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Pastor Says Boycott Divides Opinion Among Reich Jews

February 27, 1934
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The Rev. Dr. Ewart Turner, pastor of the American Church in Berlin, now engaged in lecturing in this country, indicated in an interview that the boycott, according to his observation, is not the proper weapon to use against Hitlerism. The impression he carried from Germany, he says, is that the Jews there are not in favor of it.

“I talked with twenty German Jews in Germany,” he narrated, “and all but two emphatically protested the boycott of German goods in theory and practice.”

“Assume for the sake of argument all the Nazi claims against the Jews in Germany, there still exists no excuse for the method of eye-for-eye vengeance used against them on April first or since. Two wrongs do not make a right.”

Dr. Turner Said he discussed the boycott with leaders of the American Jewish Congress.

“Rabbi Stephen S. Wise,” he said, “asked me about the attitude of the German Jews toward the foreign anti-Nazi boycott. I told him that sentiment was divided, that many Jews were in favor of the boycott but that the majority of them were against it.”

GERMANY PROTESTS

“Germany,” he continued “has perhaps as long and as violent an anti-Semitic history as any nation in Europe. At the close of the war and the beginning of the republic German Jews enjoyed a measure of emancipation never before experienced by them. The flood-gates of anti-Semitism, which had been wide open for so many years were officially closed, and the Jews promptly became ‘first class citizens.’

“Germany now protests the predominance of Jews in professions, a situation created largely by the exclusion of Jews from agriculture by virtue of their inability to hold land prior to the republic and by governmental edict restricting them from holding eivi service and other public posts.”

Dr. Turner said that the Nazi Government has made strides toward solving the Jewish problem by creating a committee to study the Jewish question. He does not feel that anti-Semitism for the moment is letting up, he added.

“Personal relations between Jews and Germans have not been completely changed,” he continued. “More than half the Nazis I know still invite their Jewish friends to their homes quite as readily as bofore Hitler.”

WOMEN’S CARD PARTY

The West Bronx Women’s Division of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League of Champion Human Reghts is giving a card party at the Burnside Manor, 85 West Burnside avenur, tomorrow evening.

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