An official investigation by the German government into the claims made by the Reich League of Jewish Front Soldiers that 12,000 Jews were killed while fighting for Germany has resulted in vindication for the league’s statistics. The investigation was demanded by the league itself when the figures contained in its memorial book to the war dead were contested.
Announcement of the findings of the investigation were made here by Dr. Leo Loewenstein, president, at a Chanukah service in the Prinzregentenstrasse Synagogue.
The inquiry, Dr. Loewenstein declared, established the fact that 90.2 per cent of 3,200 names selected at random by the authorities were without question Jewish war dead.
This result, the league’s president maintained, is an effective repudiation of the allegation that non-Jews were included in the list.
“This official announcement,” Dr. Loewenstein stated, “confirms in a sense the memorial statistics contained in our book. So far as the other 9.8 per cent are concerned the examination states that in six per cent of these cases sufficient evidence has not been obtained of the religion to which the war dead belonged.
“Since we, however, carefully examined every case on the basis of membership of the Jewish religious community, and the official investigation could not prove the contrary, we count ninety-seven per cent of all the names we listed as definitely belonging to the Jewish religion.
“The other three per cent will not enter into discussion about, because statistically it does not vitally affect the point at issue. The total of 12,000 of Jewish war dead contained in our list must be assumed to be definitely proved, when we take into consideration that our list was compiled ten years after the war, and the communities of the occupied areas were no longer to be reached.
“To go from the figures in the book to the spirit of the book, the spirit is that which animated the German Jews of the front, and it is the task now of the Reich League of Jewish Front Soldiers to hold fast to this soldierly spirit and to hand it down to the Jewish youth of Germany today.”
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.
