The Week in Review

Germany

The end of a short-lived Christmas respite for the Jews of Germany was marked by a sweeping attack on what is left of the Jewish position in many fields. By merger of the All-German Lawyers’ Association with the Nazi Lawyers’ Association, 3,000 Jewish members of the former group were deprived of membership in an organization composed of their colleagues…. Mass dismissals of Jewish doctors and dentists, including the legally exempted war veterans, continued as officials declared the proportion of Jews attached to the sick benefit panels in Berlin remained entirely too high…. Jews were denied the right to matriculate in Reich universities during 1934…. Jewish noncitizens were declared eligible for winter-relief only if the consulates of the countries in which they hold citizenship contribute to the relief fund…. The boycott drive on Jewish commerce was renewed with vicious insistence as influential Nazis denounced attempts to suppress it…. It was announced that the Aryan clause would be fully enforced during the coming year. Jewish teachers were expelled from the industrial schools…. Confirmation of reports that the Jews would be deprived of citizenship was seen in a ruling of the Prussian government setting up separate classifications of “citizens” and “residents”. Ten thousand Jews in Prussia, it was announced, had been deprived of citizenship…. Foreign Jews were ordered to surrender their unlimited residence permits in exchange for short-term residence visas…. A “racial passport” system was established for government employees…. A rule legalizing divorces because one of the parties to the marriage has Jewish blood was revealed as forthcoming soon.

… The aged Rabbi of Offenbach, Dr. M. Dienemann, was released from concentration camp. A Jewish butcher, Ludwig Frohweim, of Hocheim, was imprisoned for violating the law against schechita. A number of Jewish visitors were arrested near Munich for allegedly carrying on gruel propaganda. Kurt Aron, Frankfurt department store manager, is still held by the police although his innocence on a trumped up immorality charge was admitted by them.

… A new petition, similar to the Bernheim plea to the League of Nations, is before the Mixed Commission for Upper Silesia. It protests Nazi discriminations against Upper Silesian jews, contrary to German promises to the League. Possibility that the League will call Germany to discuss its treatment of minorities in the plebiscite area is disturbing the Reich press and is providing a knotty problem for the Nazi foreign affairs experts.

Palestine

The deportations of Jews illegally in the country continued and gave rise to an unusual incident of the kidnapping of three deportees from the police by a crowd of friends and sympathizers…. Official figures disclosed that 3,837 Jews entered the country in November…. Two of the eighteen Tel Aviv Jewish youths held for demonstrating against the deportation program, were acquitted when the trial opened at Jaffa this week…. Two new colonies for German refugees will be established with the aid of grants from two Egyptian Jewish communities…. John A. M. Faraday, assistant police superintendent who quelled the Arab disorders at Jaffa, will be transferred to Beersheba as a result of Arab complaints….

Roumania

Several Jews were named to seats in the Roumanian Parliament by the victorious Liberal party…. Incendiaries destroyed the Kantarschi Synagogue at Jassy and eluded capture….

Poland

Four Brith Trumpeldorites were arrested in a demonstration to dramatize circulation of a mass petition of protest against Palestine immigration restrictions….

Austria

Catholic Bishops denounced the “racial madness” of Nazi-ism, attacked its “violent anti-Semitism” and in their Christmas pastoral letter, urged their flocks to support the Dollfuss regime….

Greece

Police guards were set up around the Salonica Jewish quarter as threatened attacks by competing anti-Semitic groups appeared imminent. The physical attacks failed to materialize, however, but a strong state of tension prevails.

United States

The federal government made a loan of $500,000 to finance Jewish subsistence settlements in Monmouth country, New Jersey under the auspices of the Provisional Commission for Farm Settlements…. The American League for the Defense of Jewish Rights expanded its activities to combat Nazi propaganda here and opened its membership to a number of distinguished non-Jews. The new organization is to be known as the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League to Champion Human Rights…. Governor Herbert H. Lehman flayed the German betrayal of Jewish love for the country in a speech delivered at Madison Square Garden at the repeat performance of the Maccabean Festival…. President William Green of the American Federation of Labor called on members of the organization to enforce the Nazi boycott resolution adopted by the Federation at its annual convention…. Jewish youth met in a series of conventions, the Masada deliberated means of enlisting Jewish youth for Zionism; Aleph Zadek Aleph sections met in Milwaukee and San Francisco; Mizrachi youth in Syracuse; Gordonia at Baltimore; Mid-West Young Israel at Chicago….

Bishop Manning, Bainbridge Colby, Byrnes MacDonald and Nathan Straus, Jr., denounced Nazi persecutions in speeches in the Bronx Forum…. Rabbi Solomon B. Freehoff resigned from K.A.M. Temple, Chicago, to assume the pulpit of Temple Rodef Sholom in Pittsburgh…. Rabbi Joseph Shapiro was installed as rabbi of Pittsburgh’s Congregation Poale Zedeck….

James G. McDonald, High Commissioner for Refugees; Professor Joseph P. Chamberlain, American member of the autonomous governing body, and Joseph C. Hyman, secretary of the Joint Distribution Committee, returned from the Lausanne meetings of the refugee board.