Jewish merchants in Germany soon will share the fate of Jewish lawyers, doctors and commercial employees, according to reliable information furnished the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today. An ordinance soon will be issued, it was learned, prohibiting anybody from conducting commercial activities in Germany without a special card which will be called a “commercial card.”
Desiring to check Jewish commerce, these cards undoubtedly will be given to Jews only with great reservations. According to the projected text of the ordinance each applicant for a commercial card must prove “that he has undergone commercial study in Germany since childhood.”
This will be a severe blow to thousands of Jewish merchants who, though they have traded in Germany many years, spent their childhood in other lands.
American commercial firms in Germany are finding it more and more difficult to exist with every passing day because of the effort being made to impose upon them the same restrictions about employing Jews as are being imposed upon German firms.
Many American firms find it impossible to replace Jewish employees who have held certain qualified posts and done expert work for many years. Not a single day passes, therefore, without another American firm liquidating its business here, shutting up its offices and moving to another country.
No Jew can be employed for nonqualified labor in the entire Rhine district, according to an order issued by Nazi Rhine officials today.
The order declared that with the view in mind of eliminating certain elements from non-qualified artisanship each laborer henceforth must produce a special card entitling him to employment. Severe penalties have been provided for those persons employing anybody who does not possess such a card.
At the same time, it was learned that in Duesseldorf, even qualified Jewish artisans have been ordered to obtain special artisans’ cards, otherwise they are prevented from doing their work. These cards are obtainable only after passing exceptionally strict formalities.
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.
