Confiscation of Jewish business properties under the pretext of “corruption” is becoming a daily event here. The Voelkische Beobachter, Nazi government organ, reports today that the Nazi party has “taken over” the Jewish firm of Adolf Somerfeld, which has been in business here for many years and employed twelve hundred. Somerfeld was compelled to flee to Switzerland.
In addition to the use of terroristic methods in supplanting Jewish firms, the head of the economic department of the Nazi party is now planning similar tactics against small traders in the provinces.
It is reliably learned that within a week orders will be promulgated prohibiting Jews from engaging in the cattle trade and imposing special taxes on Jews exporting hops to America to be used in the brewing of beer.
The order prohibiting Jews from engaging in the cattle trade will be based on the pretext that Jewish dealers are deceiving and underpaying German peasants. It will affect hundreds of Jewish cattle-dealers whose families have engaged in the trade for generations.
TOOK ADVANTAGE OF PEASANTS
The argument for the tax on hops exporters is that the Jews, in contracting for the crops last September, took advantage of the farmers and paid them low prices for their crops, in advance, with the knowledge that beer would be legalized in the United States, thus causing a rise in prices.
The Nazi expert appointed to investigate this Jewish “betrayal” in the hops market, reported that Jewish exporters had contracted for 2,000,000 centners (about a hundred pounds each) of hops at an average price of a hundred marks and had resold them in America at double this price.
“It is the duty of the Government,” his report asserted, “to impose a special tax against the Jews who have not worked themselves but have exploited the German peasantry for enormous profits.”
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.
