No Bartholomew’s Night for Jews Says Nazi Pastor Deputy During Debate on Motion: We Are Not Going to

One of the Nazi Deputies, Pastor Peperkorn, of Schleswig-Holstein, speaking during the all-night session of the Prussian Parliament in which the confiscation resolution was adopted, said that he wanted to explain what the Nazis mean by eliminating Jewish influence from German cultural life.

Wherever we look, he said, we see these appointed disruptors of the German people, the Jews, the Jews, and again the Jews. They are pursuing a definite aim with a very precise procedure. Their intention is to empty the soul and the spirit of the German people, and when the soul has been left empty, they will fill the spirit to the brim with poison. Once the soul of the German people is killed, the enemies of the German people can put their foot on its neck and enslave it economically.

We remain for all eternity antisemites, the Pastor cried amid an outburst of cheering from the Nazi Deputies.

But we are not planning a St. Bartholomew’s Night, he added.

In saying that, he went on, we want to make it clear that we are not going to organise pogrome against the Jews. If you want to know what a pogrom is, open the Book of Esther.

We National Socialists want to solve the Jewish question differently, he said. What we want to happen to this alien and hated Jewish people is that they should create a National Socialist movement in their own ranks. There must surely be some way of such a purifying movement arising inside this people, which will cleanse it of all those things which we regard with disgust and contempt, so that other aspects of the Jewish soul may be revealed. It must surely be possible that such a movement will place other leaders at their head.

We hope that they will be leaders who will make this people again into a great Jewish nation. Such a Jewish nation can rebuild itself somewhere in the world. Whether it finds a homeland in the Crimea or in Palestine is all one to us. But out of Germany, out of economic and out of cultural Germany, the Jews must go.

SOCIALIST SPOKESMAN REPLIES SETTING UP WALTER RATHENAU’S CONFESSION OF FAITH TO SHOW HOW JEWS FEEL THEMSELVES PART OF GERMAN PEOPLE AND SOIL

Madame Deputy Dr. Wegscheider, speaking for the Social Democratic Party, replied briefly to Deputy Pastor Peperkorn by quoting from Walter Rathenau’s confession of faith to show how German Jews feel themselves part of the German people and soil.

If you were able to reflect for one minute, she cried to the Nazis, about what your spokesman, Deputy Peperkorn, has just said about German Jewry, and what Rathenau has said in his confession, you would have to admit that a speech like that delivered by your Deputy destroys your right to existence. Have you National Socialists no longer any faith in the German people? The inner disruption of the German people of which you speak, would never threaten if you National Socialists did not convert the distress of our people into a means of political combat for your ends and those of the people who stand behind you.