Letter to Editor

To the Editor:

The National Council of the Steuben Society of America, non-partisan German-American political organization, issued a recent statement in which it referred first to a resolution of March 25, 1933, challenging the right of Americans, or any other non-German citizens, to protest against the discrimination of Jews in Germany.

The National Council now states that it is convinced that according to its information, no atrocities have occurred. Of course we do not know whether the members make a distinction between the words excess and atrocity. If they apply the term atrocity only to chopped-off hands, cut-off ears, gouged eyes, they may be right. However, if they also deny definite knowledge about serious beatings, floggings and “Abreibungen” of every kind we shall be glad to furnish them with information to the contrary. They admit that a certain number of officials, Jews and Gentiles alike who were appointed by the former government, have been discharged and are trying to compare this with the change which follows in the United States upon one political party taking the reins from another. This comparison is not only misleading but is false. The Nazis themselves have called the latest change of government a revolution, mostly as an excuse for the violent methods they have employed in locking up some 40,000 men in the so-called concentration camps. This, the Steubenites are trying to tell us, is no more than what ordinarily happens after a change of administration.

Furthermore we read in the statement something entirely new to us, namely, that among the discharged officials were many Jews who emigrated from Eastern countries during and after the war….

Does the Steuben Society realize that the majority of the Jews who came to Germany after the war were settled originally along the borders or in the former provinces occupied by Poand after the war and that it was they who welcomed the German troops during the occupation of Eastern Europe, greeted the German armies as their deliverers, helped them feed the soldiers and were promised, by special decree of the former Kaiser, liberty, equality and security for their generous cooperation?

The attitude of the Jewish population in Poland, Russia and Roumania helped the German army to make its splendid progress.

The Steuben Society seems to regret the indulgence shown by the German Republic in making its immigrants German citizens. We regret this also. Among those recent citizens we find the present Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, and his closest friend, Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, head of the Nazi bureau of foreign affairs, who during the war fought on the Russian side and acquired German citizenship not more than ten years ago.

German-American.