The Reichsverband der Juden in Deutschland, central representative body of Jews in Germany, re-opened today and resumed activities for the first time since it was closed down Nov. 10 as one of a series of reprisal measures against German Jewry for the assassination of a German Embassy official in Paris by a Polish-Jewish youth.
At the same time, a ban on Jewish religious services was lifted in Munich, where a synagogue service will be held Friday night for the first time since the pogrom. This development was understood to be a concession to the deeply Catholic Munich population, which is hostile to anti-Semitism. Theodor Cardinal Faulhaber is known to have given asylum to Jewish friends and to have provided them with money for food at the height of the terror.
Incomplete reports from the provinces indicate that 60,000 Jews were arrested throughout Germany and 520 synagogues were either completely or partially destroyed in the wave of reprisals following the Paris assassination. Five thousand of those arrested have been released.
U.S. CONSULATE SWAMPED BY VISA APPLICATIONS
The United States Consulate is facing great difficulties, with 160,000 applications for immigration visas now on file, 60,000 from Berlin alone, and the total increasing at the rate of 500 daily. Recent events have loosed a new flood of applications. Besides the thousand Jews thronging the consulate daily, officials of the consulate are receiving hundreds of cables from the United States regarding emigration and thousands of telegrams and letters from Jews throughout the Reich.
Applicants now filing visa requests have no hope of receiving the immigration permits before three years. According to Acting Consul General Raymond Geist, despite the reaction in America to the recent events, possibilities of immigration to the United States have not changed. Observers point out that in some respects the situation is worse and short of new legislation in Washington there is no way of solving the problem.
Kanwhile, a welfare service for Jews released from the Buchenwald concentration camp was established near the Weimar railway station after a group of released Jews had spent the night at the station unable to buy tickets. A similar service was set up at the Oranienburg station near the Sachsenhausen camp.
A monthly load estimated at 2,000,000 marks has been shifted to the impoverished Jewish community by the changes in the welfare law last weekend (virtually barring Jews from the dole). Thirty to fifty thousand Jews who were receiving stipends of from 35 to 40 marks monthly, payable hitherto to all unemployed after a certain time limit, are now not entitled to relief until all resources of the Jewish community are exhausted. Supplementary relief from Reich welfare organizations will only be paid after "stringent examination of the circumstances."
Jewish "Kleinrentners" (persons receiving small incomes from securities), mostly elderly people, who lost their capital during the inflation period and who hitherto received doles averaging 60 marks monthly are also barred from receiving funds of Reich welfare organizations hereafter.
The Kassel Municipal Welfare Department, after all Jewish businesses had been taken over, decreed that a single shop owned by the municipality will be designated where Jews and Jewish institutions must purchase their food, clothing and other necessities.
The editors of the Jewish News Page, single-sheet newspaper which is the only one permitted to be published by the Jews, have been forbidden to print death notices. No reason for the ban has been given but it was understood that the authorities were anxious that the number of suicides be not disclosed.
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.
