Writer Tells How Nazis Execute ‘white-gloved’ Pogrom on Jews

So far history has known only one type of pogrom—the physical. The procedure was simple: a gang of hooligans were infuriated. Given weapons, they invaded Jewish districts and slaughtered, robbed, destroyed, raped and “expressed their inner-nature’ ‘in similar ways- Such has been the procedure since time immemorial. The formula was simple and the execution rapid.

To Germany, however, belongs the honor of having invented a new kind of pogrom. The formula for this variety is even simpler than the previous, but the execution is not as rapid. However, what it loses in speed, it compensates for in effectiveness.

The type of pogrom here referred to is the spiritual kind. Open slaughtering does not take place, and robberies and acts of rowdyism are comparatively scarce, but a new style of massacre is employed, and a different kind of robbery is practiced—a kind becoming “gentlemen.”

WHITE-GLOVED POGROMS

After all, one cannot expect too much from a human-being, and even the “bravest” have their weakness. To expect an office boy or a news hawker to go out and express his inner nature with violent physical acts is a little too much. There is a limit to bravery—and civilization still progresses… The old kind of pogrom was good-enough for the “barbarous” muzhiks of Kishineff, but this is Germany, the land of Kultur, the country of Goethe and Kant, of Lessing (though he is out of favor at the moment) and Schiller. Here greater refinement is required. In the land of Kultur people do not have big hands like the Russian peasants, and their hands are not tainted by the soil. They wear white silk gloves. Therefore, pogroms must be made with white silk gloves. White-gloved pogroms!

The formula for the spiritual kind of pogrom is even simpler than for the physical species: under no occasion must you miss an opportunity to insult, to throw mud, to blacken the Jews. The “never” in the formula is important. In fact, on it hangs the success or failure of the whole effort. Never, not even once, forget to remind the reader that the Jew is something unspeakably detestable and intrinsically evil. In this case constancy is more than a virtue: it is a vital necessity.

SLOW DESTRUCTION

This kind of pogrom does not aim to destroy individual human beings with one single blow. That cannot be done on a very large scale, anyhow, and if it could be done it would antagonize foreign public opinion to a dangerous extent. It therefore aims to destroy people slowly, without attracting the notice of the world, for no single striking act occurs.

Everything is done so smoothly, so gradually, so unnoticeably—except, of course, by those who feel the rope slowly tightening around their necks—that the world does not get a glimpse of what is taking place. As for those who personally feel the rope—people with a rope around their neck do not talk: they fear it will tighten even faster if they do.

Above all, this method is more effective. Of the Kishineff species of pogrom we all know. The whole world heard of it — and was shocked. The air vibrated with strong protests, and the trans-Atlantic cables were much used to give vent to the indignation of millions of people. Yet, how many were butchered there? Not very many—and even those could be butchered because they lived in a concentrated area. To murder 600,000 people living over the length and breadth of a whole country, however, is impossible with this method. To avoid foreign intervention the whole bloody act would have to take place within one night—a task of super-human organization. A species of pogrom must therefore be found which would provide no target for foreign propaganda, and which would make outside intervention an impossibility. The spiritual kind of pogrom is thus superior to the traditional kind in every way and is highly recommended by Nazi pogrom experts.

HOW THE PRESS AIDS

Nothing can better clarify the mechanism and operation of this pogrom species than a few examples of newspaper treatment of Jewish affairs. Their extreme carefulness to poison the popular mind will then become evident, and their unceasing blood-letting will become clear. Malicious, poignant ridicule is the method; slow-murder is the ultimate result.

For only two short days we will follow three widely read and very influential papers and will thus obtain a glimpse of this systematic newspaper pogrom. Clippings from the days of July 7 to 9 come to my hand, and—though I could just as well select any other two days, for the material is inexhaustible—these we will study.

