We must in general give every assistance to those Jews who wish to build up a new life outside Germany, so that there should be no purposeless destruction of Jewish possessions, Herr Georg Kareski, former president of the Berlin Jewish Community said, speaking at a recent meeting called by the Berlin Jewish People’s Bank, Ivria, of which he is chairman of the Supervisory Board.
But of the leaders, he went on, we demand that, like the captain of a sinking ship, they must stay at their posts.
German Jewry is unarmed, materially and spiritually, for the situation in which it now finds itself, and we must make strenuous efforts, therefore, to direct the transformation of Jewish life in Germany that has now become indispensable, in such a way as to avoid the purposeless destruction of Jewish values, and that the Jews who remain in Germany should be assured sufficient means of subsistence to enable them to maintain themselves.
A network of Jewish cooperative banks of the type of the Ivria, crowned by a central cooperative bank, could play an important part in this economic transformation process, he continued. The basis exists. Fifteen months ago an institution on the lines of the Ivria was founded in Chemnitz, and a few days ago another was started in Breslau.
Both in the liquidation of property, and in the building-up of new means of existence and in the measures taken for shifting the occupational strata, which will have to be carried through on a scale such as has been undertaken perhaps only in Soviet Russia, the Jewish credit cooperative system can achieve extraordinary results, both by means of credit-aid and of advice. Concentration on cooperative lines is the most effective method of economic self-aid, and will be able to save a large part of the endangered Jewish possessions.
After a discussion in which Dr. Brutzkus and Herr Salomon, member of the Berlin Corn Exchange, took part, the meeting expressed its unanimous resolve to follow the course outlined by Herr Kareski, and to place fresh forces at the disposal of the Jewish cooperative movement.
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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.
