If anyone is going to tell us that Hitlerism will distinguish between German and foreign Jews, our answer is that we do not want such distinetion, Dr. Julius Brodnitz, the President of the Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith, declared at an election meeting held here last night, under the auspices of the Union, to call on all Jewish electors to give their votes in the Parliamentary elections on Sunday to the Republican candidates.
We are experiencing a specifically Jewish distress and we are exposed to specifically Jewish dangers in our German fatherland, Dr. Brodnitz went on, and in face of that there must be an end to internal Jewish conflict.
We must guard against panic, he said. In all the years of our existence, the Central Union has carried on its work ca calmly, without losing its head. The great achievements of Judaism are so firmly entrenched in our minds and hearts, that all these things which now face us seem trivial and transient in comparison.
In such a time as this everything else must be put into the background, and our thought must be only of Germany’s interest. We German Jews bear responsibility for that like all other German citizens, only much more so.
The fable of Jewish wealth is but a fable. At the best of times, most Jews were people of modest means. We German Jews are not gold bugs, and our guiding line in life is something that cannot be counted and weighed and measured.
The end of things has not come, Dr. Brodnitz concluded. Our young people will live to reap the harvest of what we now sow.
The Hitlerist regime will not come. Germany will live, and our Judaism will live.
Councillor Leo Wolff, the Chairman of the Prussian Federation of Jewish Communities, said:
My work is in the religious Jewish community, and I take no part in politics, but at a time like this, when the future of Germany and of German Jewry are at stake, it is the duty of each of us to come out of our own particular corners, and exercise whatever influence we have on as wide a circle as possible. We have all of us our ties with our Christian fellow citizens, and it is our duty to make the situation clear to them. We must do all we can that there should continue to be a liberal Government in our great German Federated State. And we must remember that there can be no closing up of the ranks of the whole German people, unless the sacred union includes also the German Jews.
Dr. Weiss, the Vice-President of the Berlin Police Force for the past 14 years, who is a Jew, said that his Department was doing everything to maintain public order and to guard the State against violence from Right or Left.
Dr. Alfred Wiener, Syndikus of the Central Union, described the work of the Union in combating antisemitism. The monthly issue of the Union’s "C. V. Zeitung", he said, is circulated in 60,000 non-Jewish homes, and thousands of meetings are held during the year at which the facts are brought home to their non-Jewish fellow citizens.
The Central Union is not fighting only for the Jews, he said, but also for the honour and the welfare of the German fatherland.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
