Jews at Leipzig Fair Considered a Bitter Jest As Repressions Continue

The announcement that Jews will be permitted to participate in the Leipzig Fair is considered as a bitter joke in view of the increased use of terroristic measures against Jewish merchants. Not a single day passes without publication in the Nazi provincial press of the most violent personal attacks against local Jewish merchants.

In many cases, the names and addresses of these unfortunate people are used and the tacit understanding conveyed by the newspaper stories is that no one need fear punishment for attacks on these people. Thus, their lives are sharply endangered.

BOYCOTT AND INTIMIDATION

All this is in addition to the open boycott and picketing of Jewish shops and the intimidation of prospective customers, and the levying of special taxes on the Jewish merchants aimed—and succeeding in—bankrupting them.

At Leipzig, German Jews, who according to a recent announcement by the Fair management, would be permitted to exhibit their wares, do not dare to do so, particularly after announcements that the Berlin fashion show and the soap-makers’ exhibit would be barred to them.

Foreign circles in Berlin are wryly amused at the invitation broadcast from Leipzig to the Jews abroad. They see this as an avowal of the organizers’ belief that the Fair is doomed to failure. The appeal to the Jews, it is felt, will not prove successful since most Jews abroad do not feel it safe to visit Germany, particularly after the reports of the severe beating administered to Phillip Zuckerman, New York fur dealer, who was assaulted and badly injured by uniformed storm-troopers despite the fact that he informed them he was an American citizen.