The Jew in Germany Today

This the last of four article on the Jews in Germany by the brilliant British Jounalist, F. A. Voight, for many years Berlin corespondent of the Manchester Guardian, leading liberal newspager. Mr. Voight bat to leave Germany following his disclosues of Nazi complicity in the Reichstag fire and is now stanioned in Paris where he surveys the German scene for his newspaper.

Innumerable Jewish families in Germany are being uprooted or broken to pieces. Many Gentiles with Jwish wives-or Gentile woman with Jewish housbands-are getting the divorce they can now obtin without difficulty, because to be married to a Jew or a Jewes is to be classified as a ”non-Aryan,” and therefore as a kind of parish (the Jews in Germany are literally a pariah or a ”depressed” class). It is naturally the younger Jews who tend to emigrate. The older people prefer to stay or to commit suicide (the total number of suicides among Jews is not recorded, but there is reason to believe that it is very high).

Many Jews in Germany abandoned their Jewish tranditions, faith, and usuages and became entirely ”German,” but as the official test of Judaism now is not religionus but racial, and as even those who have a Jewish grandparent are considred Jews, they do not escape persecution by having been baptized or having become ”German” in outlook. Those Jews who tried to ”Germanize” themselves (some even demonstatively repudiating their Judaism) are hit terribly hard, and many have comitted suicide. While every generalizaton about Geraman Jewry in its present and imperfetly recorded state is hazardous, it does seem that the greatest power of resistance hs been shown by ward allegisance to their Judaism, especialy to their religion. They, at least, are not ashamed of being Jews-on the contrary, many have acqired a new pride, and indeed in the Hitlerite Germany that has suddenly grown up around them they can hardly help felling that it is not the Nazi ”Aryans” but the Jews who are a superior race with an older and finer tranditon, a higher ethic, a deeper inward life, and (in contemplating their own suvival after centuries of persecution that have not extinguished them) a surer futere than the Nazis with their powerfully and yet so precariously established domination have in store.

GERMAN JEWRY STRONGHOLD

And, by a strange paradox, German Jewry had become a stronghold of the finest German cicilizaton. The German theatre, film, literature, and -in large meanure -music and painting have suffered during the last ten months German science has received irreparable damage, not merely by the loss of Jewish and liberal scientist but by the asendancy of a spirit that is unscientific, or rather anti-scientific. German thought has been equally damaged-German political thought has ceased to exist. There is a profoundr understanding of German classical literature amongst Jews than amongst Nazis. There is a Jewish theatrical company which does superb prformances of German drama, though only ”non-Aryans” are admitted not the Jews but the Nazis exclude the many ”Aryans” who, wishing to see a good play just for once, would like to come)

It would be an illusion to suppose that there can be any amends for the persecutoin-the cost in physical and mental suffering, in livers, and in the total ruin of families and fortunes has been far too great. And ”surely oppresion maketh the just man mad.” A terrible hatred and bitterness that often break out inwardly, poisoning a whole mid. or in the home, creating rancour, ill-temper, and disrupton, are common enough in the absence of any out ward justice or possibility of redress. Some German Jews have acquired an extraordinary obsequiousness and a dispositon to accept a compromise. But the stupendous disaster that has overtaken German Jewry, one of the most civilized and intellingent communities in modern Europe, hs also produced in many of its members a greater self-reliance, an intensitficaton of the inner life, a deepened religious sense, and a passionate devoton to the permanent values inherent in Judaism.