Actual mistreatment of Jews leaving Germany was witnessed by a correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the German-Czecho-Slovakian border. When the train reached the last German station officials entered the cars and ordered all Jews, even of foreign citizenship, to get out on the platform. After a careful examination of their passports, foreign Jews, who had been compelled to leave their compartments, were permitted to return to the train, but German Jews were taken into a room in the station.
There, they were thoroughly searched, and several were detained. All money and valuables were confiscated from the German-Jewish passengers, in spite of authoritative permits which many of the victims produced, in which they were granted the right to transport their belongings.
The agents laughed at the permits issued by officials of the central government. “Permits mean nothing,” they declared. “If every Jew was allowed to take out even a thousand marks, the Reichsbank would lose five hundred million marks!”
Cruel humiliation of Jews in the German concentration camps for prisoners under “protective arrest” is reported here. The German Jews are doubly maltreated by the Nazi guards, as being political opponents as well as racial outcasts.
Jewish prisoners are lined up and commanded by the brown-shirt guards to repeat the words: “We are dogs and dirty Jews.” When some of the prisoners merely repeat the words “We are Jews” they are slapped and maltreated until they utter the whole refrain.
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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.
