I Wrote recently of an American Jewish editorial scribe, who from the safety of the United States lifted up his voice and proclaimed, “We are not afraid of Hitler.” I have now come across another Jewish editorial scribe in Paris who goes one better, who rises up in his wrath and trounces the German Jews for not standing up to Hitler.
What right have we to thrust martyrdom upon people who don’t want to be martyred? Those who are so anxious to play heroics can find their way into Germany. We have no right to push others into the lion’s den. If other people want to adapt themselves to circumstances, however difficult, who are we to tell them they must satisfy our lust for stage heroics?
After all, it is the German Jews whose lives are at stake. If they feel that such denunciations and threats by being reproduced in the Hitler press will only add to their troubles, which they don’t want added to, who are we to take it upon ourselves to push our noses where we are not wanted?
Sometimes I wonder if we Jews are such a blood-thirsty ghoulish lot as it seems when I see the way Jewish papers splash lurid descriptions of pogroms in their best display.
Time and again, the responsible organizations of German Jews, Zionist and assimilationist alike, issue statements objecting to the exaggerated manner in which events are reported abroad. Quieting and reassuring reports are minimized and reports of brutalities are—not exaggerated, but given most prominence. Every word in Socialist and anti-German papers, which for their own party ends or pro-French ends are conducting a campaign against Germany, is seized upon as depicting the true situation in Germany.
There is no doubt that disgraceful things are happening in Germany. There is no doubt that the Hun, the Boche, has regained the ascendancy in Germany, though it does not mean that now, as then or ever, he is the whole of Germany. The two Germanys, like the two Englands, the two Americas (Ku Klux Klan, gangsters), the two Frances (anti-Dreyfusards), the two Italys are always struggling against each other. Now one, now the other climbs into the saddle. Though this time, the German bully has been hoisted into the saddle by the obtuseness of the Powers who refused to yield to the democratic German governments what all Germany demanded, and seem anxious now to yield it to those who climbed to power over the backs of the reasonable governments whom their unyielding obstinacy brought down.
THE PRO-HITLER FORCES
Without the united feeling of all {SPAN}###rmany{/SPAN} against the Versailles {SPAN}Trea###{/SPAN}—even the Centre and the Social {SPAN}#emocrats,{/SPAN} and the German Jews, {SPAN}#any{/SPAN} of whom applaud those of {SPAN}#itler’s{/SPAN} denunciations that are {SPAN}di#ected{/SPAN} against Versailles — Hitler {SPAN}#ould{/SPAN} never have become the force {SPAN}###{/SPAN} is. Since nobody else had got {SPAN}##evision{/SPAN} for Germany, the Germans {SPAN}####cided{/SPAN} to try whether Hitler, who {SPAN}###pt{/SPAN} saying he could, would get it. {SPAN}#nd{/SPAN} it looks as if he may. Much {SPAN}###{/SPAN} the blame, too, rests with the {SPAN}#ort-sighted{/SPAN} Social Democrats, who {SPAN}#rew{/SPAN} out Bruening rather than face {SPAN}#he{/SPAN} trade unions with his wage-cut proposals, and so let in Hitler, who is crushing their trade unions altogether.
But force seems to get its way in many things. Just the same outcry ### now goes up against Hitler Germany, went up against the Red Ter### of the Tcheka, against the White ###rror in Hungary, against the brutalities of Mussolini’s Fascists, and against the Matteoti outrage. Yet the Tcheka, with its name changed to Ogpu, is still all-powerful in Russia, Horthy is still ruler in Hungary and Mussolini is now accepted as quite respectable.
AGAINST OTHERS THAN JEWS
Is the outrageous strangulation of Judaism in Soviet Russia, the strangulation of all freedom of conscience, all independence of thought any less beastly than the Hitler violence in Germany? Which, too, is not exclusively anti-Jewish. We must not lose our perspective. The six hundred thousand Jews in Germany are not the only target against whom the Hitlerists aim. There are millions of Communists, millions upon millions of Socialists and Democrats and Republicans of all sorts who are having and are going to have a very sticky time.
The Jews in Germany are helpless against the storm that has swept their country. But not all of them are dismayed. Not all of them are even sorry. There are all sorts of Jews in Germany, as everywhere else. And some are avowed Hitlerists themselves, who would be only too glad to join the ranks if the fact that they are Jews were not a bar. A few have smuggled their way in, even so. Many more support the German Nationals. Oscar Wassermann, the banker and a Jewish Agency leader, did. The big Jewish industrialists and merchants and bankers were no doubt not averse to that part of the movement that set out to crush Socialism and the trade unions.
What interests have Jews as such to defend those Jewish magnates in Germany, who, as the Hilfsverein and the Central Union categorically declared, refused to employ Jewish workers in their concerns? What business have we to defend Jews who engaged in vast swindling like the Barmats, the Sklareks, Kutisker, Jews by accident of birth, without a spark of Jewish feeling or desire to be Jews? Besides, those who have plenty of money, honestly or fraudulently obtained, will manage without our worrying about them.
COMMUNIST JEWS ANTI-SEMITIC
And what need have we to get excited about the fate of ex-Jews, and baptized Jews, like Bruno Walter, who concealed his Jewish birth, refused to admit it, worshipped like a good Christian, or Louis Ullstein, of the “Jewish” Ullstein Verlag, who was a member of the Christian Church.
Or the Communist Jews, who in Germany waged a miniature Soviet “War against Judaism,” or the baptized or Konfessionslos Socialists, who were at great pains to dissociate themselves from all things Jewish, like the “Vorwaerts” editor Stampfer, who at Eduard Bernstein’s funeral vetoed all mention of the fact that he was a Jew. There are several born-Jew Socialist Deputies in the present Reichstag, but not one who acknowledged himself a Jew.
As for the rest, the poor, humble Jews, the mass of good, decent Jews, who want only to be left alone, who accumulated no riches, and wielded no power, and have not meddled in politics and who hope that if they manage now to slink away into obscurity, the storm will sooner or later pass, and they will be able to come out again and take their place in the world, asking for nothing but to be allowed to live; what good will protests do them? It will only direct the searchlight of Nazi resentment upon them.
REFUGE THE CHIEF DESIRE
It may be cowardly to slink into the shadows, but small bushes bend before the storm. We are not all great oaks that stand straight up, no matter how severe the gale, and even great oaks are sometimes blown down.
If the protesters could offer a chance to these poor Jews to find refuge elsewhere that might be worth doing. Many would not leave. We are Germans of Jewish faith, they say. Our country is Germany, and our fate is bound up with that of Germany. If evil days come, we bear the evil as we did the good. In the war we gave our blood for Germany. If Germany wants our blood now, we shall give it, even if we are immolated on the altar this time amid cries of execration, and not of approbation as in the war. It is not what will happen to the German Jews, but what will happen to Germany that matters, is the way one of them put it recently.
WHERE SHALL THEY GO?
Even the Nazis have some under-
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.
