Stating that the only hope for the Jew in Germany was a revolution from the “bottom”, in other words a Bolshevik upheaval, Emil Ludwig, famous biographer, made what he said was his second appearance before a Jewish audience in this country, when as principal speaker, he addressed more than seven hundred men and women at the annual meeting of the Congregation B’nai B’rith.
“This is the second time that I am addressing a Jewish audience,” he said, “and I wonder sometimes whether I have the right to do so, because I was not brought up as a religious Jew.
“I am one of the lost sons who have returned to the family, and there are more and more of us lost children of Israel returning to the fold. But I am happy that I had the intuition and the courage to come back to Israel more than twelve years ago.
“If the audience will question why I do not speak so vehemently against Hitler and the Nazis, I must point out that I still have relatives in Germany, upon whom vengeance would surely fall if I did speak in such a manner.
“The position of the Jew in Germany is hopeless. I can see only one hope, and it is becoming slowly apparent that it may become a possibility, and that is that there will be a revolution from the bottom—a Bolshevik revolution in Germany.
“The Nazis had twenty-one points in their program. They could not fulfill twenty of these and so, with true Teutonic courage, they picked upon the twenty-first point, the weakest of them all, and attacked the Jews.”
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.
