Editorials

Rabbi, Temple Anshe Emet, Chicago

It is a curious accidental combination of circumstances which has conspired to give to Jewish Day at A Century of Progress a significance not originally foreseen. The Chicago Fair was anxious to have some specifically Jewish form of participation in the general concourse of peoples. The Midwest Branch of the Jewish Agency was interested in the launching of a great Jewish pageant, for which the remarkable Chanukah pageant of last Winter was to serve as a model. American Jewry as a whole happens to be interested, in a general way, in some demonstration of Jewish unity and Jewish creativity, particularly so because of the reproach which can so easily be levelled at it of disunion in the face of a great emergency. The sum total of these forces means an astonishing concentration of interest on the July 3rd demonstration at the World’s Fair. To all this should be added the rise of a genuinely friendly will toward cooperation among non-Jews who are looking for a way to express, at a time like this, their sympathy with the Jewish people and their sense of justice, outraged by events in Germany.

The date set for Jewish Day will see perhaps the largest coming together of Jews in American history. Several national conventions have re-arranged their plans in order to coordinate their annual deliberations with the Chicago demonstration. The dramatic pageant, “The Romance of a People”, which is to be enacted on Soldier Field on the night of July 3, is also attracting a general audience not connected with any specific organizations. And, by and large, the incident as a whole is likely to become memorable as an upwelling of creative Jewish will, an implied answer to those who think either that the oppression of the times has broken the Jewish morale or (which is almost as bad) that in times like these Jews ought to lie low and make themselves as inconspicuous as possible. It so happens that the first of these fears is unfounded, and the second, as a piece of advice, quite impracticable. Jews are just not in the habit of lying low, or of ceasing to act, feel and think as Jews at the bidding of anyone, non-Jew or Jew.

DOUBT AFTER VICTORY

Newspaper headlines the past week would lead one to the conclusion that the Jews have checked up several triumphs against Hitler’s Reich.

Early in the week the Council of the League of Nations adopted the Sean Lester report exempting the Jewish minority in the Upper Silesia plebiscite region from the operation of the anti-Semitic laws promulgated for the whole of Germany.

Formally and officially, the Hitler government promised the League of Nations that anti-Semitic “measures taken by subordinate authorities that were not compatible with the Silesian Convention would be corrected.”

The second victory, of a quasi-diplomatic nature, tends to put an end to the continued expulsion of Jews from German sport life, at the least.

Yielding to the threat of Brigadier-General Charles H. Sherrill, of the International Olympic Committee, that the 1936 Olympic games would not be held in Berlin if German Jews were prevented from representing Germany, the German Government issued a guarantee that in principle no German Jew would be excluded from the opportunity to compete.

These sound like glorious victories, but the victory in each case is of moral rather than practical value, and rejoicing should be tempered a little by considerations of what these victories mean and imply.

It will not be until October, when Sean Lester has officially informed the League, and through it, the world, to what extent Upper Silesian Jews have been restored to places taken from them by Nazi persecution, official and unofficial, that Jews the world over will have data by which to measure the degree of rejoicing.

The unofficial difficulties which may be raised to negate, in practice, the theoretical restoration of Jewish rights in Upper Silesia are indicated in a Jewish Telegraphic Agency despatch of June 7th.

According to this, the National Socialist Party bureau for the district comprising the Upper Silesian industrial cities has issued an appeal urging that reinstated Jewish lawyers be not patronized. In other words, you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. You can reinstate Jewish lawyers, physicians and merchants, but you cannot protect them from the effects of even an organized boycott directed even by the party in power. By pointing out the manner in which victory in Upper Silesia may be conditioned by local factors, one does not ###an to imply that there should be no rejoicing. The fact is that a diplomatic victory must be translated into restoration and restitution.

Now, there is no doubt that the concession of the Third Reich in allowing German Jews to participate in the Olympic competitions, while involving confession of wrong and humility, is a greater victory for Berlin than for anyone else, for by this concession the Hitler government is assured that the 1936 Olympic will be held in Berlin. This means that the large sum of money which might have been spent elsewhere than in Berlin will go into German pockets. And should the Nazi government desire to exclude Jews from its Olympic teams there are other ways of excluding them than by posting notices on top of the Eiffel Tower, or the League of Nations building in Geneva.

NAZIS BOAST OF JEWS

The German Legion, Inc., a unit in the Association of German and Austrian War Veterans in America, has issued a little brochure to counteract “the ever growing agitation against our German Homeland.” Therein, the Legion, Inc., points out that while the Hessian Duke sold his peasants into the British uniform for service against the American Revolutionists, Frederick the Great fulminated against the English, and that while the English, in the Civil War, supported the South, the Germans were on the Union side. But the Legion makes a curious, and even pathetic faux pas, in its list of great non-Jews who have contributed to the glory of present-day Germany. Ignorant that they are Jews, they inadvertently boast of the deeds of Germany’s two greatest chemists, Fritz Haber and Richard Willstaetter, both Nobel prize-winners. The error was natural, for there is nothing Jewish about aniline dyes, per se, or about the process of extracting from the nitrogen in the air the components required to create nitrates for fertilizers and explosives. Of course there will probably be a new edition of the pamphlet, with the names of Germany’s greatest chemists deleted. And still Haber and Willstaetter will remain great German chemists.