Refutation in open court of the vile lies broadcast by the anti-Semitic Der Stuermer of Julius Streicher, Nazi overlord of Franconia, is looked for when a libel suit brought by Streicher against the editor and publisher of the newspaper Gerechtigkeit (Justice) goes to trial.
The suit was provoked by an article Gerechtigkeit carried which asserted that Der Stuermer infringed the criminal law, published the meanest calumnies, sought to incite to disorder and printed villainous caricatures.
ACTION DEMANDED
The article demanded that the public prosecutor take action.
Angry, Streicher instituted a libel action against the writer of the article, Irene Harand, who is also the publisher of Gerechtigkeit, and Franz Weniger, the editor.
A few days ago, through their counsel, the defendants submitted their brief, a document of 127 pages.
The first matter dealt with in the brief is the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” declared genuine by Der Stuermer.
The charge of Streicher’s publication that the Jews are cowards and lacking in honor is taken up in thirty pages, in which the outstanding events in Jewish history are related in order to prove this charge false.
The defendants ask that Henry Ford appear at the trial to testify as to his withdrawal of “The International Jew,” of which Der Stuermer makes use.
12,000 DIED IN ACTION
Answering Streicher’s statement that the war was the work of Jews, the brief lists all statesmen who were in power when the first shot was fired. Not a Jew is among them.
The defendants point out also that, despite Der Stuermer’s claim that the German Jews were “slackers,” 96,000 Jews enlisted, 12,000 were killed in action, and 35,000 were decorated.
The contention that the Jews are “aliens” is answered by quotation of historians to the effect that Jews lived on the banks of the Rhine before the Teutons.
Experts’ statements are offered also to prove that the deduction that the Jews are racially inferior to the Nordics clashes with the facts.
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.
