Ask Fulda to Return to Jewish Community As Expression of Jewish Solidarity

Ludwig Fulda, German poet and playwright, is urged to mark his 70th birthday, which occurred last month, with a return to the Jewish Community which he left two years ago.

Fulda has not joined any other religious Community since he renounced his Jewish affiliation. The plea for his return is made in an open letter addressed to him by the “Israelitische Familienblatt.”

The paper writes: “The entire Jewish press has devoted space to celebrating your achievement in German literature and has shown you reverence, though you found it advisable to announce your resignation from the Berlin Jewish Community. We have honored a man whom the enemies of the Jews regard as typically Jewish, although he himself declines to shoulder the responsibilities of belonging to us.

“Now on your 70th birthday, Ludwig Fulda should cancel that resignation. The Berlin Jewish Community waits for your return and will receive you with open arms if you realize that under the pressure of persecution everyone who feels himself a Jew must belong to the Jewish Community.”

The “Juedische Rundschau” recalls that some years ago Ludwig Fulda sent a letter to the Director of Philanthropies in Frankfurt, in which he wrote:

“I am a German of Jewish origin, and if I am as far from the Jewish Church as from any other, I still describe myself of Mosaic religion, because one does not desert from a besieged fortress.”

Fulda’s image of a besieged fortress has now unfortunately become only too real, the “Rundschau” says. German Jewry is, indeed, today, like a besieged fortress. Nazi bands with their swastikas are trying to burn it down. It is something of a consolation to us to know that no single Jew will desert the besieged fortress. But, it adds, we seek a way out of the besieged fortress, where Jewish life can be free. It must not be left to the enemy of the Jews to keep the Jews true to Judaism.