German-Jewish youth is pessimistic and discouraged, stated Dr. Henry Moskowitz Wednesday on his return from Europe, where he spent five weeks in Germany and elsewhere investigating conditions of Jewry in the Nazi regime. He will make a full report on his findings to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Dr. Moskowitz is a member of this organization’s board of directors.
The most heartbreaking tragedy, in his opinion, is the fate of the Jewish child in Germany. He said:
“I do not desire to repeat details of brutal atrocities, but I cannot refrain from calling attention to the effect of the Hitler regime upon Jewish children. It is true that in the vast majority of the schools Jewish children are not separated from German children, but they are separated psychically by thousands of miles. The stories told by parents about their children’s treatment in the schools is heartrending. The Hitler regime appeals to the emotions of the people; parades and holidays are frequent in Germany now. Pupils are informed that a holiday will occur on a certain day. Jewish children dress up for it. When they come to the school that day the teacher will ask them to arise in the presence of the German children and then say: ‘You cannot participate in this holiday because you are not German’. The children then return to their parents, weeping, and ask them: ‘Why am I not German?’ This is worse than physical separation. Hitler has seared the souls of thousands of innocent children.”
WANT TO REMAIN
Dr. Moskowitz stated that German-Jewish youth desires to emigrate elsewhere, where they can start life anew.
“But the mass of the 500,000 German Jews,” he declared, “wish to remain in that country. They died for Germany during the war, 12,000 of them, and their contribution to German industry, science, art and letters show how they lived for Germany. The German Jew is being made the scapegoat of German misery he did not create.”
Dr. Moskowitz revealed that he talked with responsible non-Jews as well as Jewish leaders and discovered that the accounts of conditions in Germany, as described by Dorothy Thompson, for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Knickerbocker, of the New York Evening Post, and Mowrer, of the Chicago Daily News, were “not only accurate, but restrained.”
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.
