The hugeness of the task involved in the post-war rehabilitation of the Jewry of Europe after the fall of Nazism, is emphasized in the Christian Science Monitor, one of America’s leading daily newspapers, in an article describing the Nazi massacres of Jews in Poland, the Ukraine and the Baltic States, and the deportations of Jews from Germany and the occupied countries in Western Europe.
“The plight of the Jews in Europe in more desperate now than it has ever been,” the article says. “If the Jews are to survive at all, the United Nations must win the war. Even the slightest easement of the Jews’ sufferings would seem to be dependent upon a complete Axis collapse. But it is idle to assume that the downfall of Hitler and his partners, per se, will solve the problems of the Jews or restore them to their pre-war status.
“Millions of Jews have been completely disinherited and disenfranchised and it will hardly be possible for the United Nations to restore their rights automatically. A war-impoverished Europe will not be able to reabsorb readily a large number of repatriated Jews. Nor will a decade of insidious Nazi propaganda immediately cease to make itself felt among peoples conditioned to bigotry and grown hard in the forge of war and tyranny. Even before the rise of Hitler the position of the Jews was scarcely tolerable in some parts of Poland and in the Balkans. The problem of what is to become of the Jews after the war, therefore, is almost as vital as what is to become of them now.
“Fortunately,” the article continues, “numerous influential and far-seeing men appear to be aware that the post-war future of the European Jew will depend in great measure on what is done for him immediately after the cessation of hostilities. Strong efforts are being made both in this country and in Great Britain to make certain that the Jewish problem and the closely related Palestinian question are among the very first subjects tackled at the peace conference.”
PREDICTS BETTER RELATIONS BETWEEN JEWS AND CHRISTIANS AFTER THE WAR
“In spite of the imposing problems in the way of his rehabilitation, the post-war Jew in Europe is likely to be on substantially better terms with those of his Christian neighbors who haven’t been mesmerized by Nazi propaganda, than he has been for generations,” the article predicts. It points out that as the Nazi pressure has worsened, popular sympathy for the Jew has increased tremendously and with it has come, in many instances, a deeper and broader understanding of his age-old problems.
“Developments of the past few months make it difficult to escape the conviction that the Nazis are endeavoring to exterminate the Jews of Europe in the Shortest possible time,” the Christian Science Monitor writes. “Their attempt to annihilate an all but important enemy when they still have powerful foes with which to contend, both in the East and in the West, is typical of Nazism’s brutal and ruthless character.”
The paper gives three possible purposes behind this attempt. First, there is the continuing need of scapegoats to justify the increased demands that are being made on the German people. Second, there is inherent Nazi fanaticism, which apparently has never waned and which probably has been goaded into a new frenzy by the unfaltering resistance of the populations of the occupied countries. Third, there is the fear that the Jews will be a dangerous partisan threat at the German rear and within the Axis lines when a United Nations attack comes.
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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.
