Hitlerism Has Infected German Justice: Startling Indictment by Theodor Wolff Famous Editor of “berli

The Hitlerist victory in the September elections to the Reichstag has brought about a critical situation in German justice, which has become dangerously infected with the Hitlerist spirit, Dr. Theodor Wolff, the famous editor of the “Berliner” Tageblatt”, writes in a special signed editorial in to-day’s issue of the paper. There are many antisemitic judges, he says, who have been encouraged by the growth of Hitlerist strength to allow their dogmatic antisemitism to overrule the principle of abstract justice, and who introduce definite anti-Jewish bias in their judgments.

The highest court of all, the Reichsgericht, (the highest German Court of Civic and Criminal Jurisdiction, sitting at Leipzig) sets a really bad example to the other courts, Dr. Wolff writes. Its former President, Dr. Walter Simons, and Judge George Mueller, one of its Judges, have made propaganda for a notorious Hitler pamphlet on justice.

The Second and Third Senates of the Reichsgericht (there are six Zivilsenate (Civil Courts) and four Strafsenate (Criminal Courts) have quashed, for example, Dr. Wolff says, sentences against antisemites who grossly libelled the Jews of Hirschberg and Witten by alleging that they were engaged in a systematic campaign of infecting thousands of German girls with venereal diseases, and that Jewish employers were systematically corrupting their women employees. The Reichsgericht based the acquittal on the ground that there was no libel against individual Jews of Hirschberg and Witten, but that the charge had been made against all Jewry, which cannot bring a legal action as individuals can. Future generations will consider such decisions on a level with those of the dark days of the Middle Ages, Dr. Wolff concludes.