Chancellor Issues Statement to American and British Newsmen

Jews in Austria need fear no change in the present gevernment’s policies toward them, Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss declared today.

“Our policy toward the Jews remains unaltered,” the chancellor told a group of American and British newspapermen with whom he discussed the events of the last week and the changes events had brought.

When the Chancellor was asked about the attitude of his government toward the Nazi ultimatum delivered by Theodor Habicht from Munich and threatening aggression against the Austrian government, the Chancellor replied that that bridge would be crossed when it was encountered, but if terrorism is resumed, “we will at least know who is reponsible for it.

However, while Chancellor Doilfuss was attempting to reassure Austrian Jewry and particularly foreign opinion friendly toward the Jews, Dr. Emmerich Czermak, president of teh Christian Socialist party, the Chancellor’s own pary and the backbone of the regime, speaking at a party comference, alleged that Jewish Socialist leaders fled from the fighting and that not a single Jew was among the thousands of prischers arrested for participation in the fighting or among those sentenced by the military courts set up by the regime to try those captured with arms in their hands.

JEWISH SOCIALIST SENTENCED

At the same time that the Christian Socialist leader delivered this speech, a court martial sentenced the Jewish Socialist leader Urdler, one of the commanders of the Schutzbund, the Socialist defense corps, to serve a twenty-year sentence for participation in the fighting between the pro-government forces and the Socialists.

Dr. Csermak was repeating a statement that the government owned Austrian radio and the government-censored Austrian newspaper were constantly repeating during thefighting that the Jewish Socialist leaders have fled abroad leaving their dupes to die on the barricades. In particular this was alleged of Dr. Julius Deutsch, commander-in-chief of the Schutzbund, and of Dr. Otto Bauer, aged party leader. Later, after the fighting was all over, the two men crossed the border into Czechoslvakia. Dr. Deutsch was badly wounded and it is thought he will permantly lose the sight of one of his eyes.

Dr. Czermak recently declared that the only way for the Austrian Jew to avoid anti-Semitism was to scrap assumilation. He said that first and foremost “the Jew is a Jew and not a German.” He alos declared that he favored the numerus clausus since it is just as

promise that he would discontinue an investigation into the fund.

“Murder-Made in Germany” casts into the form of fiction HerrLiepmann’s experiences in a German concentration camp, experiences incredible enough for the wildest imaginings. “Every night,” he writes, in summing up those experiences, “I hear a thousandfold rattling in men’s throats, screaming and choking. I see eyes slowly growing dim-I see hands crushed to a bloody pulpbacks with the skin streched like a balloon. I see bloody heads, crushed feet, and corpses, corpses.”

Yet, with the vision of those tortured bodies haunting him, Here Liepmann, after he had made good his escape and was living in Paris, writing his book, returned to Germany on a forged passport to verify several details of which he was uncertain, and escaped out of Germany unharmed.

Of “Murder-Made in Germany” Ludwig Lewisohn, noted critic, wrote that it is “brilliantly vivid and scrupulously authentic. As both story and document, it deserves the widest circulation.”

In a statement to The Jewish Daily Bulletin Cass Canfield, president of Harper and Brothers, American publishers of “Murder-Made in Germany” declared that “it took great courage for Liepmann to write the book knowing as he did the dangers incoolved. He was perfectly conscious of the risk and I can only express my admiration for his courage.

We are very enthusiastic about the book, which is the first human first-hand document of information on present day conditions. Heinz Liepmann was faced, as were teh other German Jewish writers, not only with the question of oppostion to the Nazi regime, but also what they would do about it. The result was this unusual book of first-hand information on present day. Germany.”