Elias Tobenkin, Back from Tour, Sees Nazis Relenting on Jews

Elias Tobenkin, journalist and novelist, predicted today on his arrival from a tour of fifteen countries that the tendency of the German Government would be to play down the Jewish issue in the future.

He said he had learned in official circles in Berlin that the Nazis would like gradually to drop the Jewish question and allow anti-Semitic restrictions to die down if agitation against the Nazis abroad ceased.

The German people, he declared, were reacting against extreme anti-Semitism and were coming to admire the Jews in Germany for their patience and discipline. “If the people believed one-tenth of what Hitler told them there would have been many riots against the Jews,” he said.

Among the other places he visited was Biro-Bidjan, where, he declared, the Russians were building a new empire. He described conditions as promising and held the prospects for the Jews settling in the autonomous region as good because the Soviet Government was using the project as a “springboard” for its development in the East.

Japan, he said, was seeking friendly relations with Palestine and trying to arrange an exchange of goods. He described the condition of the Jews in China as pathetic because, as essentially western people, they felt out of place. The Jews in Shanghai live in expectation of going to Palestine, he said.

The primary purpose of Mr. Tobenkin’s trip was to write a book for G.P. Putnam and Sons which will be called, “The People Want Peace.” While in Siberia, he contracted typhus and his condition became so serious for a time that he was not expected to live. The Soviet Government gave him extraordinary attention, even sending him medicine by airplane.

While in Berlin, he arrived to keep a dinner engagement with Boris Smolar, chief European correspondent of the J.T.A., just in time to save him from arrest. He warned Nazi agents who were searching Smolar’s hotel quarters that he would notify the American authorities if Smolar were arrested.