The Nazi party’s intention of forming dissolution of all marriages between Jews and “Aryans” regardless of their duration was revealed in a decision today by a Frankfurt-am-Main labor court upholding the discharge of an “Aryan” technician from a position he had held 21 years on the sole ground that his wife was Jewish.
In the course of the court hearing in the case, it was also disclosed that the first step in this campaign is expulsion from the German Labor Front, and consequently from all opportunity for employment, of all “Aryans” married to Jews.
Instructions to that effect have been issued by Robert Ley, Labor Front leader, it was revealed during the court action.
The action was brought by an “Aryan” technician, whose name is not given in the German press which reports the case, a wounded war veteran who had been decorated for heroism. He testified that he had been married to the Jewess twenty-one years. The representative of the firm which had discharged him testified that the firm had no complaint against the veteran and wouldn’t have disclosed him except upon the Labor Front’s insistence.
The court thereupon inquired of Herr Ley whether “Aryans” married to Jews long before the Nazi regime are liable to expulsion from the Labor Front. Upon Ley’s answer in the affirmative, the court ruled that it could not challenge the dismissal.
Addressing a meeting at Hanover last night, Ley declared that the Nuremberg laws would have been unnecessary if the Nazi Government had been certain that the entire nation was supporting its anti-Jewish policy.
“Our generation could have spared itself the Nuremberg laws with all its complications,” he stated. “The Nazi party had other ways and means of protecting German blood. There was the danger, however, that because of a century of Jewish emancipation there wasn’t enough resisting power among the people. We had to introduce measures which will affect our generation for a long time. The Nuremberg laws are nothing but training for us to keep our generation alive and not forgetting that it belongs to the German nation.
All Nazis today were ordered to consider the large Wertheim’s Department Store in Berlin as purely Jewish and therefore to be boycotted by all loyal party members. The order was issued by party headquarters apparently to prevent Jews from sharing in the Christmas holiday trade.
Other developments affecting the Jewish position in Germany were:
The Reich Department for “Non-Aryan” Culture yesterday prohibited a scheduled performance of J. L. Peretz’s “Night on the Old Market Place.” The play, a symbolical, impressionistic drama which de-
picts the tragedy of Jewish life, was to have been produced by the Jewish Kulturbund, organization formed under the direction of the Department for “Non-Aryan” Culture, and whose activities are restricted exclusively to participation by Jews. No reason for the ban on the play was given. The play was written about twenty-five years ago.
Because it was discovered that his wife, to whom he has been married twenty-five years, is of “non-Aryan” origin, a war veteran who is himself 100 per cent “Aryan” has been dismissed from his civil service post by the municipal government of Breslau, it was reported in the local press yesterday.
When the case was brought to court, the judge ruled that the dismissal was justified under the Nuremberg laws, “despite the fact that it is naturally very painful for the dismissal official who was married long before the social question was ever taken into consideration.”
Speaking at a meeting in Altenberg yesterday as a representative of the Reich Nazi Medical Association, Dr. A. Stercke, leader of the Munich Nazi brigade, declared that it is Germany’s ambition to become the vanguard of a world fight against Jews.
Dr. Stercke is quoted as follows in the German press:
“Our hatred of Jews is not directed against the individual Jew but against Jewry as a whole. We hate Jews not because we derive pleasure from hating but because we love Germany and the entire world. It is a case of ‘to be or not to be’ for either us or the Jews.”
The Federation of German Booksellers has issued notification to Jewish book dealers that they must either close or sell their shops immediately.
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.
