Young Jews will be drafted into the compulsory labor camps that are to be set up as part of the Government compulsory labor service plans, but unlike non-Jews who will be placed in ordinary battalions, the young Jews will be put in mixed battalions containing 60 percent approved Nazis, or members of the Stahlhelm.
This measure is interpreted as part of a plan to isolate un-Nazified non-Jewish young Germans from Jewish contacts and influence and from the friendship which might spring up as a result of association. The establishment of distinct labor battalions for Jews will also make it possible for the German authorities to introduce different regulations and disciplinary measures for them, as opposed to the treatment accorded to non-Jewish labor battalions.
The first recruits for the compulsory labor camps will be drawn from those young Germans who complete their nineteenth year by January 1, 1934.
Colonel Hierl, who has been appointed State Secretary for Compulsory Labor Service, has issued a statement in which he describes it as “something quite different from ‘productive relief for unemployed’. It is to be much more than temporary aid for combating unemployment. It will embrace not only the unemployed, but will be a service of honor by the whole of the German youth for the people and Fatherland.
“There will be general and equal labor service duty, embracing all young German men fit for work, belonging to stipulated age categories without exception. There will be one grade of labor only—labor for the Fatherland will be all equal, whether it is that of the road sweeper or of the highest official of the State. That is the National Socialist conception of labor. There is no better method of putting an end to the social cleavage, and class-hatred and class-superciliousness than to have the son of the factory director and the young factory worker, the young student and the young peasant doing the same work, in the same clothes, with the same food rations, as a service for honor for their common nation and Fatherland.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
