WANTED BACK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 October 1939, Page 7

WANTED BACK

GERMANY'S INVITATION TO JEWS. TRANSLATION OF LEAFLET. Specimens of the first of the “Welcome Back” invitations (issued before the war) which the Nazis have extended to Jews and other “NonAryans,” whom they have been so ruthlessly expelling and maltreating during the last six years, have now reached Johannesburg (says the “East African Daily News”). The following is the translation of one of these leaflets, issued from the Reich: — “Geldemeeser Emigrans Help Organisation. Vienna, 1., Wollzeile, 7. “Possibilities of finding work for Christian non-Ayrans and those or no official/ religion (konfessionslose). “Healthy, strong men aged between 18 and 50 years, who are not obliged to emigrate, will find opportunities for work within the territory of the Reich, against normal payment and working conditions. “Opportunities to emigrate will be maintained in such a way that anybody who receives permission to enter a foreign country, will be allowed to return to Vienna within a few days in order to prepare for his emigration. “VOLUNTARILY.” “Whoever wants to obtain opportunities of earning a living for himself and his family is requested to report himself immediately at the Information Office, Wollzeile 7, First Floor. “Attention is expressly drawn to the fact that all persons reporting themselves do so voluntarily, but that, once they have done so, they are obliged immediately to submit to offil cial medical examination and be ready to take up work immediately. “We invite all those men, to whom the foregoing conditions apply, to report themselves for work immediately, in order to furnish the necessary proof of ability to work and willingness to work.” Similar documents have been issued in Prague, where Jewish emigrants, about to leave the country on the eve of war, were formally told by the Gestapo at the police stations that! they could find work in Germany. Various Jews who accepted the offer were sent to Hamburg. The well-known British medical publication, “The Lancet,” in a recent issue, disclosed that Nazi authorities in Austria had reinstated numei>-us Jewish doctors, owing to the lack of trained hospital staff. ( SEPARATE ROOMS. One private report received in Johannesburg from a city in Central Germany states: “Considerable astonishment was caused here recently when a representative of the Labour Front (the official Nazi Workers’ Organisation) appeared in various concerns and told the directors that, owing to the lack of labour, Jews might be employed again—provided that they were placed in separate rooms. “One employer, who inquired about this change of policy, was told: ‘Well, you see. the Jews happen to be the more intelligent people.’ And when the boss expressed astonishment at hearing this from the mouth of a Nazi functionary the latter corrected himself: ‘Well, I mean the cleverer ones.’ "Much discussion has been caused by this turn in the Jewish problem. People are asking each other: ‘Why did they first throw them out, only to fetch them back now? Why are Jewish doctors, engineers, etc., not employed according to their abilities, since there is such an enormous lack of trained men?’ ” Johannesburg Jews smile grimly at these Nazi aberrations.