That the economic situation of the German Jewish business man today is bad and that the outlook for the immediate future is extremely pessimistic, is the statement made by the Berlin correspondent of the “London Jewish Chronicle” in its issue of January 10. Among the 14,000 cases of bankruptcy in Germany during the past year, a large number have been of old-established Jewish firms, especially textile and fur houses, in which latter industry alone 4,000 bankruptcies have occurred.
“At the beginning of the new year, one is forced to say that the German Jew no longer plays the role of leading merchant and banker that he did before the war,” says the writer, who finds a political explanation for the bad industrial situation in general, and the Jewish situation in particular.
“The Young Plan for reparations has been heavily fought and attacked by the anti-Semites from the extreme right to the extreme left, that is, from Hugenberg to Hitler,” he says. “It has been called a Jewish machination to ruin the country. And as for the time being it is impossible to prove the contrary—one must naturally wait until the workings of the Plan dispose of these lies—the Jewish merchant has suffered considerably.”
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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.
