It was nine in the evening on the corner of Lexington avenue and Eighty-sixth street.
In fact, it was nine in the evening all over town.
A truckload of Nazis, hale and hearty after their day in the country, came tearing down Lexington avenue. Fine girls and boys, all of them, and for the most part excellent singers as they gave voice to the Horst Wessel Lied, that charming anthem which sets so many feet to goose stepping in many parts of the globe.
Red lights flashed on as the truck came to the corner. Quite obligingly, the Nazi vehicle drew up to a sudden halt.
From one corner of the truck there piped the voice of a stalwart brownshirt, “Hier, mein Herr, a paper please.”
With a gallant sweep of the trusty right arm grown muscular in performing the Hitler salute, he tossed the news vendor two coppers and received, as was his just due, a brand new copy of one of the early morning editions. He gazed at the headlines, read them aloud:
“MILLIONS VOTE NO IN NAZI ELECTION”
“Gott In Himmel,” the unfortunate man uttered. Then he swooned.
It seems to us there must have been a lot of swooning throughout the many countries in which Nazis abide. The swoon center, of course, was Germany itself. Nobody could have realized that almost five million fearless souls had survived Hitler’s year-and-a-half in office.
No doubt the five million stalwarts in the fatherland must have gone to the polls fearfully. We won’t attempt to describe the caution with which stormtroopers must have guarded the polling places, because we weren’t on hand to see for ourselves the espionage in this particular incident. But knowing as we do the manner in which the watchful warriors guard every written and spoken opinion in the homeland, we are convinced that there must have been a lot of peeking from behind the election booth curtains.
To these five million should go the thanks of the entire German posterity. They have given evidence that there remains in the regimented country a shred of reason.
It is our private opinion that long after the name of Hitler has been forgotten the spirit of the five million will be reflected from the pages of German history as the single bright light over a murky period of repression and persecution such as the civilized world has never known.
And whether they come from the ghettoes and ditches or the salons and tea rooms we shall always choose to consider the five million the real “four hundred” of a fast-decaying Germany.
—P.M.
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.
