Two announcements made today provide the keynote for what is occurring in Germany, as far as the Jews are concerned. The first is an official statement by the Government to the effect that the boycott will not be resumed tomorrow. The second was issued by the Nazi Party and confirms what was already known though it was not expected that it would be cried from the housetops, that the exclusion of Jews from professions has nothing to do with the boycott and it is therefore left unaffected by the raising of the ban on Jewish businesses.
The boycott of Jewish professional men, academicians and teachers is estimated to affect between 10,000 and 15,000 Jews, most of them heads of families, and is therefore a problem of no lesser gravity than the more spectacular and dramatic boycott of last Saturday.
Thus, in the case of Jewish physicians their dependence on the Health Insurance Service as a means of livelihood has made them very easy prey. Already there has been public notification of a projected inquiry into the affairs of this Service, which is as good as notice of dismissal of Jewish doctors, a fact which has, indeed, already been announced in the Nazi press. Nor, in the present temper, do the Nazi forces wait for official authorization of such dismissals. In the case of doctors, particularly, scores of Jews have already been ejected from public institutions and the various municipal welfare systems.
In the schools and colleges, the expulsion of Jewish teachers continues unabated, and there is in progress a veritable Jew-hunt in which the Nazis are busily engaged in tracking down every suspected convert.
The case of Jewish lawyers is especially deplorable. By blockading the courts and excluding them from practice as prosecuting attorneys, the regime has made certain that Jewish lawyers will be effectually deprived of their means of livelihood. At Munich the exclusion of Jewish lawyers was made the occasion of a special ceremony. With bands playing and Nazi colors flying, and in the presence of the mayor and high officials, the Bavarian Minister of Justice Frank proclaimed: “I command that no Jewish judge or lawyer shall enter the law courts again.” In other places a numerus clausus has been imposed limiting the number of practising Jewish lawyers to an insignificant proportion tantamount to total exclusion.
Nor is there any cessation in the drive against Jewish musicians, artists and actors. Throughout Germany, Jews are being weeded out of municipal orchestras, art schools and theatrical companies. The word has gone forth that Aryan art must be cleansed of Semitic influence and restored to its pristine glory. Although Reinhardt’s international reputation has served to focus particular attention on his expulsion from the “Deutsches Theatre,” there have been literally hundreds of similar expulsions in all parts of Germany. In the Berlin State Opera alone discrimination has resulted in the expulsion of a half a dozen of men and women of renown, including such figures as Frieda Lider and Alexander Kipnis.
Alarmed at the threatened complete pauperization of German Jewry, the Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith has during the past few days opened a special bureau to deal with cases of victimization and anti-Jewish discrimination, though it is difficult to see how they can cope with a problem of such magnitude and with a state of affairs that has the avowed approval of the dominant factor in the present regime.
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.
