The Truth About Hitler’s War on the Jews

(This article is the third 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).

A well-known Berlin physician, a personal friend of mine, calls me up for an appointment. He wants to see me very badly. He needs my advice.

“What’s up?” I ask him.

“Everything !” he replies in a downhearted voice.

Some time later, we meet in a cafe, and he confides to me his great secret-he would like to give up the medical profession and become a taxi-driver.

He sees that I don’t quite understand him, and proceeds to unburden himself:

“It is impossible,” he tells me, “for a Jewish doctor to make a living in Berlin at present. I’ve been losing my patients one by one. The non-Jewish ones are afraid to patronize a Jew, and Jewish patients, even if employed by Jewish concerns if they are beneficiaries of sick benefit associations-hesitate to consult Jewish physicians.”

He pauses for a moment, lights a cigarette, lets a cloud of smoke out of his mouth, and continues:

“The Jews in Germany are getting poorer and poorer day by day. They are counting their pennies and must lead a very economical, hand-to-mouth existence. When a member of a family takes sick, they no longer send for the first best doctor. They consult the sick benefit association physician, instead; in other words, one who will be paid by the association and not by the patient.

OBSTACLES IN WAY

“The sick benefit associations, however, are putting all sorts of difficulties in the way of Jewish doctors. They send their Jewish members, practically by force, to ‘Aryan’ physicians, and are in no hurry to recognize even those Jewish doctors who are entitled to such recognition under the strictest interpretation of Hitler’s most stringent legislation. In other words, if a sick fund is willing to pay for a Jewish patient, it will rather pay an ‘Aryan’ than a Jew.

“Without private practice and without sick fund patients, what is there left to do for a Jewish doctor in Berlin? Even for the best, even for the most famous ones?”

That’s the reason why my friend wants to give up the medical profession. To be a taxi-driver, he figured out, pays much better. As a taxi-driver, it will not be necessary for him to maintain an office, a large apartment, reception and waiting rooms and pay a high rental. He will not have any large expenses, he will live modestly and will earn his daily bread much more easily than as a doctor. The person who hails a taxi does not ask, for the time being at least, whether the driver is “Aryan” or not.

My friend is dead earnest about it-he talks and is really bent on becoming a taxi-driver. He has until now been driving a car of his own, and knows his way through Berlin. Why then try to learn an altogether new occupation-before trying his luck as a chauffeur, as a plain taxi-man?

THE “EIGHT THOUSAND”

My friend is not the only one in this predicament. He was one of the best doctors in Berlin; in fact, one of the foremost in all Germany, and now he has joined the ranks of the “Eight Thousand.”

Eight thousand Jewish doctors, dentists, nurses and other members of the medical profession are at present circulating in Germany without any prospects of making a living at their respective professions. Of this number, 7,570 are “genuine” German Jews, Jews whose fathers and fathers’ fathers were born in Germany, and who always considered themselves Germans more than Jews.

Of course, not all of them are striving to become chauffeurs, but all of them must abandon their medical calling. As physicians, as dentists, as dental mechanics, they cannot possibly make a living in present-day Germany.

True, a patient applying in a sick benefit association clinic has the right to choose his doctor. Theoretically, should he wish to be treated by a Jew, he may ask for a Jewish doctor who served in the trenches during the war, or belongs to some other privileged category, and is still allowed to practice. But the patient knows better than to ask for the services of a Jewish physician. If he is a Gentile, he will be afraid to lose his job. If he is a Jew-he will be afraid to expose himself as a Jew and, besides, he will dread the “yellow ticket.”

THE “YELLOW TICKET”

The “yellow ticket” -Germany’s disgrace-is the token of the special system recently introduced in all medical institutions. You come to a hospital where two or three Jewish professors have still been retained owing to their patriotic exploits during the War. The clerk at the desk says nothing, but hands you a yellow card-meaning that the doctor who is going to treat you is a Jew.

