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Dies Committee Files Aid Probe of Simon Murder

May 11, 1941
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The Dies Committee today turned over to Washington police various anti-Semitic threatening letters in its files for investigation as possibly connected with the fatal assault last Monday night on Heinrich Simon, anti-Nazi former editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, on a Washington street. Police said they still had no clues as to how, why or by whom Simon was murdered.

The letters from the Dies committee files, signed with the name “American Secret Million Committee,” contain such phrases as “massacre every Jew.” One of the letters was addressed to Herman Hoffman, Grandmaster of the Independent Order B’rith Abraham in New York. Similar letters have gone to Senator Alben Barkley and prominent Washington columnists.

All the letters bear the slogan, “England expects every American to do and die for her,” a crudely-drawn picture of a gallows and the phrase, “All-out war on Roosevelt, Jews and Jewish democracies.” Other slogans used are, “Hitlerism shall not perish from the earth but the Jews shall” and “God bless Hitler! Goddam the Jews!”

One of the envelopes containing these threats was mailed from Arlington, Va., another from Marlboro, Md. Dies committee investigators believe the person responsible for mailing of the letters operates from Washington and mails them from nearby points.

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