Dr. Ernst Rechnitz, administrative director of the Breslau Jewish community and editor of the community newspaper, Breslau Gemeindeblatt, and Albert Rosenthal, author of an article which appeared in that paper on July 10, 1933, were free today after ten months’ imprisonment under the general amnesty announced by Chancellor Hitler.
The two men were convicted after several months in a concentration camp, because of an article, “Seeking My Brothers,” by Rosenthal, which Dr. Rechnitz had published in the community paper. The article was an appeal to German Jews to give employment to Jewish workers.
The prosecution claimed that publication of the article had impugned “Germany’s honor” in that it implied that the German government and German justice were derelict in their duty because they did not protect German Jews.
Dr. Rechnitz is a war veteran who had twice volunteered for dangerous duty and had once been seriously wounded during the World War. In a moving appeal in his own behalf before the Breslau special court which had sentenced him, he declared that his forefathers had lived in Upper Silesia for two hundred years and that he did not care for how long he was imprisoned so long as his honor was not violated.
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.
