Berlin Jewish Community Seeks Release of Doctors; Hospital May Have to Close

A memorandum asking for the release of Professor Erich Seligmann and Professor Straus was submitted yesterday by the Jewish community to the Nazi political police, pointing out that the arrest of these two physicians may lead to the closing down of the Jewish Hospital, since all the head doctors are in prison at present and only the minor doctors remain to attend the sick.

Professor Seligmana, who was formerly head of the Health Office and German representative to the Geneva Congress on Hygiene, and Professor Straus, who was head of the Jewish Hospital here, were arrested last week after Nazis raided the consulting office established by the Jewish community to aid ousted Jewish doctors.

Dr. Paul Rosenstein, the only professor at the Jewish Hospital who was not arrested in the raid or subsequently, had continued his work there almost single-handed, but yesterday he disappeared. It is believed that he escaped abroad, fearing imprisonment. Today, therefore, the work at the Jewish Hospital is completely dislocated, with only internes remaining to attend the helpless invalids, ranging in age from children to octogenarians, who are confined there.

A new turn for the worse in connection with the mass arrests of Jewish doctors came yesterday, when the Nazi political police sealed the offices of the advisory bureau, which they had hitherto permitted to remain open even after last Friday’s raid there. The police now have confiscated all incoming mail, consisting of several hundred letters.

It is believed that the Nazi doctors, who planned and carried out the raid, are trying to prove to Herman Wilhelm Goering, Prussian premier, that their denunciation of the Jewish physicians was not due to personal but to political motives. They are doing their utmost at present to complicate the situation for the Jewish doctors and vindicate themselves as acting in the state’s interest.