When Maurice A. Speiser entered his shop yesterday morning he found a note which had been thrust under his door. He opened it and read in a scrawled German script:
“Keep your mouth shut, you accursed Jew!”
Speiser, the owner and operator of the Brighton Press, a printshop at 3157 Coney Island avenue, is a member of the Jewish War Veterans and outspoken in his convictions against the Hitler government. He was outspoken when he addressed a meeting of the Brighton Beach chapter of the Anti-Nazi Minute Men on Thursday evening. During a fifteen minute talk, he told the group:
“Life is sweet. It is sweet only when we are permitted to live in peace and as good American citizens. But we find the prejudices of the old world pursuing us, persecuting us in the new world.
“Life is sweet, but under persecution by aliens it is sweeter to die. What could be sweeter than to die for this nation which recognizes the equality of all and will not tolerate persecutions.”
He appealed to the Minute Men to defend American principles with their lives. He asked them to help enforce the boycott, to investigate stores handling German goods and ask their owners to pile them on boycott bonfires.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
