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Nazis Solidify Jews, Wise Says at Springfield

May 16, 1934
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“I don’t wonder Hitlerism attacks us, because it believes in war, intolerance, hatred and unbrotherliness,” Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of New York told an audience of 500 Springfield residents. “Hitlerism is shrewd enough to understand that we Jews hate war, love tolerance, hate hate, and believe in the virtue of love and brotherliness; therefore it singles us out as its natural enemies.”

In the process of singling out the Jews as their natural enemies, the Nazis have solidified Jews throughout the world, the rabbi added. “Hitler may have taken from us 600,000 German Jews, but he has given us 10,000,000 back. The Jews as a people have never learned to die. All Hitlerism makes us feel is that we are going on, on, on.”

Dr. Wise praised the Catholic and Protestant church leaders for their position against the government, and damned the Nazis not only for their political attitudes, but for cowardice. “Let me make it a matter of record that I offer my homage to the stand taken by the Cardinal of Munich against Hitlerism.”

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