The Human Touch

There is in New York today a German Jew who wishes he were back in Germany, although not in the concentration camp where he was confined for a reason, or perhaps a whim, at the nature of which he can only guess.

It seems that a farmer owed him 150 marks for goods supplied. This farmer was what the “Aryans” call an “Aryan.” The Jew wrote for his money but his letters were ignored. Finally, he composed a letter to the effect that if no payment were made, he would be obliged to put the matter into the hands of an attorney. His attorney is a Nazi. Our Jewish friend received a response to this letter, but it wasn’t a nice response at all. In the first place, it came from the head of the storm troop detachment in the farmer’s district and it was to the effect that this was no time to make demand for the payment of a debt and that one who had the misfortune not to be a “volksgenosse,” meaning a member of the folk, of the race, should be watching his step, and so forth, all of it ending with a “Heil Hitler.”

I believe that nine out of ten Jews, or ninety-nine out of a hundred, maybe, would have let the matter drop and would have kissed a sum even larger than 150 marks goodbye. Not our German-Jewish friend. He went to the leader of the storm troop detachment in his district; they had been classmates and, personally, some of this troop leader’s best friends were Jews. Anyway, he was a man with whom our merchant could talk turkey, and he did. This troop leader also advised against legal action, pointing out that such suit would be taken in bad part and was altogether inadvisable. He did suggest, however, that his Jewish friend visit the farmer and trp to get some of his money back by moral suasion. Strangely enough, this method worked and when he left the farmer’s house he had 120 marks in his pocket that he hadn’t had when he knocked at the door.

THEY WOULDN’T TELL HIM

It was some time after that he was taken into custody. He racked his brains for a cause, and could find none. The transition between the collection of a lawful debt and incarceration in a concentration camp didn’t seem logical to him and today he accepts it, dubiously, in lieu of a reasonable explanation. He made every effort to discover the cause of his arrest, but although all the boys were friendly about it-some of this man’s best friends are Nazis-no one would, or could, tell him.

He didn’t have such a bad two months of it in camp. Perhaps he isn’t particularly sensitive, or in need of those refinements of living which other men require. He played cards with his Nazi captors and maybe-assuming that gambling is allowed-had the good sense to lose some money to them. However, I can’t believe that even he, good-natured as he seems to be, had such a high old time of it, for it was after he was liberated that he made as straight a beeline as circumstances allowed, for the place in his town where you buy tickets for the trans-Atlantic boats. And he was eager enough to get out and come here. And if he is sincerely eager to return to Germany, it is only because Shakespeare knew what he was saying when he made Hamlet declaim that we bear the ills we have rather than fly to others that we know not of. Germany is his home, after all, and all Germans are not Nazis and even the Nazis are differentiated one from the other.

VARYING FATE OF THE JEWS

This man-technically a refugee-has the feeling that Hitlerism will not last forever, that its steeliness is hostile to the German temperament, which he believes is essentially one of friendliness. The fate of the Jews is not alike. It depends chiefly on the personal nature of the leader of the storm troop detachment in each district. The iron law of anti-Semitism is applied, or modified according to the personal feelings of an individual, or perhaps a group of individuals. There are Nazis who continue to maintain visiting relations with their Jewish friends, and are Nazis not because they subscribe to the Jew-hating creed, but because it is the safe and the convenient way in Germany today. These fellows might be no less eager to serve a regime friendly to the Jews.

But even the knowledge that the local Nazi commander is friendly to the Jews and will not molest them in their rights should irk the Jews of that community, it would seem to me. Just consider what it must mean to owe your toleration to the friendly whim of an individual and not to law or custom. Tomorrow that same friendly commander, eager perhaps to attract the favorable notice of his superiors, may become unfriendly, or he may be transferred to another post and an unfriendly officer put in charge of that district. What then###

GRATEFUL FOR CRUMBS

I dare say, however, that if I were a Jew living in Germany, in a district in which the Nazi storm troop commander had been my class-mate at Heidelberg, I would be grateful for the crumbs of toleration that I might derive from that fact, but I cannot say that I would feel entirely at ease, or would regard it as a just thing that the law put me on a lower level than the meanest creature who had the right to have a Swastika on his armband. Even if the head of the detachment dropped in for tea ever so often to assure me of his personal friendliness.

It isn’t in every concentration camp, by the way, that Jewish prisoners play cards with their jailors. I suppose conditions in each camp vary with the personal attitude of the chief jailors. In one of the larger camps, 500 yards from the walls of which there is a thick wood, the Nazis play a game called “shot while trying to escape.” A prisoner is told to bring back a pail of water or a load of firewood, and he is told to hurry. Usually he knows what to expect. He is given somewhat of a start and then shot at. If he makes good his escape-and a few have been known to do so-the Nazis make no attempt to capture him. If any decent proportion of prisoners made good their escape, perhaps the Nazis might stop playing their game.

I do not know what would happen should a prisoner refuse to play, but many play it for the slim chance it gives them of escape, especially since so many who are thrown into concentration camps rarely have assurances, when they are seized, that they will ever come out alive, the experience of our refugee friend to the contrary notwithstanding.