dering beggars. It is to that end that anti-Semitism is working, and not only in Oberhessen. I heard a troop of young women singing a marching song in Frankfort with this lame refrain: “Judah, get out! Once the soil is cleansed and free, Then, oh then, happy we’ll be.”
Perhaps the Jews of Oberhessen are in even a worse situation in the small towns. The Jewish shopkeeper is rigorously boycotted. Christians dare not buy from him. The shops go to ruin. Large numbers have already closed. The past headmaster is shunned by his old colleagues and pupils. The little man in the little town is of an unexcelled cowardice. He is desperately afraid what other people may say, has not a vestige of moral independence; he will eat his words in panic at any moment.
PRISON WALLS SURROUND THE JEW
For that the Jew has to suffer. The Jewish communities are continually losing members through migration. And those who do not go, grow solitary and bitter; they too, are homeless. On Sundays, when the parades and demonstrations take place, when alcohol removes the last inhibitions, the Jew of the small town stays indoors. He lives virtually within prison walls. If the fancy takes some young blackguard a Jew will, for no reason whatever, be mishandled. Black clouds glower always over the Jew in the small town. He lives in constant apprehension of what the next day may bring.
It is a bitter task to paint such pictures, but they are not in the least works of the imagination; they are plain pictures, photographs, so to speak. It is bitter to realize that it is all beyond remedy, that day by day it continues without a word said; that the unhappy victims of National Socialist spitefulness are completely defenseless and none can help, none can come forward to uphold their rights, so long as the Third Realm endures.
It is bitter to realize that Oberhessen is no exceptional case but one of the most typical examples, a characteristic instance of the unbelievable barbarism to which, in the middle of the twentieth century, innocent men and women and children are exposed, their claim to humanity and justice forfeited simply because they are Jews.
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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.
