The Truth About Hitler’s War on the Jews

(This article is the fifth of a series in which Mr. Smolar will appraise the present situation of the Jews in Germany in the light of the past year’s events.)

The saddest chapter in the contemporary tragedy of German Jewry is that about the Jewish lawyers and judges. The Hitler regime struck them harder than everyone else. Their sacrifice was the greatest.

To the present day it has been impossible to determine just how great is the number of lawyers and judges who actually suffered. Not even the government bureaus which should have the figures know them. Moreover, they do not know how great the number of Jewish advocates was before Hitler came to power, nor how many there are left since Hitler removed most of them.

The German statistice underlying the whole anti-Semitic theory of Jewish infliction of large numbers of advocates upon Germany are based solely upon the number of Jewish lawyers in Berlin. Anti-Semitic propaganda says nothing of the number of the Jewish lawyers outside of Berlin.

The same is true about Jewish judges. The Nazi government’s song to the effect that “the German courts are flooded with Jewish judges” quotes figures on Jewish judges in Prussia, but not on those everywhere in Germany.

430 IN PRUSSIA

Before the Hitler regime there were in Prussia-according to official figures-430 judges who were non-Jewish. The Jews – including those who did not consider themselves Jews at all and are only remotely of Jewish orgin-constituted, in Prussia, slightly more than seven percent. In other states this percentage was still smaller. There is reason to believe that in some states there were no Jewish judges at all.

The Nazi propaganda cry that the Jews have usurped all the judicial chairs in Germany is therefore not only exaggerated, but basically untrue. One could probably count the number of really Jewish judges in Prussia on one’s finger tips.

The same is true of advocates. The Nazis only know that they must complain to the know that they must complain to the world that “almost all the advocates in Germany are Jews.” Challenged to substantiate these claims, the Nazis have no actual figures to show that their propaganda is justified.

A foreign journalist calls at the ministry of propaganda, where he gets the routine figures showing that “in Berlin alone the Jews constituted 54 percent of all advocates.” He is told that in Berlin there were 3,400 advocates, 1,850 of whom were Jewish.

WRONG IMPRESSION

The foreigner is given these figures, and he gets the impression that there really are too many Jewish advocates in Germany. He is unaware of the fact that Berlin was a compactly Jewish center. He assumes that if the number of Jewish advocates was more than half of the total number of jurists in Berlin, the same proportion must obtain in cities other than Berlin.

It is upon this blind ignorance of the foreigner-and of the average German citizen-that the Nazis count. They base all their propaganda upon it. They do not tell how many Jewish advocates there are in all Germany, but they quote Berlin as an example and are, intentionally, completely silent about the provinces.

But how many Jewish jurists were there really in Germany?

The Association of German Jurists, which has been dissolved by the Hitler government, is perhaps the only institution which actually bad the key to this question. Every prominent attorney in Germany was a member of that society, which had more than 15,000 members, only 3,000 of them Jewish.

1,200 AMONG 12,000

In other words, there were altogether three thousand Jewish attorneys in all of Germany. If the Nazi figures are to be given credence as being correct, and the assumption made that in Berlin alone there were 1,850 Jewish lawyers, then there must have been-in all of Germany except Berlin-no more than 1,200 lawyers who were Jewish. In other words, 1,200 Jews among 12,000 non-Jews.

The number of Jewish advocates in Germany-outside of Berlin-was therefore not 54 percent, as the Nazis would have us believe, but only ten percent. About this ten percent the Nazi officials at the ministry of propaganda are silent. It obviously does not pay to talk about them.

NO MEANS OF SUBSISTING

Now, we can assume that nearly 4,000 Jewish lawyers and judges have been thrown off their balance in Germany and have, actually, no means of subsistence.

“How four thousand?” The officials at the ministry for propaganda argue with me. We haven’t shurited out all the Jewish lawyers. There are still in Berlin about a thousand Jewish lawyers who have the right to practies even today!”

