World Press Digest

Milton S. Mayer, in an article in Today, weekly edited by Prof. Raymond Moley, explaining why the Nazis chose the Jews as a scapegoat, says:

The sentiment of anti-Semitism goes back for the moment—to the psychological inability of the German people to see that their loss of the World War was a defeat at arms. Wilhelm told them they couldn’t be beaten. Ebert told them they hadn’t been beaten. They had been betrayed. I heard this every place I went in Germany: There had to be a traitor. The Social Democrats offered the people Wilhelm. That was impossible; by 1925 the old flag of the Monarchy had replaced the colors of the Republic. In 1929 the world crash came. Times grew desperate in Germany. The old enemies—even Poincare—were sympathetic. But sympathy did not lift the spiritual shackles of Versailles. The need for a traitor was more acute than ever.

National Socialism offered the German people the Jew. Had the Jew been in Doorn, or in Moscow, the hunt for the traitor would not have been over. But the Jew was right there in Germany—within a stone’s throw.

The Jew was the perfect choice for the role of a scapegoat in the Third Reich. He was an unorganized minority, numerically as unimportant to Germany as the Mormons to the United States. His disproportionate position in German life made him vulnerable ipso facto. He was militarily defenseless. And, what is most essential, he was already unpopular; Germany dates back to the massacres of the First Crusade as the spiritual home of anti-Semitism. Dr. Goebbels’ revival of “Aryanism” was the master stroke.

EXPLAIN OPPOSITION TO HISTADRUTH

The Commentator, official newspaper of the Yeshiva College students, carries the following editorial:

Our opposition to the Histadruth does not spring from our failure to appreciate the valuable work of that organization in the material development of Eretz Israel. It is occasioned, rather, by their callous indifference to and disrespect for the spiritual values of traditional Judaism, an indifference that has recently festered into a general, militant opposition to the introduction of any semblance of traditional Jewish observance in the Holy Land. When their policy becomes one of discrimination against religious Jews, such as is being practised in the distribution of immigration certificates, it becomes a menace to the future of Judaism. Hundreds and thousands of poverty-stricken, religious Jews in Eastern Europe, fully qualified as Chalutzim, await eagerly an opportunity to emigrate to Palestine. Nevertheless, the Palestine Bureau… turns a deaf ear to their heartrending appeals, issuing certificates, instead, on the basis of narrow, party divisions.

WOULD FORM LEAGUE TO PROTECT RELIGION

Charles Edward Russell, writing in the Pro-Palestine Herald, on “What Should Be Done to Help the Oppressed Jews in Europe,” says:

The first step toward the rescue of the German Jew is to induce the British government to relax its absurd and disingenuous quota limits, and that is a reform to be achieved only by Gentile efforts and influence.

There is one other thing that ought to be done and the doing of it started at once. In all the countries still immune from the reactionary wave that has innundated Germany and Austria, exist men and women whose sympathies are unlimited toward the oppressed. It would be feasible and most advantageous to unite these into a league for the preservation of religious liberty, and then to make such an organization effective in protest and protection. Once established, it should investigate and verify all cases of religious persecution, publish the facts to the world, protest against the offending State and bring it as a culprit to the pillory of the League of Nations.

Ivan Stanislavovich Blioch published in 1898 a book on war in the future in which he maintained that modern developments made war a calamity even for the most successful nation.

The Polish Jew Isidor Borowski served as a soldier under Bolivar and in Persia as a general in the 1830’s.