German Jews Keep Steady: Believe Bruening’s Resignation Not Changed Position So Long As Government N

German Jewry has taken Dr. Bruening’s resignation very soberly, believing that as long as the Nazis are unable to form an independent Government and will have to adjust themselves to the views of other Parties making a semi-Nazi Coalition possible, the situation so far as the Jews are concerned is in broad essentials unchanged.

It is said, however, that President Hindenburg will agree to dissolve the Reichstag and to order new elections, as Hitler has demanded in his interview with the President, and if this is done, it might alter the entire situation.

The Right forces are marching forward with President Hindenburg’s approval, the “Berliner Tageblatt” says, predicting that Dr. Bruening will be succeeded by a semi-Nazi Government.

The Hitlerist organ “Angriff” in Berlin claims triumphantly to-day that Dr. Bruening’s fall is the result of the big Nazi victory yesterday in Oldenburg, where there is now an independent Hitlerist majority in control of the State.

TIME NOT YET COME TO THROW UP THE SPONGE

While we do not overlook the Nazi successes, we must not minimise, however, the striking successes which, in spite of everything, were scored by the enemies of the Nazis, especially the Social Democrats, and the gigantic marches of the Republican Iron Front, which show that the Nazis do not represent the only mass movement in Germany, Dr. Ludwig Hollaender, the Director of the Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith, wrote in the “C. V. Zeitung”, the official organ of the Union, at the end of last month, when the Hitlerists obtained their big victory in the German elections.

These forces are as big and as important as the Nazis, he said, and it is just as much blindness to ignore their significance, as it would be to ignore the significance of the Hitlerists. The time has not yet come to throw up the sponge.

The great majority of German Jewry will find their lot a very difficult one, he went on, and the onslaught of the enemies of the Jews will aid to the general distress. It is our duty to look this development clear in the eyes. But there is still one hope-if we continue to work, and do not drift into despair, the Jews, as has happened always in the history of the world, will, in spite of our present difficult position survive. If we carry on our work we shall emerge from these evil days of 1932.

The inability of the Hitlerists to apply their anti-Jewish programme in a Coalition Government was urged at that time by Dr. Julian Lehmann, who pointed out in the “Israelitische Familienblatt” that if the Hitlerists agreed to join in a Coalition with the Centre, it would take much of the danger out of Hitlerism. The Centre, he said, can take Hitler’s hand only on condition that law and order is maintained and the equality of all citizens is assured. The whole structure and past of the Centre Party are a guarantee of that. The Centre Party will not permit any infringement of liberty of conscience and of the personal safety of the individual, but it will have to agree to laws and ordinances which may be of very general character, but which will in practice hit us Jews harder than the rest, and will be directed mainly against those branches of economic life in which we are mostly engaged.

The Centre, he went on, will perhaps also be unable to prevent an administration which is very markedly of the Right, from applying the laws in such a way as to place greater difficulties in our way, than necessary.

But the fundamentals of our citizenship, he declared, will not suffer one iota, either in Prussia or anywhere else in Germany, for in none of the States is there any likelihood of the Nazis obtaining a sufficient majority to change the Constitution.

We are not blind to the gravity of the situation, especially in Prussia, where 70 per cent. of the Jews of Germany live, he concluded, but at the same time there is no reason for panic.