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Swedish Paper Scores Hitler’s Threat to Stop Jewish Laughter

October 7, 1942
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Hitler’s threat to Jews that “their laughter will cease everywhere,” which he voiced in his address at the Sport Palace in Berlin last week, is sharply condemned today by the Swedish conservative newspaper Nya Wermlands-Tidningen.

“One recoils in horror before the cold, deliberate cynicism of these words, envisioning a tormented, miserable people,” the paper writes. “They have been baited, hunted without limit. Relentless persecutions have been carried out with methodical profoundness, and the concentration camps in which they have been placed have written a new chapter in the history of European ‘civilization.’ Their horrible fate, and the misery into which they have been plunged, appeals to the sympathy of the ordinary people. Hitler is exalted above such human weakness and looks forward to a world wherein fanaticism and racial hatred will obliterate all chance for life.

“It Hitler attains his goal, laughter will certainly became a rare thing in our world. Joy has already died in Poland, Belgium, Holland, France, Greece, Yugoslavia, Denmark and Norway,” the paper concludes.

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