Berliner Tageblatt Prints Special Supplement on Jewish Question

What may be indicative of a change in policy in treatment of the Jews of Germany was the appearance yesterday of a special four-page supplement, devoted exclusively to the Jewish situation, in the Berliner Tageblatt. This first effort to solve the question other than by proscription of the Jews was entitled “How to Incorporate the German Jews into the New Germany.”

The supplement contained many articles pro and con, including two by Max Nauman, president of the National Union of German Jews, who recently protested to the League of Nations against consideration of the Jews as a national minority, and Rabbi Jelsky.

“We feel it our journalistic duty to bring up this difficult problem the solving of which should not be impossible, for the sake of building up Germany’s spirit of communion,” the paper declares editorially. It promises several more similar editions setting forth all sides of the question.

While including both favorable and unfavorable observations, the supplement tends to create a favorable Jewish sentiment. It enumerates editorially, Jewish contributions to German art and science, especially Jewish inventions and discoveries, and also brings out the role played by Jews in the War.

The paper denies the common Nazi allegation that Jews avoided service on the German front and gives data revealing that 84,352 Jews enlisted in the German army, including 10,000 volunteers. Of all these, 78 per cent fought in the trenches, according to the Berliner Tageblatt and 12 percent found “a hero’s death.” Decorations were awarded to 29,874 Jewish soldiers, the paper declares.

CHRISTIAN WOMAN’S PLEA

The supplement features on the first page, an especially touching appeal from a Christian woman, Pauline Leiser, married to a Jew. It relates her recent experiences and contains an appeal to all Christian womanhood to sympathize and feel all that she is going through “as the mother of three Jewish children.” She assures the readers that the Jews are not evil and states that she dares to declare that even many National Socialists and ardent supporters of the Chancellor of the Reich are not against the Jews.

Publication of this supplement aroused much interest and speculation here, especially in Jewish circles. The more optimistic were inclined to consider it as indicative of a change of attitude and the adoption of a more reasoning policy toward the Jewish population.