Hitlerism, with its vicious persecution of Jews, is not alone a challenge to the decency, the justice and the common-sense of Europe and the world; it is no less a warning, a danger signal, of the potentialities of trouble inherent in a government which attains power on a program of hate and holds it through a campaign of terror.
Hitler and his psychologically abnormal aids, Goebbels and Goering, Rosenberg and Rust, Feder and Frick, built their strength by appealing to discontent and fiinding someone on whom to blame the ills of post-war Germany.
They blamed the trades unions for some of their economic ailments, they blamed the churches because preachers and priests spoke in behalf of peace, they blamed Marxists and Communists and members of other parties for pacifism and un-Germanism, they blamed chain stores and department stores for the troubles of small shopkeepers, and they blamed the Jews for everything. The Jews, said the Nazis, were responsible for the war. The Jews were responsible for Germany losing the war. The Jews were responsible for all Germany’s ills after the war—in politics, in economics, in culture. And so when the Nazis got power they began to put into execution policies as barbarous in their calculated cruelty as anything the superstitious Middle Ages could conceive.
And with all this—and herein is the danger to the world—the Nazis glorified war as “Germanic.” They proscribed Lutheran and Catholic churches which taught a religion of peace on earth, good will to men, so they could force these churches to “cooperate” with the State which was teaching another sort of religion—a religion in which was compounded the mythology of Thor and Wotan with love of war, vengefulness against France, Poland and the other signers of the Treaty of Versailles, and above all, hate for the Jews. They militarized their party, they took over trade unions, they usurped control over private business firms, and they deprived of an opportunity to earn their livings over 500,000 Jews who have given to Germany their leading scientists, artists, writers, teachers and business men, and 75,000 soldiers of whom 12,000 lost their lives on the battlefields of the World War.
Such is the government which rules Germany, a government of religious and racial fanatics, a government which controls the news published in all newspapers and controls all statements given over the radio. It prevents foreign papers which tell the truth of world opinion regarding the Nazi activities from being circulated, and in this manner deceive their own people.
It is a government which does not deserve to be trusted because of its savagery and irresponsibility to the opinions of civilized mankind.
TOWARDS UNITY IN ISRAEL
American Jewry, as represented in the three leading organizations of the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee and the B’nai Brith, has taken the first necessary step toward unity.
A working agreement has been temporarily reached on the one issue on which, in feeling at least, world Jewry is united—the plight of the Jews of Germany. The Jewish Daily Bulletin welcomes with joy a step which constitutes the longest stride yet taken in the direction of unity.
By the terms of the agreement just reached, the three organizations, working through a joint council on which each of them is equally represented, will consult on co-ordinating measures for the relief of German Jews. The organizations, however, are not bound to agree in advance and the representatives of each of the three groups to the coordinating council are free to withdraw in the event of dissent within the council.
May we not express the hope, in the name of world Jewry in general and German Jewry in particular, that no occasion for dissent will arise?
Congressman Samuel Dickstein, of the House Immigration Committee, in an article elsewhere in this issue of the Jewish Daily Bulletin, indicates the urgency of united action, by pointing out the probability that an appeal to the State Department for additional visas to Jews in Germany would have a better chance of being granted if it came from a united American Jewry. The urgency of this need was admitted in the first united action of the coordinating council: it sent a telegram to the State Department urging that such an increase be authorized. We hope that this appeal will meet with the result which it merits.
THE “WHITE BOOK”
The American Jewish Committee’s “white book,” which bears the title of “The Jews in Nazi Germany,” is a particularly admirable document. It is admirable because it contains in organized form facts and data heretofore scattered in many sources, not all of them equally accessible. It is admirable because the data it contains is the wheat of authentic fact gleaned from the chaff of rumor. It is admirable, lastly, because the facts it contains are so eloquent that they do not have to be eked out with expressions of indignation, or of any other emotion. The “white book” is freighted with the emotion carried in any document which hits home, with statement of fact, the all-embracing fact that injustice, organized and directed by vicious propaganda and vicious leadership, is being committed on a large scale. The facts in the case against German leadership today speak for themselves with an eloquence which does not require the support of emotional expression. The “white book” is the answer to brown injustice.
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.
