Jewish Suicide Wave in Germany: Aged Mother and Two Widowed Daughters Commit Suicide Because of Fina

The economic collapse of German Jewry which has driven many one-time prosperous Jewish businessmen and industrialists to suicide, claimed three fresh victims to-day in the person of Anna Goldschmidt, 75 years of age, and her two widowed daughters, Martha Valentin, 55 years of age, and Toni Weissman, 52 years of age. The late Herr Valentin, the husband of the older daughter, was one of the proprietors of Messrs. Jacob and Valentin, a famous Berlin firm of carriers, while Herr Ferdinand Weissman, who died last year, was the head of a big confectionary business, which at one time held a commanding position in the Berlin business world. When he died, the business was found to have more liabilities than assets, and his widow had been going about in dread of a creditors’ meeting which had been called for to-day. She had sacrificed her entire personal fortune to pay off as much as possible of the liabilities, but she saw no way of escaping bankruptcy and ruin, and so decided, together with her mother and sister to put an end to their lives.

The growing impoverishment of German Jewry is fast assuming catastrophic dimensions, it was stated by the Welfare Office of the Berlin Jewish Community in December. Things have gone so far, it said, that not only the workers and the middle-class, but even the wealthiest Jews have been reduced to poverty and their once-stately homes in the finest streets of Berlin’s West End are now haunted by misery and despair. People who once were directors of banks and of big insurance companies, important merchants, and professional men of high standing, who were accustomed to give away large sums in charity, have been reduced to pauperism and to the level of the proletariat, and would be glad to do any manual labour or the humblest of menial tasks to be able to keep body and soul together.

So many one-time wealthy men have applied to the Berlin Jewish Community for help to obtain any kind of situation to enable them to earn a livelihood, it was announced, that the Jewish Community’s Welfare Office had decided to open a special Labour Employment Bureau in the fashionable Kurfuerstendamm district, solely for people who were formerly well-to-do.