German Jewish medical and dental students who can prove that they have obtained employment abroad will be permitted to graduate without being compelled to renounce their German citizenship, Dr. Bernhard Rust, Prussian Minister of Education, announced today. Jewish doctors and dentists will only be compelled to renounce the right to practice in Germany, Dr. Rust said.
Up to now the Nazi authorities prevented the graduation of German Jewish students in these fields unless they renounced their German citizenship rights and left the country immediately.
The Jewish applicants for diplomas in the fields of medicine and dentistry must address their requests to their own medical faculties and each application must be accompanied by a declaration of their renunciation of the right to practice in Germany. However, the decision on each individual case will be left to the discretion of the Minister of Education.
In addition to dismissing a large number of Jewish physicians from all state employment under the “Aryan clause” and depriving other Jewish physicians of a living through the boycott against the Jews. the Nazis have imposed restrictions against Jewish students, declaring that there are still too many Jewish doctors and dentists left in Germany.
Numerus clausus have been imposed in all the German universities, limiting the number of Jewish students to a figure slightly less than the percentage of Jews in the German population. In some German universities the Jewish students are compelled to carry special yellow cards without which they are not admitted to lectures. But the chief weapon against the Jewish students was the refusal of the authorities to allow Jewish students to graduate unless they renounced their citizenship rights and left the country.
The concession now announced by Dr. Rust is important in so far as it will enable the Jewish graduates who leave Germany to travel with German passports and to obtain entry to other countries as Germans, instead of leaving the country as staatenlose, people without citizenship rights anywhere.
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