A few weeks ago one of the leaders of the Jewish boycott movement in England made an offer to party leader Adolf Hitler. It seems that in one of his most recent speeches this party leader had addressed himself most bitterly against the international “clique of Jews and their diabolical boycott.” Thereupon it was suggested to him from England that he might restore all their rights to the German Jews, and then an end would be made of the boycott.
A great English newspaper sent a correspondent to me and asked me for my opinion. Since it was an internationally prominent but by no means Jewish newspaper, I declined to answer the question, for I do not consider it right for us Jews to bring our problems out into the non-Jewish limelight.
Within our own community, however, in Jewish circles, I should not at all like to create the impression that my not having answered that reporter’s question signifies agreement with that Jewish bid to Hitler. On the contrary. I am very much interested in explaining that I consider this offer of negotiations false, stupid and devoid of principle.
It is false because it is undignified for a Jew to have National Socialist creatures as partners in negotiations. Moreover, this English spokesman should have known that the hundreds and hundreds of murdered Jews cannot possibly “have their rights restored” to them.
To a much greater degree than it was false, the offer was stupid. He who studies the economic situation, even just a little on the basis of expert materials, knows that the Jewish or non-Jewish boycott has as yet not brought Germany any damage whatsoever. Of course, Hitler knows this quite as well. The economic difficulties of the German Reich are not in the least related to the boycott. They arose solely as a result of the senseless financial politics of the Reich, which spent untold millions, withdrawn from the national turnover, upon armaments and the subsidizing of argicultural and industrial war necessities.
If Hitler and his faithful are willing today they are doing so for the simple reason that they wish to pay their foreign debts as little as possible. Yet on the other hand they want their foreign credits. The German nation, however, which knows nothing of all this beyond that it must economize still further and must starve a bit more, is once again told by Hitler of the “international scheme of the Jews,” the eternal scapegoat.
It is this very thing which always makes me marvel again and again when the attempt is made to lead us to believe in the personal good faith of Hitler. This instance proves again for thousands of cases that he cold-bloodedly incites the passions of the people to pogroms against the Jews in order to divert attention from his own want on politics.
Much worse than the falseness and the stupidity which speak from this offer to Hitler is its lack of principle and of dignity. If Hitler were to restore their rights to the Jews, would everything then be in order? The English Jew who made this proposition thus places himself in the perilous ranks of th#se narrow-minded “Hitler Jews” who are happy to be obliged to recognize the barbarities so long as nothing happened to themselves.
It is necessary to draw apart from all this. The world which has arisen today to work against barbarism in that land, against persecution of the Jews and for the victims—this world is discredited by men such as these. The Archbishop of England and the Cardinal of Munich; the Christian writers Andre Gide, Knut Hamsun, Theodore Dreiser, Heinrich Mann; the thousands of intellectuals, priests and scholars of Christian confession—all these turn against the persecution of the Jews because the persecutions constitute a part of the barbarism. And the Jews themselves, the victims proper, are they to recognize the barbarism so long as they themselves come clear of it with sound skins?
What about the concentration camps?
What about the book bonfires?
In its time I dedicated my book, “Murder—Made in Germany,” to the Jews who were murdered in Germany. I did it because the others died for the Socialist idea. But the Jews died simply as the victims of eternal injustice. These martyrs pledge us, not to make ourselves as safe positions as possible, but to live and die for the human rights for which our brothers were murdered. For us Hitler is NO partner in negotiations.
More dignity! And more of a sense of obligation!
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.
