Now-editorial Notes

We are publishing today extracts from the address by Dr. I. M. Rubinow, executive director of the B’nai B’rith, delivered before the National Conference of Jewish Social Service in Atlantic City. His paper, entitled “Methods of Dealing with Problems Affecting General and Jewish Community Relationships,” contains a serious and important analysis of the problems confronting the Jewish people today and a number of proposed remedies. It is thus far the most comprehensive and sensible program outlined by the representative of any Jewish organization in America that we have seen.

Dr. Rubinow is a statistician and economist of note, the author of numerous authoritative works on sociological, economic, financial and political subjects. He was connected as expert with the Bureau of Statistics, United States Department of Agriculture and Department of Commerce and Labor, and was director of the Zionist medical unit in Palestine. He was also executive director of the Zionist Organization of America. He is intimately familiar with the various phases of the Jewish problem, and his suggestions are worthy of the most serious consideration.

NAZI HUMOR

According to a report from Vienna, the German Nazis endeavored to prove that they have a sense of humor by broadcasting their “Achievements in German Humor.” A German “Aryan” humorist, Charlie Roellinghoff, was entrusted with the task of furnishing characteristic examples of German humor. When the Nazis discovered at the last moment that most of the typical examples of German humor selected by Roellinghoff were the creations of German Jews, the broadcast was cancelled. A German comedy entitled “My Leopold,” by Adolf L. Arronge, which was to be produced at the Berlin Lustspielhaus, was withdrawn when the Nazi authorities suddenly discovered that the author was not an “Aryan” and that his real name is Aronsohn.

The Nazis lack not only a sense of humor, but also a sense of shame, and a sense f honor. The Nazi drive against “non-Aryan” literature and art has served to make them ludicrous. Thus the Prussian Minister of Education tried to justify the suppression of some of the most important literary and artistic productions in Germany, by the following explanation:

“The campaign is against the subversive factors undermining racially characteristic ways of thinking and philosophy of life-i. e. against the ‘asphalt literature,’ which is principally intended for the dwellers of the large cities, in order to encourage them in their aloofness from the national community and to uproot them altogether. This is the literature of intellectual Nihilism.”

Then he defines “asphalt literature” as “mainly the work of Jewish authors.”

Among these authors are included such masters as Arnold Zweig and Arthur Schnitzler.

A proclamation by German students, posted in the streets and reproduced in the newspapers, contained eighteen reasons why Jews must be barred from German literature. Here are three points of that proclamation:

“The Jew can only think in Jewish fashion; if he writes German, he lies.

“We demand of the censorship that Jewish works shall appear in the Hebrew language. If published in German, they are to be designated as translations.

“Strictest measures against the misuse of the German language! German writing can be done only by Germans.”

The Nazis refer to the writings of foremost “non-Aryan” and non-Nazi German authors as “literary filth” and “un-German” in spirit.

A characteristic incident will serve to illustrate the Nazi sense of decency as well as their sense of humor. When the authorities of Frankfort-on-the-Main were preparing a list of books by “non-Aryan” authors to be burnt, they were puzzled as to the selection of the names to be included. In one of the libraries the students discovered, next to the works of Emil Ludwig, several books by Otto Ludwig author of classical German works known to all students of German literature. These books were seized by the raiding party of students and when the librarian exclaimed: “But, gentlemen, that is Otto Ludwig!” they replied: “That’s all the same to us. We’ve got Ludwig on our list, and Ludwig is Ludwig!”

These are the new Kulturtraeger of Naziland. According to Dr. Fritz Seidler, private secretary to the late Dr. Streseman, whose remarkable book “The Bloodless Pogrom,” has just appeared in England, “a biting comment was pasted by an unknown hand on the posters announcing the impending auto-defe (the burning of the books by ‘non-Aryan’ authors): Be sure to remember the Bible! That also is a treasury of the Jewish mind.”