A Jewish invalid in a village of Hessen, Germany, was ordered by the Nazis to leave his bed, march through the streets carrying a Nazi flag and to shout “Heil Hitler!” according to a report which appeared this morning in the “Manchester Guardian”. The Jew pleaded that he was too ill to walk, but under the threats of armed Nazis, he was forced to run through a Nazi gauntlet until he fainted. He was later picked up in a semi-conscious condition and brought home, where he died.
It is untrue, the correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian” points out, that the Nazi terror has ceased. A feeling of terrible despair and panic, he continues, prevails among the Jewish population in Germany. The many sad chapters in the history of the Jewish people in its 2,000 years in the Diaspora, know of no case where a government prohibited its Jews to make a living and at the same time forbade them to leave the country. While in the larger towns the terror has subsided, conditions in the smaller towns and villages remain frightful.
The paper also relates the farcical trial of a Jewish peddler in ###lin David Leisten, a man without country. Leisten was tried by the Moabit court for allegedly spreading false rumors regarding atrocities. The State counsel who was supposed to defend Leisten declared he did not wish to offer protection to the accused, that on the contrary, he joined with the prosecution in condemning the attitude of Leisten, which, he said, was understandable, however, if the occupation and the race to which he belongs are taken into consideration. Leisten was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment.
The correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian” points out that the atrocity Leisten had referred to is absolutely authentic.
The paper reports another gruesome case in a village in Upper Hessen, where a Jew was beaten by the Nazis, hung by his feet, his head suspended from the ground, and when the Nazis finished their tortures the Jew was dead.
In the Vogelberg region in Upper Hessen many cases of Jewish maltreatment have been reported since the elections. Several Jews are now in the hospital at Frankfurt suffering from injuries they received while being beaten up by the Nazis.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
