No champion appeared yesterday to protest the rights of the DAWA, Nazi anti-Jewish boycott group, to hold its projected demonstration in Madison Square Garden on Thursday night. It was learned however, that Mayor LaGuardia would draft some sort of a statement on the situation today. Attaches at the Mayor’s office reported late yesterday afternoon that the Mayor had under consideration protests against the Madison Square Garden affair, but they gave no inking as to the attitude of the Mayor.
In some circles it is expected that Mayor LaGuardia will take steps to ban the meeting, as did Mayor O’Brien last year when the Nazis had gained control of plans for the celebration of German Day. The Madison Square Garden demonstration is widely recognized as being of a more dangerous nature to Jewish interests than any affair executed in the history of the city.
Meanwhile Yorkville Jews continue to report the growing boycott of their concerns. It has been reported that a number of shops are facing ruin under the pressure of the Nazi boycott.
The boycott and its incidental “whispering campaign” have been extended to “Aryan” shopkeepers who refuse to join the DAWA or advertise in the Nazi weekly organ, the Deutsche Zeitung. Such is the terroristic methods employed by Yorkville Nazis that ruined merchants are fearful of being quoted with regard to their collapse in business. They do, however, speak readily on their misfortunes.
PLOT FOR A NOVEL
One German novelty shop, owned and operated by an Austrian and his German wife, both “Aryan,” has recently felt the effects of the DAWA boycott. The story, as he tells it, follows:
“Shortly after Hitler came into power, we had our first intimation of his power in America. Mr. Ludwig, a member of the firm of W. and N. Ludwig of Munich came into our store and told us that hereafter we were to buy our goods from him and travel in the company of Nazis. He forbade us to buy from a German Jew with whom we had been doing business for many years. We reminded him that we lived in America and therefore were no longer amenable to the laws of Hitler.
“At this Mr. Ludwig grew very angry. He said that he would report to the German Consulate any person who opposed New Germany. He told us that German Americans would soon cease to buy from all who did not stick by the Nazi government, and he asked us if we wanted to gain protection from being classified with the Jews and the enemies of the New Germany. Ludwig was born in the United States, but he told us, ‘We do not count as Americans.’ He disappeared when Heinz Spanknoebel, the Nazi leader, ran away from arrest.
“Since then we have been spied upon. We have caught a number of German citizens who work in America standing outside our door listening to our conversation. One of these is a German who was once our friend and who is now full of hatred toward us.
“Two men have come to us for advertising in Nazi papers. They told us that through these advertisements we would be able to keep our business. We refused, saying that we continued to deal in German goods as we always have but that in deference to our Jewish friends we could not support the Nazis in the United States. They then told us that a new order had come to America’s Germans, that hereafter Germans here would only buy from good Germans. They said that the Nazis will take care to see that this will be the case.
“For some time a number of people, solicitors and customers, entered our store to ask, first, if we were Jewish, then to ask if we were for Hitler. We tell them we are human beings who love all men. The solicitors have stopped coming, but every day women come to buy. They first ask if we advertise in the Deutsche Zeitung and if we belong to the DAWA. It taxes our wits to tell them why we do not, but regardless of what we say, they walk out without buying.
“We have been told by neighboring business concerns and by customers that ‘No Germans will come in your store any more.’
“We find men and women standing before our show window, and to all who come to look at our attractive display the remark, ‘That’s a lot of trash. One shouldn’t buy such terrible junk.’ Were it not for the fact that non-Germans like our products we should have had to close long ago. As it is, we are seriously considering selling our business.”
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.
