In view of Nazi claims that the “overcrowded” conditions in German schools and high schools which has resulted in decrees practically closing these institutions to Jewish students, the Jewish Daily Bulletin publishes here a translation of an analysis of the situation which appeared in the C.-V. Zeitung, official organ of the Central Union of German Jews.
“In order to show the general effect which the ‘Law Against the Overcrowding of the German Schools and High Schools, of April 25, 1933’ will have on the non-Aryan classes, it seems to us important to give here some material available for this purpose in the official statistical publications of the high schools.
“The latest official figures refer to the summer-session of 1932, during which the number of native students of all the high schools of the German Reich amounted to 123,048. Of these, 103,353 were male students and 19,695 female students. These figures for the summer session of 1932 may represent the limit for the present. They are in the summer session of 1932 already lower than those of the summer session in 1931, and that fully by 6 percent. This decreasing tendency presumably is due to the unchanged unfavorable economic conditions.
“The number of the native students in the German high schools exceeds that of the matriculated foreigners in the Reich by 6,558. This is a figure which has suffered a decrease of 8 percent in comparison with the summer session of 1931. The drop in the case of the foreign students in the Reich is thus still greater than in the case of the native students. The total number of the native and foreign students of the Reich in the German high schools in the summer session of 1932 amounted to 129,606. Of these 5,233 were of the Jewish faith, i.e., 4.02 percent. A comparison of the total number of male and female students and the number of Jewish students included in it, gives the following picture:
“Of every 100 matriculated male students (native and foreign) 3.45 were of the Jewish faith.
“Of every 100 female students (native and foreign), 7.14 were of the Jewish faith.
“These numbers of the male and female students of the Jewish faith include only those who for the statistical study indicated that they belonged to the Jewish race. One can assume that the number of students, whose religion is unknown, to a certain extent includes also Jews and young men of Jewish descent; as well as that the numbers of students of the Evangelical and Catholic religions include offsprings of Jewish fathers and mothers, and grandfathers and grandmothers, respectively. The total number of students of unknown faith of the summer session of 1932 in the German Reich amounts to fully 1,900, i.e., to about 1.5 percent of the total number of the students. If one counts a third of that as directly or indirectly Jewish, there results a proportion of 0.5, which if added to the above mentioned average proportion of 4.02 percent of students of the Jewish faith, would give a total proportion of fully 4.05 percent. Herein are not included, however, the above mentioned groups of those students, who are of Jewish descent, but belong to one of the Christian religions. Due to the lack of information, it is impossible to determine exactly the number of Christian students of Jewish descent. One has to forego an estimate also, mainly for the reason that there is no material of any kind available for the other population groups from which an inference as to the composition of the student body might be drawn.”
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.
