Back-to-land Movement is Furthered in Germany

(J. T. A. Mall Service)

A mass meeting under the auspices of the Union of Jewish Ex-Soldiers in Germany was held here last night in connection with the campaign of the Union for the settlement of German Jews on the land in Germany.

Representatives of many Jewish organizations were present, including Professor Tuerk, Eugen Caspary, and others representing the Board of the Berlin Jewish Community, Leo Wolff, President of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Prussia, Dr. Alfred Neumeyer, President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Bavaria, Dr. Martin Rosenblueth, Vice-President of the German Zionist Federation, Dr. M. Wishnitzer, Secretary of the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden, Wilhelm Graetz, President of the Ort in Germany, S. Adler-Rudel, of the Jewish Emigrant Welfare Centre, as well as representatives of the Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, the Joint Distribution Committee, the Jewish Health Federation Oze, the Union for Combating anti-Semitism, the Jewish Students’ Federation, the German Federation of Rabbis, the Federation of Jewish Teachers, a number of Jewish fraternal societies, Jewish youth organizations, etc., as well as many Jewish farmers.

Dr. Leo Loewenstein, President of the Union of Jewish Ex-Soldiers, who was in the chair, said that the German Jews had fought and bled for the German soil and had a right to settle on it. The Union of Jewish Ex-Soldiers stood in the van of the fight against anti-Semitism and for full equal rights for the German Jews. All sections of German Jewry were united in favor of the idea of Jewish land settlement on German soil.

Professor Franz Oppenheimer, who delivered the principal address, said that the German Jews had paid heavily for their German soil. 12,000 Jews had laid down their lives during the war fighting for Germany. The Jewish soldiers went to the front as Germans to defend their native land, but after the war hatred of the Jews had grown more intense than ever. The Jews had been settled in Germany longer than the Germans. Whatever the Jews received in Germany, they repaid a thousand-fold in spiritual values. The task for German Jewry now was land settlement. The troubles of the world had arisen as a result of the movement away from the land to industry, and the results were competition and imperialist complications. By settling on the land the Jews would be helping to solve a German problem and also to maintain Judaism. The Jews did not want to die out as people.