The Week in Review

The masters of the Reich employed new tactics this week in voicing pessimism—for domestic as well as foreign consumption—regarding the German economic situation. Following Reichsbank President Schacht’s assault on the anti-Nazi boycott, Economics Minister Schmitt predicted a billion-mark drop for the year in Germany’s foreign trade and the carefully muzzled Vossische Zeitung reported an eleven and a half percent decrease in exports for November as compared to November, 1932. In this connection the London Daily Herald intimated that the figures might have been arranged to suit Dr. Schacht’s threat of a German default in foreign debt payments.

…The Berliner Tageblatt reported that Germany had lost the American toy market to Japan…. The mayor and a delegation of substantial citizens of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) arrived in Berlin to petition the authorities to remove the Jewish boycott clauses from specifications for the manufacture of the new Labor Front uniforms.

…A favorite weapon employed by the Nazis in “co-ordinating” such concerns as the Mosse newspaper and publishing organization was brought into use in the state of Hesse when all banks there notified their Jewish clients that their loans had been called and were payable within the week. The reason? Jewish depositors, driven to consuming their capital because of loss of income, had been making withdrawals. Jewish business enterprises in Hesse, already on the brink of bankruptcy because of the boycott, with most of their assets extant in the form of merchandise credits to peasants, are consequently facing foreclosure by the banks. The usual boycott proclamations were issued in various parts of the Reich as the economic situation for the Jews settled a little deeper into the channel leading directly and inevitably to utter ruin.

…It became known this week that the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden, the all-German Jewish representative body, had, with a commendable display of dignity and courage, refused the brazen invitation of the Nazi government to submit a draft of the proposed Jewish law codifying the discriminatory decrees of the Hitler regime. Twelve drafts are now in the hands of the authorities, it was learned, one of them having been prepared by the ardent nationalist, Dr. Max Naumann…. Jews were barred from newspaper work in another decree but permitted to work on Jewish newspapers…. One hundred and thirty thousand Jews naturalized since the World War will be deprived of citizenship, it was announced. Seven thousand two hundred Jews and their families lost their citizenship in Southern Westphalia.

…Uniformed Nazi officials, participating for the first time in a Jewish meeting, cheered exhortations to Jews to contribute to the general winter relief and remained significantly silent when speakers expressed hope that cooperation between Jews and Nazis would follow along other lines…. The Keren Hayesod was permitted to hold its first public mass meeting in Berlin.

…A court decision gave the right to “Aryans” to divorce their Jewish mates…. Jewish school children were ordered to give their teachers the Hitler salute…. Jews were barred from the timber trade, from the All-German Industrial Exhibition…. The sixty-two-year-old Offenbach rabbi, Dr. Dienemann, was transferred to a concentration camp for allegedly insulting the Nazis.

PALESTINE

The complete apathy of Jaffa Moslems towards the general strike proclaimed by the Arab Executive to coincide with the trial of the leaders of the Jaffa disorders forced the Executive to call it off. Eighteen Arab leaders, including Jemal al Husseini, secretary of the Executive, who earlier in the week had a month’s imprisonment sentence in connection with the Jerusalem disorders cancelled by the district court, went on trial before Magistrate Bodilly. The district court revoked all the jail sentences set by the magistrate in the Jerusalem case, putting all the convicted defendants on their good behavior.

…Official figures disclosed that 4,449 Jews were admitted to Palestine in October…. The questions of a legislative council for Palestine and the municipal elections for Jerusalem continued to agitate both Arabs and Jews…. Myles Layman Farr Elliott, government advocate who had prosecuted the Jerusalem rioters, died from injuries sustained when he was hit by an automobile.

GREAT BRITAIN

The London Jewish Chronicle appealed to the British government to take action to halt the flood of anti-Semitic libels in England and to check the activities of organizations engaged in arousing anti-Semitism.

…The House of Commons learned that an Englishman, D. A. Sunderland, had been granted rights to seek oil in Palestine and that the Iraq Petroleum Company had received similar rights in Transjordania. Sir Herbert Samuel told the House that death was provided as the penalty for several offenses in the new Palestine criminal code and flogging for minor infractions of the law. Colonial Secretary Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister assured the members that principles of British law were being followed in the proposed code.

…The women’s division of the Central Relief Fund raised $40,000 at a luncheon at which Lion Feuchtwanger warned that any attempt to negotiate with the Nazis was fruitless and would be regarded as a confession of weakness… the central relief conference will be convened in London in January.

THE REST OF EUROPE

The Duca government swept the Roumanian parliamentary elections, winning a majority while the anti-Semitic parties obtained less than five percent of the vote. The Liberal Party victory followed a condemnation by King Carol of racial and religious discriminations in the kingdom…. The trial of Samson Bronstein was postponed for the eighth time.

…Hungarian Minister of Education Balint Homan advised a Jewish delegation that the best way to combat the spread of Nazi-ism in Hungary was to see that Hungarian college graduates obtained jobs. Disorders continued spasmodically in the universities.

…The Dollfuss trend toward a Hitler Fascism is apparently continuing. Vienna gave birth to an Aryan Lawyers’ Association including government figures in its membership. It urged ousting of the Jews from the legal profession.

…Italy honored the late David Lubin, American Jew, who established the International Agricultural Institute…. Italian Jewry celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the entrance into the rabbinate of Chief Rabbi Angelo Sacerdoti…. Vatican City sources scotched reports that the Vatican was treating with the German government on the status of Catholics of Jewish origin….

…Latvia barred two anti-Semitic parties…. Russia renewed its bid for support of an autonomous Jewish republic in Bureya. Concessions allowed however to settlers in the Far East were only partially extended to Bureya where collectivized farms will be exempted from the government’s corn and rice levies.

CUBA

Cuba’s Jewish population continued the victim of attacks by pro-and anti-government factions. Two Jews were killed outright and the life of a third is in doubt as a result of a raid by a mob of soldiers and Negroes on a Jewish store in Havana. Representatives of the Havana Jewish community have appealed to the government for protection and have secured the aid of French legation officials. The situation of the Cuban Jews continues most serious.

UNITED STATES

Samuel Untermyer roundly assailed German Ambassador Hans Luther for conducting propaganda in this country and bitterly attacked the use of German Day in New York as the occasion for a pro-Hitler rally. Speaking before 20,000 at the Maccabean Festival at Madison Square Garden, the veteran attorney denounced Luther as “a pernicious propagandist.”

…Henry Ford denied he was a “Jew-hater” or “Jew-baiter” or that he had contributed funds for anti-Semitic activities.

…The entire city of Richmond, Va., joined in honoring Mrs. Samuel Cohen, philanthropist, on the occasion of her eightieth birthday…. Atlanta, Ga., Jews presented a Chanukah program on the air for the first time in the South…. Pittsburgh Zionists honored Abraham Goldberg, Zionist leader…. Dr. William Feinbloom announced discovery of another device to aid the near-blind and waived rights to the invention…. Philanthropies benefitted from the estates of George Washington Ochs-Oakes and Robert G. Blumenthal.