Reich Jews Still Own 2 Billions, Official Tells Tobenkin

The Jews of Germany still possess a capital exceeding two billion marks, a high Government official told Elias Tobenkin, American-Jewish journalist and novelist who yesterday left Germany after a short stay.

This is the first official estimate of the financial position of the Jews since the advent of the Hitler regime. In informed circles here, the estimate is believed to be exaggerated.

Tobenkin told American correspondents today that he gathered from interviews with a number of leading personalities that Germany’s “elder statesmen” are filled with alarm at the extent to which the Nazi extremists are carrying out the anti-Jewish policy.

He said these statesmen are particularly apprehensive for the following reasons: 1) the policy of forcing Jews to sell out to “Aryans” is essentially no different from the expropriation of property practiced by the Bolsheviks; 2) by ruining the Jews, the Nazis are simultaneously ruining thousands of Germans who are rendered jobless by such transfers; and 3) the attempt by Nazi left wingers to establish a “Nazi International” for the purpose of propagating Nazi views abroad, similar to the Comintern of the Soviet, might have similar international repercussions.

A former minister in the Kaiser’s Government told Tobenkin, he disclosed, that “if we’d been allowed to vote on the Jewish question, two thirds of Germany would have voted for abolition of the anti-Jewish legislation.”

“Grown-ups realize,” the ex-minister is quoted as saying, “realize that the anti-Jewish propaganda is merely political, but the youths who starting April 1 are to be compelled to join Nazi youth organizations might grow up with distorted views on the Jewish question.