The Week in Review

The new nation-wide boycott campaign against the Jews of Germany proclaimed by the Nazi Trade and Artisans Association for March 23 and scheduled to last until April 7, has already begun… Reports from a score of German cities show that the boycott is already in full swing, accompanied by all the manifestations of the one-day boycott of a year ago…

The vicious campaign against German Jews in trade and industry is apparently designed to drive the Jews into a new type of ghetto and isolate them economically as they have been psychologically isolated ever since the advent of the Nazi regime…

The anti-Jewish boycott is being pushed with all the resources at the command of the powerful Nazi machine which so ruthlessly controls every phase of German life… Posters, trucks with loud speaker, movie shorts, radio speeches, pamphlets, leaflets, pickets, questionnaires, physical violence are all being used… All Nazi Germany seems to be singing one song, “Don’t buy from the Jews!”

Although one section of the cabinet is known to be opposed to a boycott of the Jews on the grounds of expediency, the cabinet has been ominously silent, and as far as can be learned, has made no move to halt the Nazi zealots.

Having slammed the door in the face of the Jews who attempted to shift their occupational basis to the land and to manual labor, the Nazis now are trying to utterly ruin the 600,000 German Jews.

AUSTRIA

An equally gloomy picture must be presented of the status of the Jews in Austria. They still don’t know what their fate will be. But all indications point to a gradual increase of restrictions against the Jews. Robert Stricker, one of the Austrian Jewish leaders, recently warned the Jews of Austria not to be too optimistic and told them that “dark days are ahead.”

A numerus clausus was introduced for Jewish artists on the government-owned radio system. Jewish artists will be permitted only in proportion to their number in the general population… In Linz all the Jewish doctors employed by the municipality were summarily dismissed and applicants for their posts informed that they must produce proof of “German nationality.” …The official organ of the Christian Socialist party announced that the government would carry out the widest revision of the citizenship rights acquired by Jews in Austria since the World War. It urges that the elimination of naturalized Jews from business, professional and public life be carried out not in accordance with the law, but in accordance with the “political interests of the state.”

PALESTINE

The Einstein Institute of Physics in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was officially dedicated. The building is the gift of Solomon and Dora M. Shapiro of the United States… All Palestine Jews, Christians and Moslems are united in their opposition to the proposed income tax to be introduced by the Palestine government… A two-hour strike was carried out in Tel Aviv in which all classes joined as a protest against the high rentals.

ENGLAND

The Zionist Revisionist party was completely disassociated from the World Zionist Organization, when the Zionist Executive issued a communique eliminating such Revisionist organizations as were still within the organization.

THE REST OF EUROPE

The Italian steamer Martha Washington was renamed Tel Aviv. … Another Italian ship had its name changed to Jerusalem… The German government is on trial before the Upper Silesian Mixed Commission for having broken its pledges to respect the rights of the Jewish minority in Upper Silesia… The University of Warsaw was closed indefinitely after Endek students brutally assaulted an aged Jewish scholar, Professor Handelsmann… Jews in the Polish province of Galicia are suffering from the campaign of terror against them by Ukrainian nationalists…

THE UNITED STATES

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the American Palestine Campaign of the Jewish Agency for Palestine joined together and will open a united drive to secure $3,000,000 for relief work among German Jewish refugees. Unity was achieved after a plea by James G. McDonald, League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to recognize the desperate need of the hour…

A petition bearing 250,000 signatures of Americans and asking President Roosevelt to intervene on behalf of the German Jews and that such intervention would be “in accordance with the traditions of our country” was submitted to the Chief Executive by a delegation headed by Alfred M. Cohen, international president of the B’nai B’rith, under whose auspices the petition was gathered… Professor Albert Einstein celebrated his fifty-fifth birthday this week in Princeton… There was no celebration. Dr. Einstein worked as usual.