One does not feel very comfortable, seeing that all the others get white cards-ordinary registration cards assigning patients to ordinary doctors-while you are being singled out as an outcast with the yellow card in your possession. It is far from pleasant for the patient and much less so for the doctor.

No wonder, the Jewish doctor with a German sick benefit association, a Jewish physician in a German hospital, in a German dispensary, in the municipal dental clinic, in all municipal medical institutions, feels like a leper, like one deceased and shunned by everyone. He feels undesirable, humiliated, spat upon and isolated.

“PRIVILEGED” MEN

All this refers to those doctors who have proven their past services to Germany, or those whose fathers or sons fell in the battle fields in their heroic struggle for the Fatherland. Even the lot of these “practicing” doctors is far from enviable How, then, about those who, with one stroke of the pen, were thrown out of their profession and whose patients were scared away?

THE UNPRIVILEGED

Over eight thousand such doctors are now meandering in the country ready and willing to become not only taxi-drivers but even lumber jacks. They are prepared to work at the most menial, most unskilled tasks. They gave up long ago all hope of again earning a living as physicians.

Some of them try their luck in the remotes provincial towns. But there, too, their chances are very poor. In the provinces, it is very easy to keep an eye on everybody, especially on a newcomer, particularly if he happens to be a Jew. Should one be seen calling on a Jew, everybody in town will know it the very next day, and so will the local Nazis, and shortly the patient’s name will be prominently printed in the “Black List” of the town newspaper, or if there is no paper published in the particular town, his name will be nailed to the pillory especially erected for such purposes.

AS BADLY OFF AS JURISTS

During the first months of the Hitler “revolution” many in Germany were of the opinion that it would be the Jewish lawyers who would be affected most adversely. Deprived of the right to practice, there would be nothing left for them to turn to. It would fare differently with the Jewish physicians, however. They would still be able to make a living from private practice, treating private patients.

Of course, it is no longer thought so. It is quite apparent that the Jewish doctors have fared no better than the Jewish jurists. The Jews in both professions are like men with their hands cut off. Both classes of professionals have been deprived of the opportunity to earn a livelihood, and, in both cases, as an out come of painstakingly laid plans.

In the narrow passages of the Jewish relief organization offices one comes across physicians, lawyers, singers, impoverished artists and many others who come to ask for aid, for charity. Many of them are physicians of great and deserved reputation, but what does it avail them? They are not allowed to practice in Germany, they are not admitted to other countries. In lands where they would be permitted to enter, they would be required to pass a state examination in order to gain the right to practice medicine. Then, they have first to learn the language of the new country, and besides and above all, they very often have not the expenses for emigration.

Jewish doctors are trying hard at present to wander out to China or to Brazil. They are willing to emigrate to the remotest lands, even to Abyssinia; they are ready to live among semi-savage tribes, in the most primitive settlements of Asia or Africa. But who of them has the necessary funds and, last but not least, how many Jewish doctors can these lands absorb, after all?

ONLY SOLUTION

There is therefore but one way out open to the Jewish doctors in Germany, and this is to forget that they ever were good physicians and instead, to become far from excellent chauffeurs, inefficient paperhangers, plain laborers at the building trades, wretched hod-carriers.

It is, indeed, heart-breaking to watch a Jewish doctor, an intellectual wearing glasses, mix concrete, learn candy-making in a factory, or carry bricks or lumber on his shoulders. But this is the only thing the Jewish intellectual in present day Germany can turn to. This is the fate of a few tens of thousands of German Jews, and the Jewish doctors are but caught in the whirlpool with the others. They are eight thousand strong but they are not the only eight thousand. True, this is no consolation to them, but human beings are adaptable and grow used to the worst calamities that may befall them.

So, too, the Jewish doctor in Germany has become accustomed to the idea of giving up his profession. The trouble is that not all doctors have been able, so far, to become taxi-drivers or hod-carriers. The trouble is that the Jewish relief organizations have no more means to readjust this great host of doctors in their new economic positions and aid them in building a new life for themselves.

Another article in this series will appear in the next few days.