German Americans Worried Here

Nazi activities in this country have been brought to a head by the first open attack on the Jews of America by the Friends of New Germany, Hitler organization in ## United States, which has proclaimed a boycott on the Jews. The following is the ninth of a series of articles detailing the rise and growth of the Nazi-inspired anti-Semitic movement in this country in all its ramifications. The articles are based on an exhaustive investigation of Nazi propaganda activities in this country and in Germany for a period of over a year.

Already the Nazi terroristic influence has taken hold of the entire German-American community of New York a n d throughout the country. In many respects the awful influence of Hitler’s secret police, his concentration camps, and his brow beating is felt in New York as much as in the fatherland.

Unfortunately, the many cases of Hitler’s subjection of German Americans can not be given in detail here. I have met Germans, Jews and “Aryans” alike, who have told me their sorry tales of Nazi oppression which is felt in the United States almost as in Germany. Those who have relatives in the homeland fear to speak openly their convictions on the Hitler government; and those who have no relatives in Germany are frequently sandbagged into subjection by threats of American Nazis.

ABOARD NAZI SHIPS

Those who question the truth of these statements I would refer to avenues through which they can secure some corroborations. Board any German steamer shortly before it sails from New York. You will find much Hitler-heiling among those aboard who curry the favor of the Nazi government. Well beyond the range of hearing of passengers and crew you will find a few timid souls whispering their honest opinions and fears of Hitlerism. You will find none, who by so much as a statement from any conversation you might be permitted to overhear, questions the power, glory and beneficence of the German chancellor. Go to any German Jew or German liberal living in New York, or to any American, for that matter, who has relatives living in Germany, and ask him to state for publication his sincere opinion of the Hitler government. You will find here a cringing human being who will beseech you to mention nothing of his convictions either in print or in conversation.

That the Hitler government has stationed a secret police organization in this country is the spoken ## of many Germans and ## Jews in New York, who ## felt the effects of it. I am pledged not to give the names of my informants, but I can give the details.

In the case of, at the very least, ten Jewish members of German societies in New York, relatives in the fatherland were subjected to severe interrogation at the hands of Nazi secret police, and in some cases arrests were made. The homes of those living in Germany were ransacked by members of the secret police; their correspondence was summarily opened; and they were trailed by storm troopers, criminal police and National Socialist party agents.

AGENTS LEARN OF WORDS

These incidents occurred shortly after those in America had been quoted in the newspapers as opposing either the policies of the Hitler government or decrying the high {SPAN}##{/SPAN} manner in which Hitler’s agents here had taken over German-American society and set up a highly Hitlerized press. In some instances their utterances and attitudes had not appeared in the American press; their words had in some manner been over heard and reported to Hitler’s agents.

Thousands of Germans have begged their relatives in the United States to refrain from taking any part in social or political activities in the United States. They ask this because they are being watched, because they have been openly warned that they will be held responsible for any anti-Hitler demonstration on the part of their relatives in America. Most of the letters stating the position of these poor people in Germany are mailed outside the country.

The Scheidemann type of hostage-holding is as prevalent today as at any time during the Hitler administration. The practice is carried out quietly and, as ever, the oppressed fear to make outcry.

SECRET NAZI POLICE

Who these secret Nazi police in the United States are is a question that many would like to have answered. It is probable that until now they have been connected with the League of Friends of New Germany. The most authoritative sources of information state that when Heinz Spanknoebel, organizer of the American branch of the Nazi party and the Friends of New Germany, fled from this country after the issuance of a writ for his arrest he returned to Germany through Canada and was placed at the head of a concentration camp in Southern Germany. The concentration camps are under the direction of the Nazi secret police, and many aver that Spanknoebel had been in their employ during the latter months of his service in this country.

Intimates of Fritz Gissibl, who resigned from the leadership of the League of Friends of New Germany about one month ago to return to Germany “to take part in building up the Third Reich,” quote the ex-fuehrer as saying that he will be given some such job as Spanknoebel now has with the secret police. Whether or not he is now employed by that organization and whether he and his men at the head of the Friends of New Germany constitute the communication link between harassed American Jewry and the German secret police is a mooted question.

Besides silencing German Jewish elements abroad by means of threats and actual punitive measures, Nazis here have attempted to throttle Americans and American Jewish institutions which have dared condemn Hitler and his administration for their actions. It has recently been the experience of the writer to go over a file of threatening letters, which have been compiled over a period of a few months. They have been addressed for the most part to a single Jewish municipal employe. His “fan mail,” I am told, averages about a score of letters a week, and they come from literates and slightly illiterates (who express their anti-Semitism with signs and symbols) from Portland, Me., to Portland, Ore.

MANY CRANK LETTERS

My conversations with numerous other Jews, both active in public affairs and obscure as private citizens, indicate that none is entirely free from the growing Nazi-inspired anti-Semitism. I dare say there is not a single celebrated rabbi or Jewish official in the city who has not received threatening or crank letters of one sort or another. Others. Christians of the calibre of those who voiced their protest against Hitlerism publicly, also have their anonymous correspondents.

The files which have been made available to this writer contain many different kinds of expressed anti-Semitism. There are those in which the writers’ opinions are expressed in unprintable and incoherent epithets; those of six or eight typewritten pages in which the anti-Semitism of philosophers is called into play; those in which references from the Bible are quoted at length or pointed out with mention of chapters and verses; others with nothing but profane pictures and scribbled captions. They are signed by “An ExJew”; “A True American”; “Nazi”; “Not an Antisemit,” etc., etc.

While the messages themselves, 90 percent of which reflect the sentiments of one afflicted with some mental distortion, are unimportant, the writer believes that as a whole they indicate the extent of a rising race hatred in the United States. Some identify the source of their anti-Semitic inspiration.

There is, for instance, the clipping from the front page of the Deutsche ## in which the Jews are termed “a world pest” (a favorite term of present day anti-Jewish propagandists in Germany) and in which it is declared: “The Jews! We warn Jewry; we warn Jewry for the last time!” A note accompanying this clipping is signed “A Silver Shirt,” through which the regulation “L” had been inscribed. He warned in part that “Some day you Jews will be held responsible–the time is fast approaching when you Jews will be horsewhipped through the streets of New York!”

Another letter referring to the DAWA (the Nazi anti-Jewish boycott organization), says in part: “We ar tru with the Jews no more dealing you onley wait in 6 weks you wil se how your business is going to be ol over New York wil stop buying from Jews. Jews have ruint evrithing th ar the course of this Depresen.” One communication, with a clipping from the German Outlook (the English language supplement of the Deutsche Zeitung) is signed by “German American.” It ends with, “The future will find you in the camp of your opponents,” which from the preceding information appears one might interpret as a concentration camp.

ANTI-SEMITIC TRIVIA

Other anti-Semitic letters are inspired by such trivia as the fact that a Jewish merchant in a small Pennsylvania town ordered a quantity of fixtures on credit shortly before he declared himself bankrupt; quotations from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”; the fact that a little Jewish boy in the Bronx struck a German youth for referring to him in uncomplimentary terms; the Reichstag address of Adolf Hitler; and a number of statements made by Jewish officials for the general press.

Anti-Semitism grows. With the regimentation of German Americans into Nazi groups it extends its tentacles across the country. In later articles the extent of the Hitlerization of German society will be discussed at length. At this time it is sufficient to say that the doctrines of intolerance begun by Hitler have been carried to this country, and during recent months they have embedded themselves firmly in considerably more than 50 per cent of German America. Not only that, they are being extended to embrace American of other extraction.