About 3,000 people attended the meeting in the Jewish cemetery at Cologne-Bocklemuend for the unveiling of a memorial by the Cologne branch of the Federation of Jewish Front Soldiers for Jewish soldiers who fell in the war. The memorial bears the words “Our Fallen,” and at the foot the inscription “Reichsbund Juedischer Frontsoldaten.”
Dr. Leo Loewenstein, president of the union, in the principal address at the meeting, described the purposes of his organization.
“The Union of Jewish Front Soldiers strives for honorable regulation and satisfaction in our relations to our German homeland and to our nation,” he declared. “To this aim, all the work of the union is devoted. It is done not only for our comrades, but for the coming generation, for special rights for those who fought in the war do not help us. We want to bequeath our rights and duties to our children and our grandchildren.”
Dr. Lowenstein spoke of the maladjustment of German Jewry in respect to their occupational division and the efforts made by the union to change this situation, especially by settlement of Jews on the land. “We want for our youth also,” he said, “the right to training in arms.
“They should not be excluded from the higher service to the Fatherland. For that reason we have submitted objections against the Aryan Paragraphs to the War Ministry in our capacity as front-fighters and to the President of the Reich, Field Marshal von Hindenburg.
RETURN POSSIBLE
“I know,” he said, “that to lead back our youth into German things is possible only gradually, but the road is possible. As soldiers, we are accustomed to obedience and loyalty. Our work must be conducted within the framework of the state. We are not striving to restore previous conditions. The race principle as the supreme maxim of the State seeking to prevent race admixture need be no obstacle, for we ourselves seek no such admixture. Certainly race separation should not be associated with race defamation. We can find our satisfaction also on race foundations in fully honorable form within the German homeland.
Referring to the difference between the organization and the Zionists, he said that the Union of Jewish Front Soldiers know no other interests except those that lie within the German frontiers. The veterans do not cast doubt on the ability of the Zionists to carry out their duties of citizenship, he said, “but we want no separate national minorities and we stand out against everything that seems to lead us out of the German nation. This hundred per cent acknowledgment of the German homeland does not exclude the possibility of cooperation with those of other views in practical work.”
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.
