Now-editorial Notes

A memorial for Jewish soldiers who had fallen in the war was unveiled at Cologne by the Federation of Jewish Front Soldiers. Dr. Leo Lowenstein, president of the Federation, in the principal address on that occasion, said:

“The Union of Jewish Front Soldiers strives for honorable regulations and satisfaction in our relations to our German homeland and to our nation. To this aim, all the work of the Union is devoted. It is done not only for our comrades, for the coming generation, for special rights for those who fought in the war do not help us.

“We want to bequeath our rights and duties to our children and our grandchildren… We want for our youth also the right to training in arms. They should not be excluded from the higher service to the Fatherland. For that reason we have submitted objections against the ‘Aryan’ Paragraphs to the War Ministry in our capacity as front-fighters and to the President of the Reich, Field Marshal von Hindenburg. … As soldiers we are accustomed to obedience and loyalty. Our work must be conducted within the framework of the State. We are not striving to restore previous conditions. The race principle of the State seeking to prevent race admixture need not be an obstacle, for we ourselves seek no such admixture. Certainly race separation should not be associated with race defamation. We can find our satisfaction also on race foundations in fully honorable form within the German homeland.”

The memorial to the German Jewish Front Soldiers who gave their lives for their German “homeland” and their German “nation” is an eloquent reminder to the present rulers of Germany of their brutal ingratitude to the German Jews. The supreme sacrifice of the fallen Jewish Front Soldiers was in vain. Even if an exception is made by the government in favor of the fathers and sons of the dead soldiers, the oppression and degradation to which German Jewry is being subjected by the Nazi regime must be extremely painful and humiliating to the “fortunates” whose relatives had died for Germany.

While it is strange that the president of the Jewish Front Soldiers should appeal to the Nazi government for the right to have the Jewish youth trained in arms, it is no doubt the soldier’s way of expressing loyalty to the nation whose national sport just now is training in arms.

Dr. Lowenstein rightly emphasized the fact that the Jews seek no race admixture with the so-called “Aryans,” and that race separation should not be associated with race defamation. This is a lesson that German Jewry has learned from its tragedy. Before the advent of Hitlerism, German Jews had overreached themselves by trying to submerge their Jewishness in their Prussianism, by striving to appear more German than the Germans themselves.

Germany has for years been the cradle of so-called scientific anti-Semitism. In recent years the pseudo-scientific theories of Jew-hatred were translated into savage acts of vandalism. No other land, even the most backward and uncivilized, has such a record of desecrating the Jewish dead as Germany has established. Hundreds of Jewish cemeteries in various parts of Germany have for years been torn up, gravestones destroyed, bodies mutilated by German degenerates. Jewish houses of worship have been profaned. Some of the smaller Jewish communities have been subjected to unspeakable torture and forced to disperse. The ritual blood libel has been revived by close friends and co-workers of Hitler.

It is more than strange for German Jews to pledge their loyalty to the government under these circumstances and to appeal for the right to military training in defense of their step-fatherland.

But German Jewry need not despair, Hitlerism is not only being destroyed by economic and moral pressure from abroad, but it is also doing its utmost to destroy itself by its stupendous stupidity and brutality.