Dr. Henryk G. Van Dam, secretary-general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, denounced today the distribution of an Arab sponsored pamphlet on the Palestine refugees as a “scandal” and a violation of the West German constitution.
He said the pamphlet, which was distributed by a delegation of Arab states in Bonn and the Information Bureau of the United Arab Republic, was like the viciously anti-Semitic material disseminated during the Nazi era by Julius Streicher, one of the most rabid of the Nazis. The pamphlet was distributed to many prominent Germans.
“The Jews were persecuted by Byzantines, Russians and Spaniards but never without reason,” the pamphlet states. “The last great persecution of the Jews occurred under the Hitler regime after the Zionist organizations, using their political marionettes, Winston Churchill and Zionist Franklin D. Roosevelt, succeeded in bringing war to Germany. One of the most popular Zionist lies is that 6,000,000 Jews were liquidated by Germans during that period.”
Dr. VanDam, writing in the organization’s official publication, the Allgemein Zeitung der Juden in Deutschland, declared: “This kind of propaganda is being spread in the German language in the Federal Republic, just at the moment when the Auschwitz camp trial is taking place in Frankfurt. Chancellor Ludwig Erhard is negotiating with an American President whose teacher and ideal was Franklin Roosevett who, along with Winston Churchill, is being labeled an initiator of World War II.”
Dr. VanDam said that “a logical result of such a pamphlet can only be the instigation of hatred of Jews, sabotage of all efforts to develop a spirit of citizenship, deterioration of relations between the Federal Republic and the major powers, and the approval of old and preparation of new policies of persecution.”
The German Jewish leader requested that the laws against anti-Semitic propaganda should be applied “to the propaganda modeled on that of Gauleiter Strelcher, disseminated in the Federal Republic by foreigners with the aid of foreign states. The states involved are ones which receive enormous amounts of development aid paid for by West German taxpayers, including Jewish taxpayers,” he stressed.
Although this propaganda activity is disguised as anti-Israel information, it is in fact directed at Jews living in Germany.” he declared. He said that those responsible, if they live in West Germany, will have to answer to the authorities and face prosecution under the West German criminal code. This was a reference to a paragraph of the code which prohibits inciting hate against any segment of the German population or slandering any religious, ethnic, national or racial group.
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.
