The Jewish New Year opened in Berlin with a pogrom, the worshippers coming out of the synagogues after the service last night finding themselves set upon by organised Hitlerist gangs.
The attack was carefully planned and arranged. Detachments of Hitlerist storm-troops had been posted in military formation at strategic points along the streets which the Jews would have to pass. Near the famous Romanische Cafe a megaphone had been erected which kept up a constant shout of “Death to the Jews” and the Hitlerist war-cry “Perish Judeal Germany awake”. Jews were knocked down and beaten with heavy cudgels. Some were stamped on as they lay by the heavy boots of the Hitlerists. In the Knesebeck Strasse (where the Joint Distribution Committee’s European offices are situated) an old Jewish couple were knocked down with cudgels and the man was beaten senseless. Blood was running in many of the streets. The Uhland Strasse, the Ranke Strasse, the Tauentzien Strasse and other streets through which Jews going home form the synagogue in the Nollendorff Place had to pass, looked like a battlefield, filled with stricken Jews, with battered and bleeding heads, pursued by triumphant Hitlerists shouting their war-cries.
Ex-Captain Dr. Leo Loewenstain, the President of the Federation of Jewish Front-fighters, the organisation of Jewish ex-soldiers who fought at the Front during the Great War, is among the wounded.
About 50 Hitlerists broke into the Reimann Cafe, where they found a number of Jewish customers and shot at them indiscriminately, creating a panic. They then smashed everything they could lay their hands on in the cafe. A large number of non-Jews who were in the cafe were also attacked.
The police were taken completely by surprise, and by the time it was possible for them to arrive in force on the scene of the disturbance, the damage had already been done. The police acted vigorously, however, when they did arrive, and about 50 Hitlerists were arrested.
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.
