Jewish Writers Appeal to Non-jewish Colleagues to Protest Against Nazi Massacres of Jews

An appeal to all writers’ organizations in the democratic countries to join in the protest against the Nazi massacres of civilian Jews in occupied European countries, was issued here today jointly by the Jewish Writers Club, which is the professional organization of about 150 Jewish writers and journalists, and by the Jewish Pen Club, the organization of Jewish poets, essayists and novelists.

“All the nations suffer and groan under the yoke of the Nazi aggressor,” the appeal says. “The martyrdom and tears of all the peoples fill our hearts with anguish and bid us gather all our strength and energy to aid the democratic peoples of the world in the sacred war against German and Japanese Nazism. But there are gradations even in suffering and martyrdom. In his diabolical greed to rule the world, Hitler has placed first upon his timetable, the complete annihilation of the Jewish people. From the first day of his coming to power he has proceeded to do just this, systematically, cynically, in cold blood. He turned the largest Jewish communities into ghettos and concentration camps, surrounded by high walls and barbed wire. He tramples upon the human dignity of the Jewish person by forcing him to wear a yellow badge. He tortures the Jewish communities with starvation, poisoning, and every unholy means at his disposal.

“Hitler’s aim is to extirpate the Jewish people – and he is doing it. It seems to us that it is the plain human duty of everyone to do all in his power to halt the hand of the Nazi hangman. It is, particularly, the duty of the intellectuals and the writers of the Anti-Nazi Nations. Let them make heard their sense of horror, their protest against the inhuman aims of the Nazis, against their expressed objective to murder outright the whole of the Jewish people.”