The Reader’s Forum

The editors reserve the right to excerpt all letters exceeding 500 words in length. All letters must bear the name and address of the writer, although not necessarily for publication.

August 28, 1934.

To the Editor, Jewish Daily Bulletin:

Mr. Leo Wolfstein’s letter under date of August 24 in the Readers Forum in your issue of August 28 prompted this letter. I wonder whether it is good taste for a German Jew who says he is a refugee and has been here but one year to pass such complete judgment on two Americans, Dr. Wise and Dr. Margoshes? If Dr. Nahum Goldmann does not understand the “real German Jew” I am confident that Mr. Wolfstein knows nothing about the American Jews, Wise and Margoshes, after being here one year.

Even Hitler’s persecution didn’t change Mr. Wolfstein’s notion of the importance of the German Jew, who keep on licking the boots of the Christian ruling Germans and feel that to be a German citizen it was necessary to submerge all Jewishness. Even back in Heine’s time the German Jew, and since then, was looked upon in Germany as a “Verdammte Jude.” Mr. Wolfstein’s reference to Dr. Margoshes as a typical Yiddish reporter indicates that he brought with him to United States the same contempt for the Yiddish that he held in Germany where he was kicked from pillar to post and liked it. Where is this German Jewish statesmanship? It is the same brand that the world saw the Kaiser and his gang use that precipitated the World War.

Mr. Wolfstein forgot to add that very familiar word “kike” so handily used by the real German Jews who to differentiate themselves from all other Jews taught the Christian to also call non-German Jews “Kikes.” They said to Hitler, “You are a little hard on us but you are right; it’s those Eastern European Jews who have no ethics, who were non-Germans, who have an Oriental philosophy; we are not that kind; they are ‘Kikes’; we are true-blue Germans even though for hundreds of years you spat on us and called us damned Jews.” To attain unity among Jews let German Jews first practice decency toward all other Jews; let them leave in Germany that Kaiserlich conceit and ego.

As pertains to ethics by Jews my observation has been that it differs very little among all Jews. When the real German Jew is unethical he puts it over with finesse, whereas the unethical Eastern European Jew lacks that German “st###manship,” but the results are the same. The German Jew was fortunate in that the Kaiser kept him cleaned up in order to give him good health to make a soldier out of him and slaughter him on the battle field. And when the world condemns the Hitlerite brutes for their asinine policies they still keep on making the Jew the scapegoat instead of repenting for their crimes against humanity.

The situation of the Jews in Germany is no longer a problem of the Jews in Germany alone, it is my problem in the United States and it is the problem of the 10,000,000 or more Jews in the rest of the world who cannot under any circumstances permit the Hun, Hitler, to keep his boot pressed on our heads. He and his brutes who have enslaved 70,000,000 Germans cannot come out of that the victor and have him say to the rest of the world—”The Jews are your cancer; get rid of them as I have.” He already said that throughout the world. Its echo was heard in Lancaster a few months ago when a high American church dignitary residing here stated that he had been in Germany and he saw nothing wrong, and in fact everything was peaceful and orderly—more order than he ever saw before—less crime than ever; there was no danger to go about in Germany whereas here in the United States people were hardly safe on the streets.

After Mr. Wolfstein is here a few more years he will learn that Christians here don’t like men without “guts” and that they respect a man for fighting for what belongs to him—a liberty that is consonant with the rights of others. Jews have nothing to do that should be secret. Hitler stated to the world that we are pariahs and that we have no right to expect the same liberty of action that others enjoy. He boycotted the Jews and gave them publicity such as the world never did before. I, for one, am not going to sneak into the back door and beg for my human rights. I am going to demand them from the house-tops. I believe in the shirt sleeve diplomacy and not the Kaiserlich brand nor some of the other brands that has been dished out in Europe.

My advice to Mr. Wolfstein is to drop that talk about the “Yiddish business” and to drop the word, “Kike” from his vocabulary as 99 per cent of Germans use that word in designating non-German Jews. It was imported from Germany into the United States.

When the real German Jews have lived their three score and ten and have gone to heaven our decendants will get along quite well with their decendants. Until then I ask respect, not tolerance, for all Jews who were so fortunate as to have had their cradle rocked outside of Germany.

S. H. Livingston.

Lancaster, Pa.