German Working Class Reported Dissatisfied with Constant Nazi Anti-jewish Propaganda

Dissatisfaction with the constant anti-Jewish propaganda of the Nazi party, radio and press is manifesting itself among wide sections of the German working class, according to information disclosed here today by a Jewish worker, who was able to emigrate from Germany before practically all emigration was halted.

The refugee worked as a mechanic in a Hamburg factory and was in constant contact with a hundred other workers, yet, he states, although it was known that he was a Jew on no occasion did he get into any difficulties with his follow Workers nor was he subjected to any indignities or humiliation. Some of the Germans who worked with him even remarked that the anti-Jewish laws were “despicable,” he reports. When the order providing that every Jew wear a Mogen David was first announced, one of the factory employees remarked: “We, also, ought to wear this thing in order that we might be taken for decent fellows.”

In the house where he lived, the emigre reveals, his non-Jewish neighbors made it a practice to leave foods which Jews were forbidden to purchase on top of the pail of sand which stood before his room for use in case of fire resulting from R.A.F. bombings. During harvest time one neighbor who owned an orchard would heap the pail with fruit which was marked “Windfallen – without value” although the fruit was in perfectly good condition.

These pro-Jewish actions continue despite ruthless reprisals upon the part of the Nazi officials when they uncovered evidence of Germans befriending Jews, according to a reliable report from another Jewish worker formerly employed in Berlin. A shop mate of his, the Berlin Jew said, was sent to the Wustermark compulsory labor camp because he had expressed indignation and disgust when a column of Jewish workers who were being marched through the factory courtyard were maltreated by the Nazi guards.

Information received from a Jewish lawyer in Berlin, who recently emigrated from Germany, discloses the extent to which corruption has spread among the Nazi bureaucracy. In one district, the lawyer reported, all the Jews were ordered to deliver their valuables to the municipal pawn shop, but, in some way, most of the property disappeared. As a result the manager of the shop was imprisoned as was a high S.S. official who while in charge of supervising foreign exchange control had organized a private smuggling ring.