A plea that Jews the world over unite as a means of warding off persecution was sounded by Emil Ludwig, eminent German Jewish author, who arrived here yesterday on the S.S. Paris.
Mr. Ludwig will spend a few days in New York and in Chicago, where he will visit the World Fair, before proceeding to Beverly Hills, California. There he is to work on a scenario for the forthcoming cinema production of his biography, “Napoleon.”
Besieged by newspaper men to discuss the political situation in Germany, where his books have been publicly burned and where he himself has been ostracized, Mr. Ludwig declined to go into the subject, repeating with emphasis:
“I don’t know Hitler. I don’t want to know him. No, I will not talk about him.”
But in a statement which he had previously prepared for publication, the writer said in part:
“Hitler suits the German character as it has developed for sixty years far better than we do, who tried unsuccessfully for a decade to have western European ideas take root in Germany, but who at the most represented only a small minority.
“Now the Germans are, so to speak, at ease with themselves, as their present leaders proclaim. And Hitler has the right to assert that his ideals of race, blood and war-worship are indeed the German national ideals. The working class and the other European-minded Germans are defeated. The middle class, led by the barons of big industry, rules while the professors supply the music.”
The only hope which Herr Ludwig said he sees for the Jews in Germany, where he believes Jewish persecution is extremely popular, is in union.
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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.
