Indicative of the attitude of the Scandinavian press in this country in regard to the recent outburst of Nazi anti-Semitism in an article which appears in the current issue of the Nordisk Tidende (Norwegian News), weekly newspapers published in Brooklyn in Norwegian.
“Despicable cowardice” and “German barbarism” are the appellations given by the writer of the article to Nazi attacks against Jews. Exploding Hitler’s “Aryan” race as a myth, the major portion of the comment, however, is a vitriolic attack on the validity of the racial policy upon which Fascist Germany bases its persecution of the Jews. H. Sundby Hansen is the commentator in a two-column spread.
Under the caption, “Civilized or Merely Clever?” Hansen refers to the Jews in Germany as the “goat” chosen by the plundered middle class and bankrupt aristocracy upon which to wreak their vengeance. “The Jews served the purpose admirably,” the writer says. “What risk was there in attacking so feeble a minority—600,000 among some seventy million population. Yet individual Jews of large wealth and financial power were not molested. Their contributions were needed for the Hitler campaign.”
QUOTES RACE BOOK
As to the Hitler “Aryan” myth, Hansen quotes extensively from a fellow Norwegian’s book on the subject. This is “Racepolitik og Reaksjon,” (“Racial Policies and Reaction”), and the author is Dr. Karl Evang. According to Hansen, the book is packed with scientific facts based upon the most advanced knowledge of the race question.
“Hitler’s racial policy is based upon the idea that there is such a thing as a pure German race,” Hansen continues. “In the beginning Nazi propagandists maintained that the ‘pure’ Germans were Nordics. However, this claim was later abandoned when it was discovered that Hitler himself as well as a very considerable number of the population exhibited anything but Nordic physical characteristics.”
“As a substitute the clever German theoreticians hit upon the idea of calling all non-Jews ‘Aryans.’ The German people, usually reputed to be intellectual, swallowed it whole along with the rest of Hitler’s demagogic absurdities and false science.”
‘NO PURE RACE’
In Hansen’s opinion “there is no such thing as a ‘pure’ race of human beings, be it Nordic, Alpine, Semitic or any other of the numerous ethnic groups of present-day mankind.” He maintains that these several racial divisions are set up mainly for convenience of classification. Moreover, all races of mankind in existence today are of mixed racial origin.
Hansen supports his contentions with Dr. Evang’s scientific observations. With reference to the alleged undesirable racial qualities of Jews, according to Hansen Dr. Evang wrote that “all the leading civilized nations in Europe, England, France, Germany, are notorious for their high degree of racial intermixture, and history fails to indicate that the Jewish admixture has in any way been of a worthless character, rather to the contrary.”
POPULATION IS MIXED
As final proof of the invalidity of Germany’s racial policy, Hansen’s quotes Dr. Evang as saying that “in so far as we know, all nations, tribes and population groups, have originated by the mixture of different human types. Further, every single individual is heterogeneous, with a motley congregation of hereditary attributes and qualities derived from different sources. For this reason, even children, the parents of which belong to the same so-called humane race, afford great variations. Entirely alike individuals, in a hereditary sense, are not to be found, perhaps with the exception of identical twins.”
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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.
