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New Laws to Hit Jewish Retailers, Lawyers in Reich

October 29, 1935
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New legislation aimed at ousting Jews completely from the retail trades and reducing their numbers in the legal profession to less than one percent are now in the course of preparation and will soon be promulgated, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency learned today.

According to the Voelkischer Beobachter, official Nazi Party organ and property of Reichsfuehrer Hitler, the new legislation affecting Jewish traders will also force Jewish stockholders in industrial and commercial enterprises to sell out their holdings soon. There has already been a wave of security-selling by Jews in anticipation of just such laws.

The Beobachter states that competent agencies of the Nazi Party in the Government are now preparing the legislation which will forever oust Jews from Germany’s economic life through “well-planned, unified, well-regulated and legal measures in the spirit of the Nazi Party’s program.”

The measures in course of preparation, the Nazi daily writes, first will not permit Jews to open new retail stores. Secondly, those stores remaining in Jewish hands must be marked by special signs. Stores in this latter class, until they are “step by step forced into liquidation, will be placed under special regulations in order that ‘Aryan’ employes do not fall under Jewish influence.

A fourth and highly important feature of the legislation being prepared will force all stock corporations to abandon anonymity so that the Government may learn how many of the stockholders are Jewish and how much every Jew owns of the shares of German enterprises.

The Beobachter points out that the ousting of Jews from the nation’s economic life is the most essential political necessity of the day.

“The importance of having our national supplies in the hands of German traders,” the newspaper declares, “becomes fully appreciated only in a critical national period,”

Emphasis on these points by the Beobachter reveals the existence of a behind-the-scenes dispute over the extent to which Jews can or should be eliminated from commerce. The dispute, it appears, extends also to the methods by which such elimination is to be accomplished.

That anti-Jewish legislation even more drastic than that now in effect is being prepared to regulate the legal profession became known at a convention Saturday in Frankfurt-am-Main. Speaking before the Association of National Socialist Jurists, State Secretary Dr. Stuckart announced that the new laws would reduce the number of Jewish lawyers in Germany to less than one per cent of the number of “Aryan” lawyers.

Dr. Stuckart urged his hearers to be patient pending issuance of details of the Nuremberg laws. Saying that these would be announced in “due time,” he warned against special interpretation of the laws in the meantime. He insisted that no extra ordinary anti-Jewish measure be taken either locally or regionally before the details which will make the Nuremberg laws effective are announced All judges, Dr. Stuckart emphasized however, must be guided in their verdicts by Nazi principles, particularly the racial principle since it was through this that “we prevented Jews from being judges and notaries and it is also because of this that we are intending to restrict the number of Jewish lawyers and provide that they be allowed to represent the interest of Jewish clients alone.”

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