Campaign to Restore Hitler’s Ban on Shechitah Grows in Germany

Even though only a few thousand Jews in all of Germany purchase kosher meat, agitation that calls for a revival of Hitler’s prohibition of kosher slaughtering has grown to disturbing dimensions in recent weeks.

The current issue of one of Germany’s largest news magazines, which exerts great influence on public life, devotes five columns to the “problem,” quoting copiously from an inflammatory two-page illustrated spread that appeared in a butchers’ trade magazine last January.

Concerted and organized demands for the outlawing of kosher slaughtering are being received by the Bonn Ministry of Food and Agriculture. Most astounding is a petition of Dr. Walter Kolb, who signs it not only as head of the German Animal Protection League but also as Lord Mayor of Frankfurt. “I consider,” says his communication, “the reserve with regard to Shechitah heretofore shown by the German Animal Protection League no longer appropriate, and request that you take steps which will bring about a cancellation of the Military Government decree.”

The decree referred to was instituted by the Allies in 1946, so as to permit the killing of fowl and cattle according to Jewish ritual. If it were now rescinded, the Nazi anti-Shechitah law of April 1933 would, in the view of certain German experts, be automatically reinstated. This contention is based on the argument that the Nazi law was a humane and not an anti-Jewish measure.

The Conference of German Rabbis holds that the repeal of all Nazi legislation applies with particular force to Hitler’s first anti-Jewish law, namely that prohibiting Shechitah. Also, and aside from the untenability of the allegations against it, the Jewish mode of slaughtering is protected by virtue of the Constitutional safeguards against religious discrimination. The rabbis also point to the impropriety and incongruity of Germans usurping the right to brand as inhumane a Jewish religious law, in the name of a law signed and promulgated by Adolf Hitler.