The suffering of German Jewry, caught in the vise of the nazi anti-Jewish program, has grown worse lately owing to the increasing intensity with which its captors are turning the screw, according to a survey of the situation by a J.T.A. Special correspondent.
There have been no new laws and regulations affecting the Jews of the Reich during the last three months. Nor have there been any spectacular anti-Jewish activities, for the anti-Jewish work has gone under cover, unreported in the press and conducted under guise of the legal forms provided by the anti-Jewish legislation enacted in the past.
What has been and is happening in Germany today is the intensified application of every anti-Jewish measure provided by nazi legislation and decree to a point unequalled in the previous history of the regime and to an extent permitting no single Jew to escape. What is happening to the Jews in Germany today effectively disposes of any belief that the Nazis, after realizing the major part of their policy with regard to the Jews, would permit some stabilization of the Jewish question.
It is significant to note that the loudest demands for action on the Jewish question are being voiced by the Schwarze Korps, the mouthpiece of the S.S. guards and the secret police; for it is the secret police who are chiefly responsible for the increased pressure felt by the Jews today.
One of the chief goals has been the isolation of German Jewry by depriving it of contacts with the non-Jewish world in Germany and with the Jews abroad. German Jews, with some exceptions, are no longer given passports, unless to emigrate. Those receiving passports, find them valid for only six months.
German-Jewish organizations are not permitted to receive visits from representatives of foreign Jewish organizations without permission of the Gestapo. German-Jewish newspapers may not even accept subscriptions from non-Jews without special permission from the authorities in each case. An increasing interest in the activities of Jewish organizations, particularly those engaged in emigration work, is being shown by the police, who do not hesitate to attempt to dictate policies.
PLIGHT OF 30,000 STATELESS JEWS HOPELESS
Lately, the estimated 30,000 "stateless" Jews in the Reich have been receiving the attention of the police. The usual procedure is to notify the stateless Jew that his labor permit has been cancelled and that his residential permit has also expired and he must leave the country within fourteen days.
As no European country today admits stateless persons, the stateless Jew has, in most cases, only two alternatives — the concentration camp in Germany for failure to obey the deportation order, or jail in a neighboring country for entering it illegally.
The German-Jewish emigration organizations are able to do little in these cases. Emigration possibilities today are very slight and exist only for qualified individuals. The organizations in Berlin are now receiving as many as 200 requests a day for advice and assistance in emigration work.
It is in the industrial and commercial fields that the Nazis are meeting with their greatest success and are securing the "Aryanization" of one firm after another. These activities are now being concentrated in the textile fields with the large Jewish-owned houses as the principal targets.
The Jews are being rapidly forced out of industry by the withholding of raw materials (or foreign exchange to purchase them), and from trade by the refusal to supply finished products to Jewish agents and retailers. A vigorous campaign is being conducted among dealers not to buy from Jewish manufacturers. Anti-Jewish propaganda activities are especially noticeable in the export branches of industry.
HELPLESS AGAINST POLICE PRESSURE
The Jews have been able to hold out against these tactics to a certain extent, not only in the textile but in other industrial and commercial fields, but they are helpless to oppose police pressure to sell out and emigrate. This police pressure, now being applied to an increasing degree, is having a marked effect in liquidating the Jewish position.
Today there is only one large department store left in Berlin in Jewish hands. It is rumored that it will be pulled down for municipal purposes early this year. A Jewish owner of a large shop in Berlin was ordered to install separate cloak rooms for his "Aryan" and Jewish employes. He himself cannot take any action against nazi employees in his own shipping department who wrap leaflets urging the boycott of Jews with purchases made in his own shop.
In general, the policy is to make things as difficult as possible for the Jewish manufacturer or merchant until — in the words of a nazi official to a Jewish businessman — he realizes that "there is no future for the Jew in Germany." There is no great reluctance to use persuasive methods to bring about this understanding, particularly in the provinces, with the result that the Jewish businessman takes the best offer he can get and clears out.
One result of this has been a further weakening of the Jewish communal structure, the financial basis of which weakens steadily as increasing numbers of members of the Jewish community become financially unproductive and unable to maintain their share of the communal burdens. What these are may be seen from the fact that one in five of the Jewish population in the cities is dependent on the community while in the smaller towns the proportion is larger.
MIDDLE-AGED NOW SEEK TO EMIGRATE
Another result has been the development of a new emigration problem. A large class of middle-aged people, with a small amount of capital, is now seeking to emigrate. Most of them have no vocational experience except. Commercial activities and are of an age where they cannot easily master new vocations or languages. The great majority of them are also beyond the age which countries of immigration consider suitable.
Existence of this class, which continues to grow daily, provides another contradiction to the Nazi dictum: "Young Jews, overseas; old Jews, Weissensee (the Jewish cemetery)."
Jewish emigration from the Reich now proceeds by the estimated average of about 1,500 a month under steadily mounting difficulties. The German Jews considered from the viewpoint of age and training as most suitable for immigration, have already gone from the Reich and it becomes increasingly difficult to place those remaining. The number of German Jewish girls emigrating has not been in proportion to men and efforts are now being made to further the emigration of young women.
In spite of the fact that women emigrants find it easier to get employment abroad than men, there has been some reluctance on the part of the Jewish girls to emigrate, chiefly because they prefer to remain with their families as long as it is economically possible for the families to remain together. Once they leave Germany, they know that they may return to the country only under special circumstances and with special permission of the police. In many cases, emigration means separation for life and this they naturally prefer to delay as long as possible.
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.
