Now-editorial Notes

The League of National German Jews, a small Jewish organization in Germany, which has licked the Nazi boots that kicked the Jewish people in Germany, has now issued an appeal to all German Jews to vote for Hitler. The League even justifies the anti-Jewish persecutions by declaring that the sufferings of the Jews in Germany were necessary in order to clear away the damage done by “un-German elements.”

The appeal reads, in part, as follows:

“We members of the League of National German Jews, founded in 1919, have always in war or peace placed the good of the German people and the German Fatherland above our own good. Accordingly, we greeted the national uprising of January, 1933, although it brought rigors for us, for we saw it as the only means to clear away the damage done in fourteen unhappy years by un-German elements. … We urge all Jews who feel themselves Germans to vote ‘Yes’ on August 19.”

These Jewish Nazis deserve the contempt of all Jews. Their cringing, cowardly and humiliating attitude cannot fail to disgust even the most nardened “Aryan” Nazis. These Nazi Jews, who are betraying German Jewry by insinuating that it was disloyal to Germany, are “the destroyers within Israel” whom the prophets of old characterized as the most dangerous.

Fortunately, the membership of the Nazi German Jewish Black Sheep organization is very small.

THE BLOOD LIBEL

The attack on President Masaryk in Julius Streicher’s Der Stuermer was made because Masaryk, as a young professor, defended a Jew who had been accused and convicted of ritual murder in old Austria. The Hitlerite ritual murder organ, published in Nuremberg, was confiscated for two weeks on the ground that the attack on Masaryk was a “libel against the head of a State.”

The vicious assault on President Masaryk by the Nazi arch Jew-baiter was called forth by the recent publication of a book entitled “The Struggle of Polna, The Story of a Martyr,” by Bruno Walter, describing the notorious Polna “ritual murder” case, Masaryk’s defense of Leopold Hilsner and his denunciation of the “ritual murder” myth.

The Stuermer said:

“The martyr is the Polna Jew who killed two Christian girls, whose blood was misused by the Polna Jewish Community for ritual purposes. Hilsner was condemned to death by a Law Court … It was only when Jewry succeeded in buying the then Deputy Masaryk, this half-Jew herosage who is today President of Czechoslovakia, and who knew how to bribe the authorities in Vienna, that the death sentence was changed to one of penal servitude for life. When Czechoslovakia was created, Masaryk naturally got his friend out of jail, appointed him Rabbi in a little Czech town, and compensated him with about a million Czech kronen …”

These and other absurdities and falsehoods, mild in comparison with its usual attacks on the Jews, appeared in the confiscated issue of Der Stuermer, which is now resuming publication.

Recently there appeared abroad a highly interesting book, “President Masaryk Tells His Story,” recounted by Karel Capek, the famous Czech author of R.U.R. and other important plays and novels. That volume contains President Masaryk’s life story—his struggles, his philosophy and his achievements. There is also his brief and simple account of the Hilsner affair.

In an explanatory note, Mr. Capek writes:

“Hilsner was a young Jew who was accused in 1899 of murdering two girls near the town of Polna and using their blood for rites connected with the Jewish religion. He was tried and convicted, and the trial let loose a storm of anti-Semitic feeling. Masaryk was convinced, from a study of the evidence, that Hilsner was innocent, and flung himself into the campaign to prove it.”

And this is President Masaryk’s own version of the affair:

“The campaign over the Hilsner affair was a bad business, in which I had to struggle with the superstition about ritual murder. At first I took no interest in the case, but a former student of mine, the Moravian writer Sigmund Muentz, came from Vienna to see me and prevailed upon me to take part. I knew the books of the Berlin theologian Starck describing the origin and history of the ritual superstition. I gave Muentz my opinion of the matter, and he published is in the Neue Freie Presse. That landed me in the thick of the fray. The Viennese anti-Semites incited the Czech nationalist and clerical press to attack me. Naturally I had to defend myself; having taken the first step I had to go on. To do this I had to study criminology and physiology, on both of which I published detailed articles. I travelled to Polna to inspect the scene of the crime and its surroundings. And then they said that I had been paid to do it by the Jews. Students and non-students came to my University lectures to shout me down. When they did that I chalked up a protest on the blackboard against the absurd calumny, and challenged my hearers to come to my house and substantiate it, giving reasons for their demonstration; one single student arrived that afternoon to answer my challenge, a slim, pleasant-faced young man who later became known as the poet Otakar Theer. So that my detractors might not imagine that I was afraid of them, I went the rounds of the whole lecture hall and challenged each to argument, but none of them dared. And what do you think? The University, instead of taking a strong stand and restoring order, actually suspended my lectures for a fortnight! That evening the crowd came to my house; I was in bed with a chill, so my wife went out to them, and told them that I was lying down but that if they wanted to speak to me they could send a deputation. No one came. I suffered much through this campaign, not because I was attacked, but because the level of the attacks was so low.”

President Masaryk concludes with the remarks that during the war he saw how useful his defense of Hilsner and his denunciation of ritual murder had been. He writes that the Jews, especially those in control of the press, knew him from the Hilsner case, and repaid him for what he had done for them, by writing favorably about the cause of Czechoslovakia. And he adds:

“That helped us a great deal politically.”

Thus Czechoslovakia was helped by Jewish public opinion during and after the war in appreciation of what Professor Masaryk had done years before as a fact-finder and as a courageous champion of the truth.

It is this that the Jew-baiting Nazis cannot forgive President Masaryk and the Jews.