Staats-herold Denies Ridder is Aiding Nazis

Reports from Vienna, printed in the Jewish Daily Bulletin April 19 to the effect that the German Nazis were planning practical steps to win over the six million Americans of German descent to the National Socialist cause have had many repercussions here.

Bernard H. Ridder, president of the “Staats-Herold,” one of the most influential German-language publications in this country, in a letter to Jacob Landau, publisher of the Jewish Daily Bulletin, denied that Victor Ridder, one of the publishers of the German newspaper, was in Germany for the purpose of organizing the German element of this country against American Jews. He enclosed an editorial from the “Staats-Zeitung,” one of the Ridder publications, which expressed their stand.

The editorial, which appeared March 23, said in part:

“We register our emphatic condemnation of the wholly unwarranted and senseless persecution of the Jews of Germany by the Hitlerites, and we protest against it.”

Exception to the Vienna dispatch was also taken by Henry Wollman, of 20 Broad Street, who wrote in part:

“In the Bulletin of this morning, I find a telegram from Vienna which is headed ‘Metz-Ridder Mission to Try to Win Germans in America to the Nazis,’ and states that Mr. Herman Metz and Mr. Victor Ridder will ‘devise methods how to best organize the German element in the United States against American Jews.’ I know both of these gentlemen very well and I esteem them highly. I am as sure as I can be of anything that that statement is absolutely without the slightest foundation. I think it is the last thing that either of them would be willing to do or would do.

“I have been hoping that Messrs. Metz and Ridder, who are now in Germany, will be able through their influence in Germany, to be of real service to the German Jews in the present crisis.”

In another communication to the Bulletin, printed here in part, Edward Jelenko comments on the report that Messrs. Ridder and Metz would be asked to advise the German Government on how to allay public sentiment aroused in the United States by recent occurrences in Germany.

“I am a constant reader of the ‘Staats-Zeitung’ and I observed that during the last few weeks that newspaper has been indulging in skillful maneuvering and has not come out openly against the persecution of innocent men and women in Germany who are made to suffer merely because they belong to another race or faith. The ‘Staats-Zeitung’ has refused to publish letters from myself and others while printing a large number of letters friendly to the Nazis.”

He referred to an editorial in the “Staats-Zeitung” which is reprinted from the March 21st issue in translation here in part:

“People of the United States must be on the watch to prevent sinister powers from inciting the passions of hatred. We have evidences that the venomous serpent of propaganda is again raising its head, that insidious, malicious anti-German agitation is being renewed.

“Just as it began in 1914: with carefully disguised rumors of ‘Huns’ ‘atrocities’ said to come from over the borders of Germany from unimpeachable sources and which little by little were consolidated into the false reports of ‘impaled Belgian babies,’ ‘chopped-off limbs’ and the like in order to influence the public opinion of the Neutrals in favor of the Allied Powers.

“Organized propaganda knew that continuously dripped poison would have a sure effect and that the naive American press would be only too eager to put before its readers such ###ish sensations. . . .

“The New York Times, which proudly announces that it publishes all the news that’s fit to print,’ once again has been hoodwinked. This leading American paper published yesterday on the front page reports with the headlines:

German Fugitives Tell of Atrocities at Hands of Nazis, Americans Bear Out Tales of Outrages and Cruelties in Racial ‘Purging’, Jews Flee Persecution, Police Apathetic, Police Powerless, Fugitives from Germany Flood Saar, Tell of Terrorism of the Nazis.

“After investigation, de discovered first that all reports bear a Paris date line, and secondly that most of them were already published by less prominent papers as reports of the Vienna ‘Arbeiterzeitung.’ . . .

“Doubtless during the celebration of the victory, some excesses by the Hitlerites were unavoidable, but these were single cases. . . .

“It is very important that the Hitler Government recognize the danger, and take care that Germany’s reputation as an orderly country is not damaged. Hitler must lay the ghosts he has conjured up. He must check the anti-Semitic agitation and convince also the foreign nations that Right and Justice are still the highest law in Germany, if he does not wish that again the world believe in reports which, in 1914-1918, had done so much harm.”

A denial that the Americans of German descent will become “Hitlerized” was voiced by a prominent German-American writing to the Bulletin under the pen name “Germania”. The Germans in this country are too deeply steeped in liberal democratic traditions to be influenced by the Goebbels program, he said.

