Holding that the German Zionists and friends of Zionism are responsible for the present situation of the Jews, The National Union of German Jews, the organization headed by Dr. Max Naumann, which recently endorsed the Hitler program and attempted to find means for enlisting German nationalist Jews in the Hitler movement, in a declaration published here yesterday, protests against the attempt to influence Government measures by foreign pressure.
The Union declares that German Zionists, though officially not participating in the World Zionist Congress at Prague, nevertheless doubtlessly influenced the Congress to adopt a resolution urging foreign powers to interfere in the internal affairs of the Reich.
“Trusting to the sound sense of the German people,” the declaration states, “the Union expects a solution from inside Germany, without foreign interference, will be found shortly permitting really German-feeling Jews to cooperate in the National German State.”
The Eighteenth World Zionist Congress at Prague misconceived the German-Jewish situation when it demanded the restoration of Jewish rights in the Reich, the Juedische Rundschau, official organ of the German Zionist Federation declared editorially. The suspension of the Rundschau by the secret police, because it replied to an article by Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler adviser and editor of the Voelkischer Beobachter, criticizing the Zionist parley, was lifted last week.
The resolution of the Congress on the German situation, the Rundschau points out, mistakenly aims at the re-establishment of Jewish rights when Jews should ask at present, not for the re-establishment but for the creating of a basis for Jewish life and existence.
The Rundschau further expresses displeasure at the reference to religious discrimination in the Congress resolution, explaining that it probably was in reference to the ban on schechita, Jewish ritual slaughtering. The paper stresses the point that Nazi discrimination is not directed against the Jewish religion but against the Jewish race.
The paper ascribes this reference to religious persecution to pressure exerted on the Congress by the orthodox elements represented there.
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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.
