Both high Nazi officials and leaders in Jewish circles are watching with interest today for the latest developments in the thinly disguised war between Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank and Julius Streicher, premier anti-Semite of Germany.
Dr. Schacht’s speech at the Eastern German Fair in Koenigsberg yesterday, in the course of which he vigorously condemned “illegal” aspects of the campaign against Jews, is being freely interpreted here as a direct answer to Streicher’s first public Berlin speech last week on the Jewish question.
In his address, Dr. Schacht scored “those people who during the night heroically smear window panes, who placard every German buying from a Jewish store as a traitor to the nation.”
The Minister of Economics warned that the Reich government must be permitted to direct all activities against Jews without interference from individuals. Unless those individuals who “act without discipline” desist, Dr. Schacht declared, “I shall make them responsible for it if the financial and economic completion of the task set up by the Fuehrer is made impossible.”
At the same time, Dr. Schacht was careful to indicate that he was interested only in seeing that Jews in commerce are left un-molested, and that he is in full accord with the government’s program against Jews in politics and cultural fields.
“Jews must reconcile themselves,” he emphasized, “to the fact that their influence among us is over, once and for all. We want to keep our people and our culture pure and our own, just as the Jews have put up this demand for their people since the Prophet Ezra. But the solution of these problems must take place under State leadership and cannot be left to unregulated individual action, which constitutes a grave disturbance of the national economy and therefore is constantly forbidden by the State and party organs.”
That Dr. Schacht’s warnings will again, as in the past, go unheeded is indicated by the fact that most Nazi organs censored his speech in its most vital parts.
At the same time anti-Jewish incidents indicating the determination of the Nazis to continue the campaign in all its aspects were reported from many parts of Germany.
One of the most significent of these incidents developed in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, site of the Winter Olympic games next February. Huge signs suddenly appeared yesterday at the gates of Kurgarten, center of the town, announcing that “Jews are not admitted.”
This is the first open manifestation of anti-Jewish activity at the Olympics site of the Winter games. Unless the government intervenes for the sake of appearances abroad, it means that Jewish sports lovers will not be permitted to attend the games. Following appearance of the signs, hotels in the section announced that they would neither serve Jews food nor give them shelter.
In Berlin, truckloads of Storm Troopers and Hitler youths toured through sections of the city where about 70,000 Jews are quartered shouting “Destruction to the Jews.”
An isolated exception appeaned to be a development at Hamburg, where Dr. Schacht’s influence seemed to be stronger than that of Streicher. There, District Governor Kaufmann, in a speech at the Town Hall declared that neither posters nor red paint will solve the Jewish problem. The solution, he stated, lies in “legislation replacing Jewish by German morality in all spheres of life.”
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.
