Germany has in the past been the source of many an idea for the Day Book. Some have been good, some have been bad and some have been merely indifferent. None, however, has proved profitable which, in the final analysis, is the most trustworthy measure of an idea’s worth.
But Germany, dear old versatile Germany, has finally come through with an idea that H. W. of the Day Book is going to turn into dollars and cents. I wish to take this opportunity publicly to express my gratitude to the Third Reich for presenting me gratis with a method whereby I shall become solvent. Did I say solvent? What I really mean is that I shall soon become the Croesus of Mount Vernon and the J. P. Morgan of the Jewish Daily Bulletin’s city room.
“As guests of the German nation,” a recent editorial in the Deutsche Zeitung, Nazi Labor Front organ, stated, “the Jews must be made to pay higher taxes.”
On the theory that every home in the land is a miniature government—and it’s a theory that will probably hold water before the highest courts in the nation—I shall in the future act accordingly. All persons crossing the border-threshold of my nation-home shall be taxed.
My friends in Mount Vernon, New York City and other such suburban neighbors of Mount Vernon, have got away with it long enough. From now on every guest of Mr. and Mrs. H. W. is a paying guest, a walking bit of taxable property. When the Jimmy Lipsons of the North Bronx cross our threshold-border, they may be wearing tuxedo and evening gown. But when they leave, they’ll be attired in something much more fitting to their new station in life. We’ll send them forth as honored (and paying) guests should be sent forth. For them, nothing but the best. They came in tuxedo and evening gown—they shall go in the very finest sugar barrels we can mooch from Berger’s, the corner grocer.
Some cold night in January the M. Iushevitzs of near-Gramercy Park will be dropping in on us unexpectedly. Already I am looking forward to honoring our distinguished and wealthy friends. Ah, what dear, expensive (expensive to them) guests they shall be. And, oh, how the H. W. nation-home’s treasury shall be swelled to bursting as a result of their visit. They shall have the best squab the Lipsons’ tax money can purchase. The squab will be garnished with humming-bird’s wings (purchased with the levy assessed on the Wittsteins who outstayed their welcome and were honored by double the usual tax).
Of course, the Iushevitzs who drove up in a beautiful Hispano-Suiza and were wrapped in the costliest Persian furs, will not object too s##enuously when we seize their limousine and wraps. With the taste of our cordial hospitality still lingering on their lips and in their minds, they will be only too happy to ride home in a wheelbarrow and a couple of old shirts we shall provide them from our bounty. The memory of our beautiful evening together will keep them warm on the way home.
But that haul will only be as chicken feed by comparison to the harvest we shall reap when the Berkowitzs of Greenwich Village are our guests of honor. How the dining board shall groan under the tons of pastries, viands, matjes herring and gallons of vintage liquors that we shall spread before their popping eyes. Feast your ###oh ye honored guests of mine, ######rnucopia. Tempt your ### rarest foods and wines the Iushevitzs’ tax money could purchase, my bosom friends. Oh guests of ours, fill your stomachs to bursting with the finest matjes herring that ever came out of a barrel.
But when the Greenwich Villagers have dined and drunk their fill, they shall be turned over to the internal revenue department and will be required to pay over all their valuables, down to the very diamond-studded underwear they are wearing. How delighted they will be to sign over to us their life’s savings, their insurance policies, their future earnings and other incidentals.
And as they stalk forth from our warm home in the nude (just a couple of literary nudists as it were) they will be sighing gratefully!
“Ah, what charming hosts those H. W.s are. And to think they got that way as the result of an idea that one of Hitler’s pals gave him. Only in Germany could guests be more royally treated than in H. W.’s home.”
Noble people, those Berkowitzs!
The Deutsche Zeitung idea, the more I ponder on it, is such a swell one that I’m going to obtain the American patent rights on it at once. After all, it would never do if the H. W.s were the guests of the Iushevitzs’, the Berkowitzs’, the Lipsons’ and the Wittsteins’, to have the tables turned on us.
Yoo hoo! C’mup and see me some time. I dare yah!
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.
