Dr. Heinrich Rothmund, chief of the Police Division of the Federal Department of Justice, was today charged with being the originator of the discriminatory “J” which was stamped into the passports of all Jews by the Nazis in Germany. The charge is made in an article in the “Schweizarischer Boebachter, ” a liberal Swiss publication.
The Boebachter says that after the Austrian “Anschluss” by the Germans in 1938, Dr. Rothmund went to Berlin and proposed to the Nazi officials that the passports of Jews be stamped with “J” because he wanted to prevent large numbers of Jewish emigrants from seeking asylum in Switzerland. This practice, declares the publication, was the first step on the “road to the dire fate for many thousands of Jewish emigrants. ” The Boebachter emphasizes that its information is based on documents in the fifth volume of German foreign policy archives published jointly by the United States, Great Britain and France.
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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.
