Jews Are ‘angry and Frightened’ by Nec-nazi Success, Goldmann Says

Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress said here last night that Jews were “angry and frightened” by the election of eight members of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party to the Parliament of the German State of Hesse.

Addressing the National Governing Council of the American Jewish Congress at Fair-mount Temple here, Dr. Goldmann warned that the German people were “getting tired of being reminded of what the Hitler regime did to the Jews and to the world. They are tired of the problem of indemnification,” he declared, “tired of war crimes trials. But Germany can ill afford to tire so easily,” he warned. “The memory is too fresh — the crimes too vast — to permit the German nation to abandon the material and moral reparations which it must make to the Jewish people.

“In material terms,” Dr. Goldmann continued, “Germany has cooperated in providing economic restitution and indemnification for the victims of Nazism and their heirs, although recent difficulties interposed by some officials indicate a weakening of the original spirit in which restitution was conceived. In moral terms, however, Germany has not yet succeeded in confronting the full and awful meaning of the crimes committed in her name against the Jewish people and all civilization. It was to the credit of Germany that many of her religious, political and intellectual leaders, and much of the German press, has warned against these dangers. But these warnings are not enough,” he added.

“Radical changes are necessary in German school curricula and textbooks so that the young generation will learn and understand the enormity of Nazism’s assault on humanity,” he continued. “A review of existing legislation is needed to enable German authorities to take more effective action against incitement to racial and religious hatred. Above all, Germany must remember — and conduct herself at home and abroad ever mindful that the Nazi past can never be permitted to happen again.”

(In New York, Dr. Goldmann issued a statement on behalf of the World Jewish Congress warning the German leadership not to repeat “the fatal error” of underestimating the threat of the early rise of Nazism. “Jewish communities all over the world have noted with deep concern the steadily growing influence of former Nazis in the political life of the Federal Republic of Germany,” he said.

(Citing the success of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party in winning eight of 96 seats in the election to the State Parliament of Hesse, he said: “It is impossible for us to regard this resurgence of an old movement in a new form without the gravest anxiety.”)