Regulations of a convict colony for lifers sound like a cheery New Charter in comparison with Hitler’s National Labor Law. No wonder labor in America and the world over is up in arms against Nazism.
Despite brutal suppression and staggering penalties imposed for disobedience, the new law has evoked a storm of bitter protest, German workers justly appraising it as a law of complete enslavement and abrogation of the rights won at such a terrific sacrifice over a period of many generations.
At a meeting summoned by the Nazified shop council in the huge Siemens machine works, one of the largest plants of its kind in Germany, workers had the courage to demand an open discussion of the labor law from the floor. Unable to regain control of the meeting, the “leaders” hastily adjourned it. This is but one example of reports seeping through from all corners of Naziland.
Analogous difficulties have arisen in a variety of other coordinated sectors of Germany. The result is that during the past week or two, irreproachable authorities, German and otherwise, have deluged public prints with statements on the impending downfall of Hitler, Not a day passes now without an economist, a journalist, a student of labor affairs, or someone equally responsible, making an emphatic prediction of the inevitable overthrow of Hitlerism.
Of course, opinions differ on what is to succeed the bloody Nazi regime, but there is startling unanimity on the imminence of its overthrow.
Also significant is the resistance developed in the ranks of Germany’s unemployed, as contrasted with that of the workers with jobs. Illustrative of the expanding spirit of discontent and rebellion among millions of jobless, is that not a single one of the 18,000 Bremen unemployed stepped forward to answer the call for “volunteers” to enroll in the Agricultural Labor Camps. Apparently the unemployed prefer their present pathetic status to the blessings of the coordinated camps.
These camps, incidentally, are one of the methods of the Fascist dictatorship for solving the problem of unemployment. The “lucky” ones are herded there to work without pay.
The mayor of Bremen publicly complained of the “stubbornness” of the jobless, who dared defy the Nazi edict. Won’t he and his be surprised one fine morning in the near future to discover the stubborn resistance that the rest of Germany’s population has developed “overnight?” And he won’t be dreaming, either.
L. Z.
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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.
