Making good its threats of reprisals for the attempted assassination of a German embassy official in Paris by a young polish Jew yesterday, Nazi Germany today delivered a swift succession of blows at German Jewry.
While anti-Jewish excesses flared in Kassel, provincial capital of Hesse, and Vienna, the Nazi authorities banned all Jewish children from attendance at public schools and suspended all Jewish newspapers throughout the Reich and all branches of the Nazi-supervised Jewish Cultural League.
At the same time, today’s scheduled conference between Germany and Poland on the mass Polish-Jewish deportations was disrupted, the German representatives insisting that the attempted assassination had resulted in “a new situation” with regard to the Jewish position. It is understood that Polish Ambassador Jozef Lipski protested at an hour-long interview with state secretary Weizaecker, resulting in a further conference tomorrow.
It was feared that suspension of the press, which went into effect this morning, may become permanent. Fifty papers with a total circulation of 250,000 are affected by the ban. Today’s actions followed a police ban, announced last night, on all Jewish gatherings, except for worship, and covering athletic meets and adult education classes. Although it came shortly after news of the Paris shooting, the prohibition on meetings was understood to be in retaliation for a recent attack by Jews upon a group of German tourists in Antwerp.
(Havas News Agency reported from Berlin that thousands of excited Nazis staged a violent demonstration before the synagogue at Kassel, while other anti-Semitic demonstrations occurred at nearby Beora. Members of the Kassel mob were said to have entered the synagogue, smashing its furnishings, while cries against Jews came from the main body of the crowd.
(Havas also reported that the Berlin Chief of Police ordered Jews to surrender all arms in their possession. widespread raids were conducted by the police who reported, Havas said, seizing 702 firearms, 20,000 cartridges and 2,569 daggers and blackjacks. the only official explanation given was that these measures were made necessary because of “certain incidents.”)
Meanwhile, today’s German newspapers spoke unanimously against the “bloody deed” in Paris, warning of retribution not only against German Jews, but also against foreign Jews.
Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s Voelkischer Beobachter published on its first page an article by Wolfgang Diewerge, who covered the trials at Cairo and Berne involving the spurious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in which he declares: “It is quite clear that the German people will draw their own conclusions from this new incident. It is an impossible circumstance that within our borders hundreds of thousands of Jews still dominate many business streets, patronize places of amusement and take away money from German tenants as foreign landlords, while their racial comrades abroad demand war against Germany and shoot down German officials.
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.