Naturally, I must smile at this argument. Of course there are still, here and there, Jewish lawyers who have the right to practice. They may; but can they?

These days a Jewish lawyer who may practice will not readily run the risk of appearing in a German court, may he even be a veteran who fought at the front. Should he defend a case, he would surely lose it. Nor would anyone come to him in the first place. A Jew will not come because he knows that, should a Jew represent his interests, the chances of winning the case are very poor. A Gentile will not come because no Gentile in Germany today will dare to let himself be represented by a Jew.

COURTS DIFFICULT

The Jewish lawyers who still have the right to practice are in a position not much better than that of those whose right to practice has been taken from them. They may practice, but they have no occasion to. What Jewish advocate would have the courage to appear in a German court, the sessions of which are opened by the judge with a “Heil Hitler” salute and where all must raise their hands according to the Nazi custom?

Necessity is stronger than iron, and there were some Jewish lawyers who took the risk of appearing in court, depending, naively, on the fact that they served at the front for Germany during the world war or on the fact that they lost their fathers or their sons on the battlefield.

These courageous Jews will not appear in court again. They were routed out in the meanest possible fashion. They were chased about in court-buildings much as animals are chased. They were forced to jump out of windows, to hide in cellars, to steal out by back-doors. Several of them-were beaten outright. All of this was done in an organized and deliberate fashion. It happened in a number of cities and in a number of court-buildings.

In Berlin-the principal city, where the government did not wish any “publicity” for matters of this sort-Jewish lawyers who retained the right to practice were warned by judicial administration, in a “friendly” fashion, against appearing in court. By so doing, they were told, they would avoid “unforeseen unpleasant incidents.” To this very day the “Stuermer,” bitterly anti-Semitic newspaper, publishes every day a list of the firms which permit themselves to be represented by Jewish lawyers. These firms may be Jewish. They may, indeed, be foreign. But the “Stuermer” places them on the blacklist, that they may be boycotted for having dealings with Jewish lawyers.

ONLY CLERICAL WORK

The best Jewish lawyers-provided they are still permitted to practice law-can have, at best, mere inside clerical work. They may prepare documents and organize a case at home for presentation in court. But they may not appear in court. They dare not. Nor do their clients wish it. Their clients are aware that the best way to lose a case is to entrust it to a Jewish lawyer for defense.

If Jewish lawyers were allowed to work in partnership with non-Jews and to maintain joint offices, perhaps a thousand Jewish lawyers would be in no worse a situation than they were in formerly. The non-Jewish partner could then take care of appearances in court, while the Jewish one would prepare the necessary documents for the case.

But German justice is at present very strict in the matter of joint offices. Non-Jewish lawyers have no right whatever to maintain offices with Jewish attorneys. So that in this direction, too, the opportunities for Jewish lawyers have been entirely cut off.

FATE OF PROFESSORS

And, in speaking of the fate of Jewish lawyers, it might be well to consider the fate of Jewish professors.

It is no easier to determine the number of the Jewish professors who have been dismissed. In Prussia alone nearly a hundred Jewish professors have lost their posts.

But in many respects the case of the professor is better better than that of the lawyers and judges. The professors are men of science. All the world is theirs.

Therefore the greater part of the Jewish professors are now abroad. Almost all of them are established. More than thirty German Jewish professors have been invited to teach at the new university at Stambul. Turkey. Nearly twenty German Jewish professors are now teaching at the New School for Social Research in New York.Two dozen Jewish professors found positions in various American universities outside of New York. Some of them have been established in England. Only a few remaining professors have been unsuccessful as yet in finding positions abroad, and these are employed as consultants by foreign firms.

The dismissed Jewish professors has found his way out, more or less. But the situation is dark for the Jewish attorneys and judges even for those who, the world is told, have been readmitted to the pursuit of their porfession. All of them are now people who “have been.” All of them are living ghosts. All of them look with dread towards the immediate future.

And their future certainly does not pormise much that is joyous.