The Jewish Central Committee here today started legal proceedings against the German newspaper, “Sued-Deutsche Zeitung,” which published a violent anti-Jewish letter yesterday in which regret was expressed that the Nazis had not gassed all the Jews.
The letter resulted in a two-hour fight between German policemen and displaced Jews who demonstrated against the newspaper, Six Jews were still hospitalized here today, some of them with serious injuries. Twenty-six German policemen were also hurt in the clash. The legal proceedings are being taken by Jewish community leaders under the law barring incitement to race hatred.
The Jewish Central Committee also made public a resolution today blaming the American Military Government for the growth of “neo-Faciscm” in Germany. The resolution emphasized that no Jew intends to remain in Germany. “We do not want to stay on this soil stained with Jewish blood,” the resolution says. “We have our own country now. As long as we are forced to remain here, we will use all our strength to fight any attempt at anti-Jewish provocation.”
Meanwhile, augmented German police units were today guarding the premises of the Sued-Deutsche Zeitung. The editors of the paper said that they had received a considerable number of letters similar to the one which they published yesterday. An article in the paper declared today that it was the duty of a German newspaper to print typical letters from its readers even if they were anti-Semitic.
Western Germany’s Jewish population, which numbered more than 500,000 before their numbers were decimated by the Nazis, has dropped to an estimated 20,000 today according to an American manpower expert, Reuters reported. The expert, Jack Hain, who was called to Germany to survey the Jewish community in three Western occupation zones, said “Berlin and Munich, which have Jewish populations today of approximately 7,100 and 800 German Jews respectively, are the only two German cities with more than 500 Jewish inhabitants.” Frankfurt, which before the war had the second largest Jewish community in Germany, has now only 365 native Jews.
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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.
