Nazi persecutions of Jews and the Nazi racial theory is condemned in a survey on “scapegoats in history” published here today by the Y.M.C.A.
The survey, issued in the form of a booklet entitled “They Got the Blame,” is to be distributed to religious, civic, cultural, educational, and labor organizations in America, with a view “of helping Americans counter divisive pressures in our democracy.” It shows that Hitler’s trick of making the Jew a scapegoat is not new and that dictators have always worked up unreasoning prejudice against innocent scapegoats to provide an outlet for the grievances of their people and to divert the blame from themselves. It relates how the Jews for more than 1,000 years have been the favorite scapegoats in various countries, and how the early Christians were martyred by Roman emperors who hoped to hide their own incompetence from the public.
The survey also deals with the agitation which American fascist groups are conducting against aliens. It proves that there is less crime among foreign-born than among natives, that the states having the greatest concentration of foreign-born actually rank highest in per capita income and lowest in illiteracy, and that refugees create more jobs than they take.
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.
