The question of League of Nations action on the Jewish question in Germany is causing considerable concern in government circles as the possibility is foreseen, even in the Nazi press, that the League’s Council, meeting at Geneva next week, may act to force Germany to recognize the Jews in the Reich as a national minority.
Not only would such recognition put the Jews of Germany under the protection of the League, but it would seriously involve the prestige of the government internally and abroad.
The Berliner Tageblatt yesterday made no secret of the fact that possible action by the League Council is one of the chief questions occupying the attention of the German delegation which, with Baron Constantine von Neurath, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, Minister for Propaganda, will leave for Geneva Wednesday.
JEWS OPPOSE MINORITY STATUS
The press, in its discussions, emphasizes that the German Jews oppose a national minority status but that this opposition is being ignored by certain influential diplomatic circles abroad. These circles, states the Nazi press, are manipulating to have the forthcoming sessions of the League Council discuss Jewish rights in Germany with a view to making a fight for the national minority rights for German Jews which the German Jews themselves rejected voluntarily at the time of the Versailles treaty.
The German delegation will not be surprised, it is stated, if some members of the Council will require a reply as to how the Jews are now being treated in the plebiscite area of Upper Silesia and whether the decision of the Council on the petition of Franz Bernheim, an Upper Silesian Jew, is being carried out.
The Voelkischer Beobachter, newspaper owned by Chancellor Hitler, expresses curiosity as to whom the Jews are going to associate with in national minority politics now that the Jewish delegation has withdrawn from the National Minorities Congress at Berne.
“Developments in this connection will be watched here carefully,” the paper stated, “since the Jews were the dominating element in the National Minorities Congress and also since they expected to create a bloc with Polish and other anti-German national minorities which could affect international German interests.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
