The situation of German Jewry is even worse than last year, in the opinion of Rabbi Ferdinand M. Isserman of St. Louis, who returned from his second trip to investigate Jewish conditions in Europe and Germany. Rabbi Isserman visited Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, the Saar, France and Austria, and conferred with many Jewish leaders, government officials, journalists and League of Nations representatives.
Rabbi Isserman reports varying conditions in Germany, depending largely on the caprice of local Nazi leaders. In Berlin, Jewish merchants reported unusually good business, due to heavy purchasing in anticipation of inflation and raw material shortage. But he declares no Jews are being reinstated in their old positions and no Jewish unemployed receive work. In any case the terror and suspense is so great that even the wealthy prefer to emigrate, no matter what their prospects abroad, he says.
ONE MAN’S STORY
“In Holland,” Rabbi Isserman relates, “I met a former Jewish manufacturer, now living wretchedly as a salesman, happy and relieved because he could live unafraid and his wife no longer had to become hysterical whenever the doorbell rang.
“In Paris, I met a former German millionaire, a wounded war-veteran, who left more than a million gold marks in Germany, struggling to support himself and his family, yet happy and relieved to be out of Germany. He was compelled by Nazi leaders to post copies of Der Stuermer, which printed attacks on him and his factory. He could get no service in restaurants nor take his children to the park. The pupils in school wiped the bench after his daughter had sat on it.”
The lot of the resource less German Jews, Rabbi Isserman reports, is infinitely worse. The border nations were at first exceedingly hospitable, but as refugees kept pouring in where unemployment was already bad, help became more and more thinly distributed, he says. Despite the gene##sity of the Dutch Jews, 1,000 Jewish refugees were about to be thrown on the streets of Amsterdam when a check arrived from the Joint Distribution Committee.
FRENCH BURDEN HEAVY
In Antwerp, the bankrupt refugee committee was about to stop its allowance. The French Jews, Rabbi Isserman finds, though they have been exceedingly generous, already having prepared 12,000 refugees for futures in other countries, are finding their burden difficult.
Young intellectuals can make a certain adjustment, but the middle-aged find themselves in an almost hopeless position, he says.
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