“Non-Aryan” firms, and especially their employees, will enjoy a lesser degree of legal protection than the employees of “Aryan” firms, if the decision of the German Labor Front, exempting “non – Aryan” firms from the wage scale, is elevated into a principle, the Frankfurter Zeitung reported editorially, basing its discussion on issue No. 21 of the Deutsche Volkswirtschaft, (German Economic Life), which dealt with this decision.
“We can agree with the Deutsche Volkswirtschaft, the Frankfurter Zeitung proceeds, “in so far as it says that the results must be catastrophic, if the conception of the Berlin Labor Court is carried into practice.
“The Deutsche Volkswirtschaft takes the view that the decision is legally too untenable, and it produces sound reasons for its belief. It points out that the decision is based in reality on the idea of the old collective agreements whose validity depends on membership of one of the parties to the agreement. Against this, there is the law for the regulation of National Labor, which in principle rejects collective rights in that sense, by setting up in place of wage agreements an authoritative order by the Leader, which does not depend for its validity on membership of any organization.
OBJECTIONS ARE SOUND
According to the Berlin decision, says the Deutsche Volkswirtschaft, “all those ‘Aryan’ firms who on April 30, 1034, did not yet belong to the German Labor Front, must also remain outside the wage arrangement.
“It is for similar reasons, we understand, that the National Socialist Economic Service has come out against the decision, which it declares to be legally untenable.
“All these objections appear to be thoroughly sound, in the sense of the new Labor Law, and we must add that the ‘non-Aryan’ firms themselves must be vitally interested in not accepting such conceptions with regard to Labor rights. However much the ‘non-Aryan’ head of a business may desire to be free t# pursue his economic activity and to be placed on equality with other enterprises, he will not wish by reason of legal vagueness, particularly in relation to his employees, to be exempt from duties which all others have to bear.
PROPOSITION IS VAGUE
“That there is a certain amount of vagueness in this matter, and that it was not easy for the Labor Court to arrive at a decision which will be in accord with the new Labor Law, is fairly easy to understand. The old {SPAN}wa#e{/SPAN} agreements applied only to those who were parties to the agreements. If it is now assumed, as Deutsche Volkswirtschaft does, that the extension of these agreements must be effected under new legal forms of the wage ordinance, it remains doubtful whether mere further extension, accomplished to a certain extent automatically, has changed the field of validity, if no special ordinances are issued bearing upon this particular point. That clearly does not appear to have been done, and there, it seems, lies the reason for this unique decision of the Labor Court.
“However that may be, this and other difficulties seem to arise from one common source, which is the fact that the process of placing ‘Aryans’ and ‘non-Aryans’ on a plane of equality in economic life encounters many hindrances and obstacles.
The exclusion in principle of all ‘non-Aryans’ from the German Labor Front has brought about several quite unexpected consequences arising out of this decision. It is hardly necessary to point out that it may be found to be oppressive and full of material consequences for the ‘non-Aryans’ themselves, too. Things are so placed that the German Labor Front has made it its aim to organize within its ranks all of German race who are economically active, and the social and economic protection which proceeds from such membership is in no way to be regarded as slight.
SEES BUSINESS HURT
“Of those economically active in Germany, only the group of ‘non-Aryans’ is in principle barred from membership. But how can these outsiders be placed on a level of equality with the rest in economic life without establishing some body to which they can be admitted? This is only one instance, and perhaps not even of these problems which call for a new authoritative order.
“But it is repeatedly emphasized that the frontiers of ‘Aryan’ legislation have been laid down by the Reich government itself, the Reich Supreme Court only recently based itself on that well-known circular of the Reich Minister of the Interior, which warned against the extension of the ‘Aryan’ legislation to fields where it was not intended to apply, and no less consideration must be given at this time of day to the text of the laws than to the divergencies which have been created in practical life.
“The ‘non-Aryan’ business firms pursue undeniably now the same object as the ‘Aryan’ firms, to contribute to the development of economic life and to combat unemployment.
CONFLICTS WITH ORDERS
“In order to produce, in order to be able to provide employment for workers, agents, clerks, assistants, etc., they must sell. Where will it lead to if local bodies keep on issuing new appeals and proclamations to {SPAN}al#{/SPAN} who are of ‘Aryan’ origin that they must shun Jewish firms and Jewish businesses? The methods used range from the publication of long ‘Jew lists,’ registers of all the ‘non-Aryan’ firms in the area, with no accompanying remarks, to threats to make public the names of all who buy from Jews, or arrange purchases to be made from Jews. A big conference has only now resolved that whoever buys from a Jew, or consults a Jewish doctor or Jewish lawyer, besmirches German honor.
“Apart from the fact that the consequences of such an attitude can hardly be favorable to German economic life, the problem still remains that the ‘non-Aryans’ in Germany, even according to the will of the Reich government, are not to be annihilated, but are, like all other people, to be allowed to live and to work.
“It seems that this idea is in certain localities not accepted. Now that the German ‘non-Aryans’ have been excluded from all the professions which the State regards as of specific importance for the political and ideological life of the country, the time must at last come when the ‘non-Aryans’ are guaranteed a field of activity in which they will not be represented to the minds of the people as ‘enemies.’
‘LIVE AND LET LIVE’
This, too, should be in accordance with the will of the Reich government, for it is not to be contemplated that it was thinking only of ‘legal’ permission, and not of practical opportunities, when it arranged for a certain number of ‘non-Aryan’ doctors and lawyers to be exempted, and when it prohibited by means of the circulars issued by the Reich Minister of the Interior, Dr. Frick, any extension of the ‘Aryan’ legislation to free economic life.
“People will also recollect,” the Frankfurter Zeitung concludes, “that not long ago, on the occasion of the Spring offensive of German partisanship, industry and retail trade, all anti-Jewish boycott propaganda was expressly prohibited. Exactly the same feelings and the same difficulties arise here and there over and over again. These tendencies can be countered only by an authoritative fixing of the boundaries, a fixing of the boundaries which will definitely bring the needs of practical life into accord with the limitations of the ‘Aryan’ legislation.”
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.
