The Human Touch

Conclusions on the news: The figure of Franz Bernheim continues to fascinate me. Who is this Jew from Upper Silesia, a refugee in Prague, whose appeal for justice to the Secretariat of the League of Nations gave the oppressed Jews in Germany and the refugees out of it their international sounding-board? In almost all the records of Nazi violence there runs a thread of implied confession by the Nazis that the Jews are superior; shrewd at the least, but I do not think that, in their fanatic absorption in the business and avocation of violence and economic spitefulness, they envisaged such a possibility as that with which Franz Bernheim faces them. Power to him ! Long may he protest ! His possible inconsequence as an individual does not invalidate his consequence as symbol. At the risk of appearing fantastic I present the possibility that he may stand as the symbol, on the Jewish side, of the whole story of Nazi persecution during 1933— and no longer, we trust !— just as Dreyfus was symbol and occasion, victim and rallying-point, of the anti-Semitic movement in France several decades ago.

And while we’re about it, let some consideration be given to the able advocate who presented the petition on his behalf. Our only clue, thus far, to his identity is in the fact that he showed a profound knowledge of international law, and, naturally, of those clauses governing the rights of inhabitants of plebiscite areas, in which category Upper Silesia belongs. Perhaps it is best for the present that not too much be known about either Mr. Bernheim or his lawyer. If, as is likely, they read the despatches from Geneva in which it was reported— even if only as rumor— that the Germans were offering the English and French delegates at the League concessions on disarmament in return for postponed consideration until September of the Bernheim petition, they must have glowed with justifiable pride. There can be no doubt that of all the petitions and appeals, resolutions, protest parades, representations against terrorism in the legislative chambers of the world, this plea of the Jewish refugee in Prague has done more to embarrass the Hitler-Goebbels-Goering triumvirate than almost any other single protest effort, with only the possible exception of the anti-Hitler debate in the House of Lords. Bravo for Bernheim, and a couple of Rahs and Tigers !

We do not know whether it is entirely just to judge a revolutionary movement by its meanest manifestations. There is no doubt that there is something of a revolutionary ardor and an impersonal social zeal in the movement of which the National Socialist Party is the political front and expression. But that ardor has been befouled by enough evidences of meanness and spitefulness to give rise to the justifiable hope that it will not survive. It seems to me to be bad enough to encourage louts to burn books which they distrust because they do not understand them, but when New York Nazis, carrying on the smoky torch from Berlin, are inspired to sneak into public libraries and mutilate books of so-called Jewish inspiration, one can’t know whether the expression of zeal in such terms doesn’t deserve rather contemptuous pity than indignation. Even the leaders of the Reich themselves are embarrassed by the silly expressions of Nazi ardor; perhaps even they could do with a little pity isn’t it possible to imagine some of them just a little bit worried about the nature of the harvest they have sowed. If you will look up Bullfinch’s “Age of Fable” you will read about a mythological fellow who sowed dragon’s teeth: that was Hitler’s very great-great-great, etc. grandfather.

AMONG THE BURNED

Marvin Lowenthal has written only one book and even that one— or, at least, Lion Feuchtwanger’s copy— went up in smoke at the Opernplatz in Berlin on May 10th. This is how it happened:

Dr. Feuchtwanger had written to Lowenthal asking for a copy of “A World Passed By”. The proud author communicated this request to his publisher’s publicity representative, who informed Mr. Lowenthal that a copy already had been sent— to Feuchtwanger’s Berlin address. To this effect Mr. Lowenthal wrote Dr. Feuchtwanger. From Marseilles recently Mr. Lowenthal received the following note:

“My home and library in Berlin have been seized and my books are going to be burned [this was before the holocaust, of course] and your’s no doubt with them.”

Mr. Lowenthal did not go into a decline. Certain kinds of smoke are good for the nostrils. And now that Jesse Isidor Straus, former president of Macy’s, has gone to Paris as American Ambassador, Mr. Lowenthal and several other “burned” authors ought to be saying: “It’s smart to be burned.”

GLASS IN HITLER’S SOUP

Our Waiter observed one of us reading a copy of the Jewish Daily Bulletin. He looked at it reflectively. He looked as if he had a profound comment to make. Our conversation drooped anticipatorily. “There is a little thing I would wish. I have served lots of big people in my time, but there is one man I would like to wait on.”

“Yes?” we said, expecting more, “who is it?”

“Who can it be?” looking meditatively at the paper; “Hitler,” with a decisive shrug of his shoulders.

“What would you give him, poison?”

“Poison !” as if the suggestion were too absurd to be credited. “I should give him poison, and he wouldn’t have to suffer?”

“What then?”

“Ground glass I’d put in his soup,” and then with an eloquent gesture, “so it would cut up his insides in nice little pieces—that’s what I would do.”

He turned away as if he had met a social emergency with éclat and somehow I felt that if a miracle should at that moment produce Adolf Hitler the waiter would remember— that he was a waiter.