There’s a dizzy little ditty a vaudeville friend of ours used to go around the country singing behind the footlights. It had many silly stanzas and if the memory cells haven’t been atrophied by too much Day Booking, here’s one of them:
“Oh, this world is full of many funny things;
A chair has got a back, But it doesn’t wear a coat;
A bottle’s got a neck, But it hasn’t got a throat;
Yes, this world is full of many funny things.”
That was many years ago. The world is still full of comedy. Backs and coats, necks and throats may not be the theme song, but there are a few good substitutes available. Take the earlaps of your auricles and listen:
In Landsberg, Germany, a chap by the name of Reichsfuehrer Hitler makes a holy pilgrimage. It’s to the jail cell he occupied in that old Bavarian town ten years ago, in company with some of his cutthroat cronies. The cell is now a national shrine—a shrine of shame, the temptation arises to call it and some day the Germans themselves will probably call it that.
Prisoners no longer occupy it. It is laden with fresh flowers— probably roses, carnations, lilies and maybe even buttercups and daisies and forget-me-nots. The roses are for the blood he’s spilled since he left that cell, the carnations are for the purity of his “Aryan” soul, the lilies are for the peace he brought to seventy-seven (official count) former friends, the buttercups and daisies signify his innocence and the forget-me-nots are just a sentimental trifle with not much significance in Hitler’s case; as if anybody will ever forget him. My, that cell must smell sweetly!
If you’ve still got the ear laps off, cup your hands behind your ears and listen to this one:
From Berlin we hear that all Germans (and it isn’t specified whether this includes the “guest” Jews or not) are to be compelled in the future to carry racial cards. These racial cards must certify the bearer’s ancestral origin. They’ll be called, colloquially perhaps, “sippenblatt.” The new order was announced by Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, in an address to 500 civil register officers. These officers, it was explained, will be obliged to gather the minute details of every German’s race, tracing it through ancestry and kinship, in order to keep the race pure from foreign blemishes.
To the poor, rule-bogged Germans who have to carry around with them a multitude of cards, this will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Every pocket in the average German’s suit—if Hitler still allows him to wear a suit with pockets because they might conceal weapons—is bulging with cards of one sort and another. Dole cards, work cards, bread cards, traveling cards, sick-ness cards, insurance cards, police cards, health cards, party membership cards, and now, good grief, racial cards. Henceforth, every German will be required to purchase a dog-cart to follow him around with his load of government-required cards.
Incidentally, the Day Book pauses to wonder whether any of the racial ancestry “sippenblatts” will tell the truth. For if they do they’ll have to go a bit farther back than Adam and Eve and tell about great – great – great grandpappy and grandmammy Simian who used to make their home in the trees and traveled from limb to limb on their tails and never had to worry about “sippenblatts.” And maybe, before Herr Hitler gets through with his compatriots, they’ll be wishing the were back in the days of great-great-great grand-pappy and grand-mammy Simian.
—H. W.
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.