His letter follows:

LIBERAL TRADITION STRONG

“There is but a small chance for the Americans of German descent to become ‘Hitlerized’ because they are rooted in liberal democratic traditions which extend as far as the first German immigration in this country. Only the German postwar immigrants may be forced into the camp of reaction, immigrants who came here during the fourteen years of Hitler-propaganda in the Reich, who will try to throw German-American traditions overboard or reorganize German-American community life according to their ideas and the Goebbels program.

“Germans came here since the 17th century in their quest for religious fredom. German-American history is a history of idealists fighting for liberty. The first martyr of American freedom was a German, Jacob Heisler, Governor of New York, born 1640 in Frankfort, who revolted against British oppression and was beheaded. John Poter Zeager, father of the freedom of the press in America, was a German, von Steuben fought for American freedom under Washington. Nearly all the historical German-American heroes were fighters for liberty of thought or religion.

“The living German-American generations are educated in the same traditions. They are sons of immigrants who came here fleeing from persecution. Demagogic persecutions after Wartburgfest in 1817 brought Follen and Lieber here. After the Hambacher fest of 1832 the first large immigration of political Fluechtlinge came. Many preachers were amongst them, Friedrich Muench, George Walkter, and Heinrich Scheib.

POLITICAL BODIES LIBERAL

The most important wave of immigration came in 1848, the year of revolution in Germany. They were radical liberals. The next group were socialists, who came under the regime of Bismarck. They organized the first unions and labor federations in this country. Many German Catholics came during the Kwetunkampf in Germany after 1872. Many Catholic leaders were in this group. The present Deutschtum consists of an amalgamation of all these groups including the Lutheran groups, and Liberal Protestant groups.

“Between 1848 and 1890 all important German-American organizations were formed under the influence of liberal ideas. The Steuben Society was organized in 1920 as a political body on liberal American principals. The latest creation, the German-American conference, is also founded upon religious and political freedom.

“Also many organizations formed by postwar immigrants are of liberal character, like the German Legion, an association of war veterans of Germany and Austria. There are now, however, a few nationalistic groups like the Hitler groups which are not officially recognized by the German-American organizations, being bodies depending on central groups in Germany and responsible to them. They now try to get recognition under the name of Friends of the Hitler Movement. Their leaders will try to influence the United German Societies of New York, a local central body and it is predicted that this United Societies will be split apart if they should try to recognize the Hitler leadership in the old country.

THEATRES NEED JEWS

“It is also noteworthy that not a single German-American group sent felicitations to Hitler on the occasion of his birthday. The New York Hitler group, however, celebrated it last Saturday night at Teutonia Hall, on 16th Street and Third Avenue, the property of Eugene Kaplan.

“Since German institutions here to a great and vital extent are dependent upon the moral and financial help of Jewish citizens a co-ordination of German-Americanism with Hitler will mean the utter breakdown of these institutions, that they will share the fate of the old German theatre which could not exist after German Jews ceased attending it, while the Europa, a German film theatre, near Broadway, had to become a Yiddish film theatre. The German house of Columbia University, the German Polyclinic, the Lenox Hill Hospital, the German Masonic home, Odd Fellows Home, etc., all depend—more or less—of German-Jewish help, cooperation and charity.

“Also the New York German Masonic Lodges have many Jewish members and several lodges are 100% German-Jewish. It is understood that they will demand that the Grand Lodge of the State of New York sever relations with the Hitlerized Masonic Lodges in the Reich.

“It is true that the majority of Americans of German descent were greatly excited over the ‘atrocity’ campaign and that the measures of boycott planned by Jewish war veterans threatened temporarily to throw German-Americans into the Hitler camp. Since this movement has subsided, reason returned. The prevailing feeling is that as liberal Americans they cannot support a government of brutality. I feel that they would rather support a monarchistic regime in their old country. They cannot understand why German Jews should be deprived of their civic and moral rights and why Hitler should have to walk over dead bodies in order to fulfil his promises of butter and bread for his followers. They also hope and believe that under the pressure of world opinion the Hitler Government will change its course.

“German-Americans are expected to be true to their traditions. This will be possible as long as their press will not bow to the Hitler forces and go off its liberal standard.”