President von Hindenburg’s award of the Cross of Honor to Jews as well as “Aryans” was hailed by the Juedische Rundschau, “as of special importance to us Jews because it is a state political act by which all German state subjects are placed on a plane of complete equality.”
“We do not believe,” says the Rundschau, “that we German Jews should boast of our achievements in the war and the natural fulfilment of the duty which each of us has to the Fatherland. We have done our duty like all our fellow-citizens, and we expect no special recognition. Our beneficial incorporation in the state system is bound up with all the questions affecting our historic existence, and we ought not to succumb to the widely-spread error of seeing the Jewish question one-sidedly and in far too simplified a form in respect of this matter of the war participation of the Jews. But now, when with the approach of the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the war there is such a sign of honor being issued, every Jewish war participant will put forward his claim to the symbol of commemoration.”
Since there are in the ranks of the Zionist Federation of Germany a large number of war participants, the Front Fighters Department of the Federation, the paper concludes, asks each one of them to notify to it the receipt of the cross, giving the number of the document and the class of the distinction.
German Jews, too, who took part in the war, or lost their nearest in the war, will receive the Cross of Honor.
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.
