During the past week there has been an interesting exchange of mail published in Die Plauderecke, the correspondence corner of the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung. The Ridder Brothers struck upon an excellent idea when they decided to allow their readers to spout on the subject of “Truth! Justice! Tolerance!”
The letters lay open the German American opinion of the New Germany, and from their communications, one gets many interesting sidelights on the impressions Hitler has created among former Germans who can speak without fear of concentration camp or hope of favor with the native Nazis.
The editors withhold the right of censorship. We can well appreciate this reservation, for too frequently comment on the Hitlerite situation, both pro and con, can be brought to print only in the following terms, “###*- & (‘###!!!”
It becomes apparent from the communications, and there must be hundreds of them daily, that German American sentiment is not entirely Pro-Hitler. One who signs himself, “Has Been Nazi” ends his letter with “. . . and now I am deeply disturbed that our beloved Germany, ‘Germany the land of Poets and Thinkers,’ has become a toy in the hands of the enemies of the fatherland.”
The early part of his letter is devoted to a defense of the old German Jews who, he claims, had nothing to do with the blight of the country, which he charges may be laid to the Eastern Jews. He expresses the conviction that Hitler’s nonsense is leading to considerable difficulties, and that it is without foundation. He states that the Eastern Jews were recalled at the establishment of the Polish state to work in the mountains.
One signing himself, “Student,” assumes the burden of replying to many correspondents who had declared that freedom still exists in Germany. He says, “It is well known to me that one may feel free under any conditions, but whether one appears free-?” He then goes on to point out many liberties which the German people are “unwilling” to utilize under the Hitler regime, and he ends up with a wall that Jews should have been boycotted, that the Catholic church should have been brought into the Nazi strife, that the German worker had been “gleichschaltet.” Let us add to his complaints-“that birth control hadn’t been better regulated about the time the grim-visaged Hitler infant came squalling into the world.
Another, “Richard,” apparently a publicity man for the DAWA anti-Jewish boycott organization, says that he is neither Nazi nor anti-Nazi, but that he wears the DAWA pin. He says that daily at the bank in which he works he comes in contact with a number of non-Germans who wear the button-a badge of respectability.
“German American” quotes Hull’s dissertation on the fact that American liberalism and democracy are firmly lodged in the American Constitution and cannot be swept aside, and he warns that others in this country cannot serve the spirit of the Constitution and the spirit of Hitler’s twenty-five points. He ends with, “It is dangerous to play with fire, hence this warning.”
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.
