The Central Council of Jews in Germany has conveyed to Chancellor Adenauer its concern and misgivings of a decision to accept former SS officers, up to the rank of lieutenant colonel, into the new German armed forces.
Nazi victims called up pursuant to the recent draft law cannot be expected to serve under officers who were career members of the military SS, says the Central Jewish Council. Similar views, sometimes with special reference to the position of Jews resident in Germany, have been expressed by some democratic German papers and organizations.
The Munich “Sueddeutsche Zeitung,” largest daily in South Germany, in an editorial, terms it “unthinkable that German Jews could be expected to serve in an army permeated by high-ranking SS officers. The Frankfurt “Nachtausgabe” recalls that, ten years ago this month, the entire SS was declared a criminal organization by verdict of the International Military Tribunal, in good part due to the role of the SS in the million-fold murder of the Jewish people.
The West Berlin “Tagesspiegel” writes in an editorial. “The young people of Germany, inclined to skepticism as they are, and the Allied liaison officers assigned to a future joint headquarters, will find it difficult to draw distinctions once they start asking themselves whether a given officer of the new army was a participant when the Warsaw ghetto was liquidated, when women and children were shot down in Oradour, when ‘living space’ was conquered in Russia or when Jews were gassed in Auschwitz.”
The Munich “Club of Republican Publicists,” a group of anti-Nazi writers, newspapermen and radio people, points out in a declaration of protest that while not all SS enlisted men were volunteers, SS officers affected by the new government decisions all voluntarily and by conviction supported the most radical measures against justice, human dignity and religion. SS officers now admitted to the higher ranks of the new German Army, who would soon become commanding officers of battalions and regiments, could then mould their troops in their own image.
A resolution adopted by the Munich chapter of the Bavarian State Council for Freedom and Justice strongly protests the decision “because German youth should not be asked to allow itself to be led, or misled, by these former stalwarts of Hitlerism.” The official trade union weekly “Welt der Arbeit” calls on Defense Minister Theodor Blank to revoke the decision, which is “a clear-cut provocation of public opinion.” The Defense Ministry should not forget, adds the central trade union organ, “that the SS has become, for the entire world, the symbol of inhuman dictatorship.”
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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.
