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Job Discrimination Against Jews Mounts in U.S. Since Hitler’s Rise

December 28, 1938
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Prejudice against Jews in employment in the United States, reaching a high never before attained and showing a marked advance since the advent of Nazism, reported by the American Jewish Congress. A report on Jewish non-employment based on a year’s investigation with particular reference to the Metropolitan area of New York, prepared by Rabbi J.X. Cohen, Chairman of the Congress’s Commission on Economic Problems — entitled “Towards Fair Play for Jewish Workers” — declares that since the advent of Nazism the frequency of discriminatory specifications has grown progressively higher, until in 1937-1938, these frequencies have reached heights far in excess of the preceding years.

This finding, says the report, was substantiated through data obtained by a survey of the leading employment agencies in New York City. About half of the 90 major agencies interviewed stated definitely that “discrimination is on the increase.” They sense a marked Tendency to make Jews marginal workers, that is, to be the very last hired and the very first fired when entering the period of economic decline.

In the technological field, the report says, “upon inquiry of a large list of American universities and college scientific schools, it was elicited that they have found more and more doors and many important industrial firms being closed to their technical graduates who are Jewish. The daily broadsides of columns of advertisements marked “Christian,” “Christian firm,” “Anglo-Saxon” and similar limitations “deliver a steady flow of serious anti-Jewish propaganda penetrating millions of American homes,” says the report.

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