Journalist Praises JTA Man Who Defied Censor Goebbels

High praise for the courage of Boris Smolar, chief European correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency who has been stationed, with brief intermissions, in Berlin since prior to the advent of the Hitler regime, was voiced today by James Eable, prominent American journalist, writing in the London Morning Post.

The correspondent, relating an interview he had with Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, head of the Ministry of Propaganda for the Reich, described the effect Smolar’s stand had had on the Nazi official.

After telling of earlier incidents in his interview, the correspondent said:

“I then referred to Smolar, the correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. A Jew who had dared to send out adverse reports in the teeth of the Nazi censorship, who had protested bitterly against the suppression of his dispatches and had kicked up such a row that his office was closed down for two days, only to raise a more violent agitation which had opened it right up again!

RESPECT FOR SMOLAR’S COURAGE

” ‘How do you regard my friend Smolar?’ I asked, emphasizing the word ‘friend.’ I watched Goebbels’s face. It registered unmistakeable respect for Smolar’s courage.

“He smiled, spread his hands in an open gesture, saying, ‘Well, you see for yourself he is still here.’

“I asked, ‘and the Jews in general? How about them?’

“Goebbels frowned for a moment and did not answer. I got in another lick for my Jewish friends. ‘Can you deny that the Jew is intelligent. often more so than the Gentile?’ I asked.

“Goebbels regarded me. ‘Perhaps their wits have been sharpened by persecution,’ he snapped.”

Boris Smolar, chief European correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, is the only Jewish newspaperman representing an outside news service still on duty in the Reich. He has been with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency for more than twelve years and has represented it in most of the countries of the world. He was at one time Moscow correspondent of the old N. Y. World.