Goering, one of Adolph Hitler’s principal aides, notorious for the virulence of his anti-Semitic preachments, was chosen president of the Reichstag, at its opening session yesterday afternoon receiving 367 votes of the 582 votes cast.
Captain Goering’s name was placed before the Reichstag for the post of president by a member of the Centre Party. This is regarded as significant of the agreement between the Nazis and the Centrists for a working coalition.
Captain Goering set forth his views regarding the attitude of the Nazis toward the Jews in an interview given to a representative of the "Gazetta del Popolo" of Turin as recently as the end of last May.
At that time he made it clear that the Nazis would tolerate no equality rights for the Jews whom he charged with being a "disruptive and poisonous element which has brought harm to the German people."
Although he denied that the Nazis plan to murder the Jews, when they come into power, he emphasized that the Jews would be suffered to remain in the country as aliens only.
"The Jewish question is not fundamentally for us a theoretical question," he stated at the time. "Nazism defends itself against the Jews. It does not persecute them. We defend ourselves against Jewry, not against the Jewish religion. In the Third Regime, religious liberty will be complete for all confessions which do not conflict with the customs and moral feelings of the Germanic race.
"It would be ridiculous to allege that we seek to persecute the Mosaic religion, which leaves us quite indifferent," he asserted. "We are defending ourselves against an element that is alien to our race, against a disruptive and poisonous element which has brought harm to the German people."
Continuing his tirade against the Jews, Captain Goering said: "For a very long time, but especially since the end of the war, during the post war period, Berlin has become the centre of attraction for all Galician and Russian Jews. They have come here in hordes, with their lice and their caftans, possessed of nothing save an insatiable desire for acquisition. Berlin has become the filter of this mob. After a few months here they learn how to dress in European fashion, to speak German and even to take baths. Most of them have done well here and some have even become rich. They have left the East Side and gone to live in the West, and more than one who arrived at the Schlesische Railway Station in Berlin wearing his caftan left after a few months via the Zoo Railway Station for London, Paris, or America, transformed into a European, shaved and scented. But for every one who leaves, ten remain behind, and most of those who remain are the dregs who have not passed through the filter.
"The Third Regime," he promised, "will enact legislation to prevent all further immigration into Germany from Poland, Russia or any other country in the world. Those Jews who have immigrated into Germany since August 2nd, 1914, will be expelled. All the Jews who have in any way insulted the German nation will be taken to the frontier or they will be punished here according to the law for the crimes of which they are convicted.
"All those Jews who have not immigrated into Germany from abroad will be left here, but they will be removed from all public positions, in the press, the theatre, the film, the school and the Universities. We shall also dismiss them from all public offices, cancel all their honors, and remove them from every position in which they may be able to exert their disruptive anti-national, international or at best binational influence to the hurt of the German people.
"It has been said that we shall kill the Jews. That is untrue. The decent Israelite merchant who wants to remain in Germany as an alien, under the protection of the alien laws, will be able to continue to pursue his business unhindered and will come to no harm."
Deprivation of citizenship for all those who marry Jews or Jewesses was promised by Goering.
"The aim of the Hitlerist movement," he asserted, "is to revive German national life. The Nazi regime will allow no alliance between Germans and people belonging to the black and yellow races, nor between Germans and Jews. German citizens, men or women, who marry Jews or Jewesses, will automatically forfeit their citizenship rights in the German State."
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