R. D. B. Struck by Unflinching Loyalty of Refugee Jews to German Homeland

Famous British Editor and Cable Contributor to the Jewish Daily Bulletin

I am beginning to believe myself that perhaps the best policy for the Jews to adopt in the face of German oppression is to do nothing at all. The Nazis are working so hard towards causing their own destruction that it hardly requires assistance by their opponents to hasten the inevitable day. It is almost monotonous now to read, day by day, about the latest monkey tricks played by Hitler’s enthusiastic and glory-blinded dupes—monkey tricks meant to be acts of statesmanship but falling so far short of the ideas of statesmanship as understood by the rest of the world, that they can be viewed only as monkey tricks.

It is a virulent and devastating fever that has gripped a once sane people and, unfortunately, like all plagues, it has to run its course and in its progress unfortunately destroys everything that comes in its path. Here is a great nation that has run amok. What will be left of poor old Germany after these leaders have gone whence they came is a matter of sad conjecture.

During their “campaign” against the Jews, the Hitlerites scored some ###able victories. They are proud of ### that they painted a swastika in great splashes on a mountain side of the Austrian frontier. They may credit to themselves the suicides of some aged, highly respected professional men and women whose great and unforgivable crime was that they happened to be Jews, people of the same race as Jesus Christ and the twelve apostles. Perhaps the greatest achievement of Nazidom, which undoubtedly caused a thrill of pride to pass through the hearts of swastika-doped millions of Brownshirts, was the order of a Bavarian municipality forbidding local Jews to bathe in the river.

ASTONISHING LOYALTY

And yet we hear of the astonishing loyalty of German Jews to the land of their birth. It is a remarkable thing that nearly every one of the German refugees with whom I have spoken persists in making plain that he is first and foremost a German, that his love for his country is incontestible and that he does not desire to be a citizen of another country. What pleases him about the Palestine prospect is that it is so welcome a contrast against the memory of his terrorized homeland. But above all things, since his life has been spent in the land of his birth which is also the home of his fathers, he cannot reconcile himself to being considered anything but a German.

“I know it’s strange,” said one of these intelligent professional men, “but I can’t help it. The mere fact that the Nazis tell me I am a foreigner does not make me one. I believe in Zionism and all that, but I never thought in other terms than German. It is like saying a fish is a fowl. Saying so does not make the fish a fowl.”

That is a nice prospect. It will take a generation to hammer this German complex from the minds of these people. I cannot quite understand it either, for originally my own people came from Germany after living there for some hundreds of years. They were not driven out but I was never inculcated with a desire to be German above everything else. On the contrary, the only thing German about myself that I have ever been able to discover was the German name which I bear and which I bore throughout the war as a sort of defiance in spite of the fact I never had any German sympathies.

CONFIDENCE IN SIR ROBERT MOND

I am hopeful for useful things to come from the great October gathering of world Jewry which will coordinate the efforts to place Jewish policy on a sound and effective footing. I have the greatest confidence in Sir Robert Mond who will preside, not only because he is an eminent man, but because he is one of those rare eminent men who get things done. Further, I have great hope in the efforts of Rutenberg, the great engineer, who has been working quietly and unostentatiously but definitely in perfecting his great Palestine scheme. He has been in London for some time and I would like to see him bring out his plan for the development of Palestine at the earliest possible moment. Added to this plan I would like to see the backing of all world Jewry as part-owners, share-holders so to speak. There are some fourteen million Jews in the world. Of these, seven million, at least, could afford to give Rutenberg five dollars for a share in the Palestine development company.

Every Jew ought to be proud to be a share-holder in such a company and be happy to be able thus to assist in planting his unfortunate brethren in the land of the future. Thirty-five millions is a good deal of money, but not nearly enough. It would, however, help to make a grand start. It means only five dollars per head. There are thousands and thousands of sympathizers who could and would give more and thirty-five millions might in due course become three hundred and fifty millions. I want to see that.