Nazi Police Levy Heavy Illegal Taxes on Jews for Passports

In recent months, it was learned today, Jews have been mulcted four to five million marks by the Berlin in police as the price of passports. The money, which police said would eventually be used in behalf of poor Jews, lies in a special account to the credit of the Berlin in police presidency.

Marked down for illegal levies are said to be Berlin’s 900 wealthiest Jews as listed in the published returns of the registration of Jewish property ordered by Field Marshall Hermann Goering last June. The listed persons must hand over a “Helldorf contribution,” named for Wolf von Helldorf, Berlin police president, before they are granted passports. No Jewish welfare or emigration organization has so far seen any of the money collected.

Meanwhile, neither Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reichsbank, nor any other Reich representative today contacted George Rublee, director of the Intergovernmental Refugee Bureau, who, following yesterday’s 90-minute conference with Dr. Schacht, was waiting for a second appointment to continue the discussion of the Jewish problem.

There is no question that certain influential Nazi quarters see the Rublee visit to Dr. Schacht as so much wasted effort. It must be remembered that the Schacht emigration plan, considered abroad as a typical piece of Nazi effrontery, is considered here as a compromise with the Nazi radicals, whose hatred of the Jews blinds them even to the economic advantages of the plan.

The moderate Nazis, who before Dr. Schacht’s visit to London and the rejection of the plan there had filled the air with rumors that something would be done for the Jews, now assert that Mr. Rublee came to Berlin with nothing more than academic ideas and vague, humanitarian sympathies, both of which are anathema to the Nazis. Under the circumstances it is easy to understand the pessimistic atmosphere in which the discussions are being held.