The Hitlerist organ, “Voelkischer Beobachter” has seized upon the allegation made in Hungary that trachoma is a Jewish disease and publishes an article today under the heading: “The Sacred Disease of the Jews.”
“Since the Hungarian Revolution,” the paper states, “in spite of the ‘White Terror’, thousands of additional East-European Jews have swarmed into Hungary and occupied notably the district of Debreczin where the philo-Jewish Protestant Bishop Dr. Balthazar holds his protecting hand over them, and they have created there a new home. In a few years they have managed to pest the whole province with the epidemic of trachoma to such an extent that the authorities were helpless. An investigation has resulted in the medical authorities establishing that the sole cause of the disease is the Jewish population and their peculiar customs, their religious practices, their ritual baths, and their Chedarim.
“They treat the victims as if they had a sacred disease and conceal them from control and medical treatment.
“The measures which are being taken to combat the disease,” the article says, “will, of course, be denounced as anti-Semitic, and there will be more talk about Jews being persecuted in Hungary.
“This,” the paper concludes, “is how all the Tollers, Eisners, Levys, Levines, and the rest of the leaders of the democracy looked at one time. Fechenbach still has the sacred disease in his eyes. Twenty or thirty years after they have as children in the Chedarim become infected these people develop into journalists, politicians, artists, critics, and leaders of the their disease and then they infect them with their ideas.”
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.
