The Nazi movement to force Jewish business men to turn over the direction and control of their enterprises to Hitlerite commissars appointed for each concern has attained a mass character, with reports of such measures growing more numerous daily from all parts of Germany. Intimidation and if necessary, murder is used to bring Jewish business into Nazi hands, it is revealed.
The seventeen stores controlled by the firm of Leonard Tietz of Cologne, which comprise the largest chain of department stores in western Germany, has been turned over to the brown-shirt commissars, while the owners of the concern are refused permission to go abroad. Florian Sachs, owner of the largest Jewish-controlled textile factory in Chemnitz, was murdered when he opposed the Nazi order to relinquish control of his factory, it was authentically stated here, although the government report of his death lists him as a suicide.
Isidore Weiner, the lawyer of the Sachs firm, was arrested and is also reported as having been murdered.
In spite of this openly and consistently carried out policy on the part of the Nazis, the campaign for the suppression of the “atrocity stories” is more stringent than ever. Although the campaign has succeeded abroad in creating the impression that the German-Jewish situation is quieting down, the contrary is true. The persecutions are more widespread every day. The recent raids on the large international Jewish organizations, the Ort, a self-help institution, and the Oze, a health institution, the Joint Distribution Committee, and the German-Jewish relief organization, the Hilfsverein, have brought an extreme effect of helplessness on the Jewish spirit, although nothing of an incriminating character was found in the raids.
In addition, the German Jewish community is to be compelled by the Nazi government to compile and publish a booklet of Jewish denials of “atrocity” reports. This booklet will be circulated throughout the world. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency learns on good authority that the Dresdnerbank, a government institution, will undertake the distribution of the booklet, aiming chiefly to reach financial and commercial circles abroad.
“ALL QUIET” SAYS VICTOR RIDDER
“No Jews were molested in the streets or stores or in their houses so far as I could learn, and the situation is now quite tranquil,” said Victor Ridder, secretary of the Staats-Herold corporation, who returned to New York yesterday from a good-will mission which he had carried out with Col. Herman Metz.
Mr. Ridder interviewed Chancellor Hitler and many other officials of the new Reich and is convinced especially of the “sincerity and honesty of Hitler.” He spent ten days in Berlin, Dresden, Munich, and other German cities.
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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.
