The streets of Yorkville have recently been coated with a thick layer of molasses richly sprinkled with sugar, according to a number of merchants operating inside the limits of the Nazi citadel.
The vinegar with which the pavements and doorsteps were heretofore dampened daily has been washed down the gutters and into the sewers, leaving only a faint but pungent aroma behind.
The Nazis have found a new way to catch flies.
One merchant who has been badgered daily by DAWA solicitors and ad takers for the Deutsche Zeitung reported yesterday that never since the early days of his refusal to pay tribute to the American Nazi movement has there been so much heel-clicking inside his door and bowing and scraping at the threshold.
“For three full weeks,” he narrated yesterday, “the Nazis had let me severely alone. Some, who were my friends before they donned the stormtroop uniforms, were kind enough to turn away when they passed me on the street. They stopped giving me the icey stares and merely pretended as though they hadn’t seen me.
“Then, all of a sudden, three days ago they began shaking hands with me, patting me on the shoulder, and calling me endearing names. I was surprised, of course, and when the first one stopped me on the street to ask how I was I replied,
” ‘I’m the same as ever—you can’t sell me any Hitlerism today.’
“Then others began coming back, telling me what a fine fellow I was. I learned that they were doing the same with all my Aryan neighbors. For a couple of days there wasn’t the barest suggestion of their trying to sell us ads in the Deutsche Zeitung or memberships in the DAWA.
“But today one of them came in, very friendly like, and told me it was my duty to pay out five dollars to the DAWA. He had no sooner left—without the money—than another came in to tell me that my business needed an ad in the Deutsche Zeitung.
“They did the same to all my neighbors, and from what I hear some of them, a very small percentage, jumped right into the molasses.”
It is understood that the Nazis have been instructed in chivalry, which they are to apply to Yorkville until they have assured themselves that all those amenable to heel-clicking have come into the brown battalions.
Then, it s expected, they’ll return to their roles of hardy souls that don’t care a rap about this nonsense of being neighborly.
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.
