Between the Lines

The Jewish situation in Germany is again beginning to attract attention, this time because of the utterances of certain Nazi leaders that it is high time to consider the Jewish problem in Germany solved.

When the Nazi theoreticians included in their program the so-called “Aryan’ paragraph, they wanted to oust the Jews from the government machinery and from the cultural and political life of the country. This, they claim, has now been achieved. Germany no longer feels any Jewish influence.

The only field in Germany in which the Jews are still active is the field of commerce. Here the Jews cannot be touched. The application of the “Aryan” paragraph to commerce would definitely lead to collapse of the entire German commercial system. It would increase the army of unemployed Germans. It would cause dissatisfaction among the middle class, which buys its goods cheaper in Jewish stores than in “Aryan” stores. It would hamper the development of German trade.

THE INDUSTRIALIST PRESSURE

Thus the leading industrialists in Germany, who practically control Hitler’s actions, now consider it opportune to impress upon the Nazi leaders the necessity once and forever to declare that the Jews will no longer be molested in Germany. Once such a declaration is made, German industry will benefit not only within the country but also abroad. The boycott of German goods abroad will cease, German exports will increase. Jews will again represent German firms in foreign countries. The lost market will be recovered. Factories in Germany will again begin operating. Employment will increase. The world will learn to realize that the Germans are not as brutal as it had been assumed. More sympathy for Germany will be gained in international politics. Confidence will be restored to German credit. There will be more opportunity to obtain loans abroad. There will be no necessity to burden the German taxpayers with new taxes.

The pressure of the industrialists in regard to the Jewish question seems still to find opposition in the ranks of the Nazi party. This opposition is, however, daily growing weaker. It has especially diminished during the last two weeks when a German delegation returned from the United States with the disappointing report that no loans can be obtained from this country under the present state of affairs in Germany.

Milder winds are therefore to be expected in Germany as far as the treatment of the Jews is concerned. The notorious Julius Streicher will still continue his Jew-baiting publication with its libelous anti-Jewish accusations, but this will not be the policy of the government. The government press will restrict itself to a more dignified tone than that of Streicher’s “Stuermer.”

ARMISTICE BUT NOT PEACE

The status quo situation with regard to the Jews in Germany is, however, far from being a solution to the Jewish problem there, and will hardly satisfy Jewish leaders abroad. It may be true that Jews in commerce will remain undisturbed, but that does not settle the question of those who have been ousted from their positions as doctors, lawyers, journalists, professors and scientists. What about the restrictions with regard to Jewish students? What about the restoration of the Jews to their normal citizenship rights?

The Jews of the world can accept a status quo in Germany only on a basis for further negotiations to restore German Jews to full citizenship rights. Only as an act of armistice, and not as a permanent peace. Real peace between the Jews of the world and the Nazi Reich can only be achieved when the Jews in Germany will be given back those rights of which they have been deprived.