German Jewish Situation is Worse Than Spanish Expulsion, Says Dr. Adler

Declaring that placing the swastika alongside the American flag was the basest kind of blasphemy, Dr. Cyrus Adler, head of the American Jewish Committee, who is here for a brief-rest, yesterday addressed a group of more than 100 representative members of the local Jewish community at a luncheon given in his honor. Dr. Adler’s statement was in connection with a photograph which appeared a few weeks ago in a local daily newspaper showing four young men wearing the Hitlerite emblem and standing beside an American flag.

The situation for the Jews today is more serious than in 1492, when they were expelled from Spain, Dr. Adler stated. “At least, in those days the Jew could be converted to Catholicism,” he pointed out. “They were given three months’ time within which to sell some of their belongings, and the rest of the world was open to them for colonization.”

Now the world is closed to the German victims of Hitlerism, he stated, and the worst part of this phase of persecution is that the Nazis are not courageous enough to adopt a plan of open massacre of the Jews in Germany. What the Nazi wants is not to kill the Jew but to degrade him, to oust leading physicians from their positions and to make them scrub the floors of the hospitals where they formerly were the chief medical authorities, he said.

COMMITTEE’S WORK

In discussing the work of the American Jewish Committee, Dr. Adler said that long before Hitler became chancellor of Germany the committee had already been communicating by telephone and cable with the leaders of the German Jews.

“World opinion so far has had but little effect on Germany’s attitude toward the Jew,” Dr. Adler stated. “The German Government has disregarded the opinion of official England. Mussolini has turned his back on the Nazi representatives. In America Hans Luther and Dr. Schacht have been told in no uncertain terms what this country thinks of the persecution of the Jew. And yet all of this pressure has done little to alleviate the lot of the Jew in Germany.

“It is up to us in America to help financially. Here in America we do not yet feel keenly the terrible plight of the German Jew. But England does, and with its handful of Jews has contributed more money than the four and a half million Jews in this country.”