The first newspaper clipping that comes to my hand is from “Die Wahrheit” of July 7. Under the heading, “An Anecdote,” the paper tells a story taken from the Austrian Zionist monthly, Palestine. It is about a Jew who arrived in Palestine penniless and within a short time owned a completely rented large building. So much for the story. But the Wahrheit does not believe in art for art’s sake. Every story must have a moral. An exegesis must accompany the tale in which the moral, as the Wahrheit sees it, will be made clear to the gemuetlichen Friedrich who is probably too tired to interpret the story as the Wahrheit wants him to interpret it. This is the paper’s comment:

“Even if this story be merely designated as an ‘anecdote,’ still we all know that things of that sort—and not only in Palestine, but by us and in other countries — have occurred daily.”

THEIR INTERPRETATION

The wealth which Jews have accumulated is thus made to appear to have been gotten by shady methods, and the speed of the accumulation — this is directed against the much-advertised Polish Jews who arrived in Germany after the war and with almost nothing managed to establish themselves—the very speed of the accumulation speaks against them. Of course, what is wrong when a man succeeds in saving some money is difficult to say, but that the notice and comment will not serve as Semite-phile propaganda is obvious.

The widely-read Berlin weekly Kladderadatsch of the following day sarcastically tells of a conflict which occurred at a Berlin Zionist meeting. Taking the Bible sentence, “How Beautiful and Lovely,” as a sarcastic heading the paper concludes its notice:

“On the wall of the meeting-room was inscribed the Psalm sentence, ‘See how beautiful and lovely it is that brothers live amicably together'” (Paslms 133:21).

The Koblenz Nationalblatt reports another conflict among Jews under the heading “The Warring Maccabees:”

“No one should believe,” the notice begins, “that the progeny of the Maccabees has died out. Most of us know only our effeminated, assimilated Jews. But they are derided even by their racial brothers, who regard themselves as real Jews— when the assimilated type ceased to pass muster. The real Jews, the Zionists, proudly feel themselves today as the followers of the Maccabees. They feel themselves even today to be brave, these children of Zion, and in order to prove their heroism they institute fights among themselves here and there— which never end without flattened noses and swollen lips (Oi waih!).

While the Children of the Chosen People made terrible tumults at a Zionist Congress in Prague a year ago, we read today of a hearty meeting among the Jews in a synagogue in Siedlice, Poland, where they united to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the death of the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl.. Police had to intervene in order to pull apart the pugnacious caftan – wearers… Whether the Rabbi of the traditional Jews was very much edified by the behavior of his flock is unfortunately not given…”

SPREADS ‘HATE’ LIBEL

One of the chief tasks of the German press is to convince every Teuton that the Jew carries within his breast an ineffable hatred for everything not Jewish. Germans must be made to believe as firmly as religious zealot ever believed in his dogmas that any cultural activity which the Jew undertakes is intentionally planned to be destructive, and his influence, however expressed, is invariably venomous. No incident is allowed to pass without enforcing this dogma, and the most absurd bagatelles are exploited in a most ridiculous fashion to bring out this loss. I have at hand many quotations to illustrate this point, but since I have limited myself to use as illustrations articles which appeared within forty-eight hours, the following will do:

“Joy in the home of Dr. Metrisser…. (the story begins). “The dog of the Jewish-born wife of Dr. Metrisser of Nuerenberg with another dog, whose owner, the wife of Dr. Grolt, told the Jewess that Jewish women do not count for anything any more in the new Germany. For saying that the Jewess revenged herself and told the police that her neighbor’s dog was not led on a leash. The revenge was successful! The German police squeezed out of a real German woman eight and a half marks in punishment.

“To hurt the German woman, of course, gives much joy to the Jewess!”

It is useless to continue with such quotations. These I have taken from newspapers of two days, and every day brings a new crop of such vicious propaganda. But these few are sufficient to illustrate the constancy, the ceaseless, relentless, planned poisoning of the German mind against the Jew. These few quotations clearly reveal the new method employed in Nazi-land to destroy the Jews. There is no bloodshed, no violence, no loud calls for butcheries and mass-murder. In place of it has been substituted the slow, gradual, unseen, but constant and unceasing removal of the ground from beneath the feet of German Jewry.