Gentile Women Riot Against Nazi Pickets

A serious skirmish resulting in the arrest of two Jews has been reported from Kottbus.

The trouble started when an enraged crowd, composed chiefly of Christian women, objected to the picketing of two Jewish department stores by Nazis. The pickets were led by the Nazi editor of the Kottbus Lausitaer-Kampfsblatt, who explained to the police that he had noticed many brown shirt youths patronizing these stores and wanted to check them.

Accordingly he posted pickets in front of the shops, one of which was the Schoken department store, managed by a Jew, Herr Menasse, and the second of which was owned by a Jew named Krebs.

Menasse protested to the editor that the picketing was unlawful. Many Christian women in the store upheld Menasse and insulted the pickets. In the argument that followed a panic started among the customers, who rushed from the store shouting against the pickets.

Nevertheless the pickets stayed in front of the two stores until their closing hours, and Menasse and Krebs were arrested. They were set free, however, on the same evening when they established the fact that Nazis, not Jews, had provoked the tumult.

None of the Nazi pickets was arrested and an ominous warning appeared in the Lausitaer-Kampfsblatt. “Next time,” the newspaper said, “Jews will not be handled so patiently. Kottbus is governed by Hitler, not by stinking Jews from Lodz and Lemberg.”