The Spread of Hitlerism in Germany: Anti-jewish Songs in the Trains: Majority of German Population C

“Smash the heads of the Jews and thus

“Make the future safe for us”.

“Our banner waves proudly over the flood,

“When the sword is running with Jewish blood”.

“Get your hand-grenade, and throw it well,

“And let it blow the Jews to hell”.

This is the kind of continual refrain you hear on the trains going on a Sunday from Munich into the mountains, Peter Scher, a well known South German author writes in the “Welt-Buehne”, describing the acrt of anti-Jewish terrorism that now exists in Southern Germany. About a third or half the seats in the trains are occupied by twenty-year old boys, singing these songs lustily all the time, he says, and making it impossible for the other passengers to obtain any peace or quiet.

It would be wrong to consider this kind of thing as exceptional or as an extreme manifestation of radicalism, Dr. Ludwig Hollaender, the Director of the Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, comments in an editorial in the “C. V. Zeitung”, the official organ of his Union, in which he deals with Herr Scher’s article. National Socialism (Hitlerism) is not so strong in Bavaria now as it is in the other parts of Germany, he proceeds. What is important about the whole business is not so much its political aspect as the cultural degradation it reveals. It is incredible that in one of the most highly civilised countries of the world there are hordes of people going about day after day shouting “Perish Judea”. It can hardly be believed that in this country it has become a normal matter of routine which surprises no one that a section of the population should be regularly insulted and vilified as the Jews are.

There is no doubt at all, Dr. Hollaender goes on, that the overwhelming majority of the German people do not approve of this coarseness and vulgarity. But what do they do about it? Hardly anyone makes a move against it. Everybody shrinks away from it, and the result is that it struts about in public, load-voiced and impudent, and not a soul dares to lift his sword to out off the heads of this hydra.

By far the greatest part of the German students have been caught in the toils of Hitlerism, Dr. Hollaender says, to such an extent that we should give up all hope of the next generation of our people, did we not firmly believe that it will all pass like a mist.

Go through the archives of our Central Union, Dr. Hellaender continues, and you will find a list of gruesome happenings that will make you shudder to realise that this is how things stand to-day in Germany. The Jewish religion is insulted, our Jewish institutions are attacked, our Jewish cemeteries are desecrated, our synagogues are smeared with filth, the ritual murder lie is preached openly, and the law courts let the criminals go free.

Dr. Wirth, the Federal Minister of the Interior, was asked the other day in Breslau by a Hitlerist what the Government was going to do about the formation of a Society of the Godless in Germany, and he replied that any insults against the Christian religion would be severely dealt with by the authorities. That is right, Dr. Hollaender says. The great mass of the population will applaud this statement. But unfortunately that is not the attitude of the authorities when the Jewish religion is insulted. We have recently protested against the acquittal of an editor who wrote that the foundation of Jewish teaching is that Jews are to treat with contempt all civil duties towards non-Jews, that Jews are to deceive, to spoil, to corrupt and to annihilate all non-Jews and swindle and betray the State. Similar allegations are made in public print and public speech all over the country, and those who insult the Jews and the Jewish faith in this way are acquitted by the law courts and the acquittals are upheld by the Supreme Court.

If anyone were to say that German officers are cads, or that German judges are cads, or that German shoemakers are cads, Dr. Hollaender says, the representatives of these groups of our population would bring actions against their calumniators and would have them dealt with properly. But when Jews are insulted in this way, there is no manner of means of doing anything, because the Supreme Court will not have it that an insult against Jews is an insult against all Jews. Any day we can read in the anti-Jewish press that there are no exceptions, that “the swinishnessis in the race”, that every Jew is a criminal and a scamp. But when it comes to the Jews, the law courts observe the strict letter of the law, and have no use for the spirit. There is a violent agitation carried on against the Jews. We want Jewish blood, is the cry that is raised day in day out, every hour. But the law courts say that it is nothing; that it is not meant seriously, and all these things go unpunished. Suppose it was the other way about, Dr. Hollaender suggests and in some country where there are German minorities, mobs went through the streets shouting “Germany perish” what would happen then? Everybody in Germany would berightly indignant. International action would be taken, and with justice. But when it is a question of only a few Jews, why all the excitement? But it is time, Dr. Hollaender concludes, that all those people who are concerned for the common weal should take this matter seriously. Everyone who sees what is happening and does nothing to put a stop to it shares in the guilt and bears some of the responsibility for one of the most terrible waves of enmity that threatens to engulf our German people.