The entire English press in New York, in leading editorials, yesterday greeted Hitlerized Germany for the anti-Jewish riots which took place on Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin on Monday evening.
Emphasizing that the accounts of what happened in Berlin are irrefutable, The New York Times says:
“The official explanation of the rioting and terrorism in Berlin restaurants and hotels is that they were the work of ‘irresponsible elements.’ But the police did nothing to make them keep order or to protect innocent and helpless persons. The Nazis who raged through the streets and forced their way into private houses and public places of entertainment may have been irresponsible, but at any rate they know or had been told exactly the people whom they were to assault. Their furor Teutonicus appeared to have something morbid or sadistic about it. It must be seldom that a mob anywhere will knock women down and beat and kick them as they lie half conscious, but it was a common sight in Berlin on Monday. The reports read as if the brutal men guilty of such deeds were really gratifying a long repressed blood-lust.”
“The world has been given another glimpse of Nazi mentality and methods,” the Times says. “Yet we shall be told again by the Nazis that Berlin is the very place to hold the Olympic Games, which emphasize good sportsmanship, fair play and respect for womanhood.”
The Herald-Tribune editorializes:
“Monday night’s riot did not become in any sense a popular one until an organized band of Nazis had set the mob many examples of sadistic brutality and had demonstrated that the police who arrived on the scene were not there to afford their Jewish victims any protection whatever. But the fact that the inspiration of these disgraceful scenes was undoubtedly official, emanating from Adolf Hitler’s intimate circle, is no apology for the insant zest with which the German populace takes part in such orgies of cruelty. Monday night’s incidents are strongly reminiscent of the anti-foreign riots with which Chinese officialdom used to divert public attention, a generation or more ago, from the miseries that followed upon maladministration. We have here the same official and semi-official dissemination of mendacious, scurrilous propaganda, the same use of ruffians to show the mob how far it could go, the same reluctance of the uniformed guardians of the peace to rescue the scapegoats and the same display of a vicious and cowardly delight in the abuse of harmless and helpless folk that is characteristic of an illiterate, credulous mob of Oriental coolies. This comparison does the citizenry of Berlin no credit, and it is not meant to. They do not deserve any.”
The Daily News’ popular editorial, “Hitler Hounds the Jews Again”, comments:
“Well, most of us are wise to Mr. Hitler now. As Tennyson pointed out, when you go in for persecuting somebody else you only inform the onlookers that you are afraid of something or mistrustful of yourself. Mr. Hitler has plenty to worry about, at home and abroad. All we’d like to know is what particular worry or fear started him hounding the defenseless Jewish minority in Germany this time.”
The New York Post pins the blame directly on Hitler.
“The anti-Jewish persecution by violence is official policy, as is the anti-Catholic repression,” the paper says.
“Official Catholic circles now realize this and the strong note sent to Germany by the Pope yesterday, protesting attacks on the church, amount to a flat charge that the mistreatment of Catholics and their secular and lay leaders are part of definite public policy in Hitlerland.”
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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.
