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Gustloff Case Seen As Springboard for New Nazi Repressions

November 18, 1936
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Jewish leaders expressed fears today that the Government would enact new anti-Jewish measures immediately after next month’s trial of David Frankfurter, Jewish medical student, for the assassination of Wilhelm Gustloff, Nazi leader in Switzerland.

Violent anti-Semitic utterances voiced at a conference of Nazi officials and district leaders, and a vigorous anti-Jewish campaign being waged by the official Nazi press under reported orders of the Propaganda Ministry were cited in support of the belief.

Intervention of the League to Combat Anti-Semitism in behalf of Frankfurter was deplored by some Jewish leaders on the ground that the resentment over it in the Reich might lead to its use as justification for new anti-Jewish restrictions.

The new measures, it was reported, would not be restricted to propaganda activities, but might embrace new discriminations demanded by Julius Streicher, Germany’s arch anti-Semite, and other Nazi Party extremists.

Nazi leaders, meeting in the third day of a seven-day conference to plan a program for the coming few months, heard Dr. Otto Dietrich, the Nazi Party’s Reich Press Chief, describe the changes in the German press since Jews were ousted from it.

Propaganda Minister Goebbel’s paper, Der Angriff, continuing anti-Jewish agitation in connection with the Frankfurter case, charged that “Moscow and world Jewry are making intensive preparations for the defense of Frankfurter.”

The paper asserted that Dr. Felix Loria, attorney of Bruenn, Czechoslovakia, had received 5,000 Swiss francs from the Soviet legation in Praha for the Jewish medical student’s defense and that Jewish industrialists and representatives of the League to Combat Anti-Semitism had conferred in Bruenn on appointment of an executive body to conduct an offensive against Germany in connection with the case.

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