Hitlerist Desecrators of Jewish Cemetery Sent to Prison in Germany

Two Hitlerists, both appearing in court demonstratively wearing their Hitlerist uniform, have been sent to prison, one for a month and the other for two months, at Oels, near Breslau, for having desecrated the neighbouring Jewish cemetery at Trebnitz, in the early part of last November. This was the 95th. case of Jewish cemetery desecration in Germany since this form of vandalism was started in 1923, the number having since increased to 101. The vandals in this case did their work even more thoroughly than usually. They smashed 34 gravestones, and painted the antisemitic emblem, the swastika, on the fragments in red. They also broke into the mortuary, smashed the windows and furniture and daubed on the walls the Hitlerist cry: “Hail Hitler Perish Judea”, and a picture of a Jew dangling from a gallows. The Jewish Community of Trebnitz offered a reward for the arrest of the criminals.

The chief Hitlerist paper in Germany, the “Voelkischer Beobachter”, has accused the Jews of themselves desecrating their own cemeteries in order to be able to use the accusation that the Hitlerists do it as a weapon against Hitlerism. The intention, it wrote, “is to discredit the National Socialist movement, whose gigantic strides forward are striking terror into the hearts of the Jews”. The paper argued that the fact that in most cases the vandals who desecrate the cemeteries are not traced is proof that the vandalism “is committed by Jewish agents-provocateurs”.

On another occasion, the “Voelkischer Beobachter” wrote that while it did not justify the desecration of Jewish cemeteries, there were more important things to worry about like unemployed and starving German people, and it suggested that if Jewish cemeteries were desecrated, it was done only by thoughtless foolish boys, but not as the Jews complain, by members of the Hitlerist Party, and as the result of Hitlerist incitement.