The announcement made by R. H. Macy and Company to the effect that instructions had been cabled to close its Berlin offices cannot fall to produce a favorable impression upon all who abhor the Hitler regime of bigotry and persecution. The explanation given for this move is that “consumer resistance to goods of German origin is responsible for the closing of the Berlin office” and that “the successful search for merchandise which would not meet with consumer resistance has made it possible to replace German products in almost every instance.”
Mr. Percy S. Straus, president of Macy’s, is to be commended for having made this decision on the eve of the projected intensified anti-Jewish boycott in Germany. Even though Macy’s purchases in Germany during the past year were reduced to an insignificant minimum, according to the statement of R. H. Macy and Company in the Jewish Daily Bulletin, the closing of the purchasing bureau in Berlin and the establishment of a new office in its place in Prague, will bring home to the Hitler government and to the German merchants the extent of American consumer resistance to goods of German origin and the power of public opinion in the United States.
Macy’s withdrawal from Germany is more than a mere gesture, even though it is belated. It is an unmistakable proof of the temper and attitude of enlightened public sentiment to ward Nazi Germany.
The German merchants and industrialists are paying ever more heavily for the continuous crimes of the Hitler regime. Germany’s economic structure is being undermined by the arrogance, bigotry, cruelty and folly of the Nazi rulers.
Macy’s reason for closing its Berlin office will give no comfort to the Hitler government. It cannot be explained away in Germany as a sentimental endorsement of the anti-German boycott by a Jewish-owned department store in America. The truthful reason given by Macy’s hits the Nazis very hard, for it makes it clear that the Berlin purchasing office of the largest department store was closed not only because of consumer resistance to German-made goods but also because German goods can need be replaced by merchandise produced elsewhere.
The German people will feel the effects of Hitler’s criminal blunders for generations to come.
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.
