A concerted movement, apparently at the direct orders of Nazi headquarters in Munich, has begun all over Germany headed by local Nazi chiefs to fight the readjustment of German Jews to new occupations, particularly agriculture and artisanship.
Numerous reports have been received by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from the Hessen, Pomeranian and Brandenburg areas showing that everywhere peasants have been convoked and ordered to dismiss all Jews employed as farm hands. They were also ordered to refuse to train Jews in agriculture even when the future Jewish farmers definitely agreed to proceed to Palestine or to the Argentine when their training ended. More than forty Jewish farm hands have already been dismissed and the number of dismissals is growing daily. In the same way, young Jews have been ousted from artisan training even where they paid fees for the training.
The movement seems to have been initiated recently when the West Deutscher Beobachter called for action to prevent the Jews from entering agriculture and artisanship.
TURN TO NEW OCCUPATIONS
Convinced that they have no future in the professions in Germany, German Jewish leaders have made every effort to turn German Jewish youth in the direction of new occupations, away from the liberal professions, toward agriculture, manual labor, handicraft and artisanship.
German Jewish organizations have arranged training courses for young Jews in agriculture and artisanship and recently an organization was formed to further the training of Jewish youth exclusively in agriculture. Practically all German Jewish organizations participated in the formation of this new group, which is to have communal houses for those undergoing training.
However, every effort to give Jewish youths new occupations and to turn them toward the land has been met with open opposition by the Nazi party. When the Nazi government ordered that Jews be allowed to become artisans and authorized Jewish and non-Jewish artisans to accept Jewish youths as apprentices, local Nazi party groups aided by the Chamber of Artisans, which the Nazis control, ordered artisans not to employ Jewish apprentices and threatened Jewish artisans that if they employed Jewish apprentices they would not be sold materials.
OPPOSE JEWISH AGRICULTURE
Nazi newspapers announced that the Jews would not be allowed to turn to the land. The West Deutscher Beobachter, whose article against Jews in agriculture started the drive against them in this field, said: “To avoid any mistake, while one German remains unemployed, this whole question is unreal and it can arise only when German unemployment is completely eliminated.
“Even then,” it continued, “they are only limited opportunities for a livelihood, hardly affording, to the slightest extent, incorporation of alien races in, these occupations.”
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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.
