History Unfolded: US Newspapers and the Holocaust

Headline: Status Of Jews In Germany Remains Uncertain As Nazis Launch Drive Of Retaliation

Publication Date: Monday, March 27, 1933
Historical Event: Nazis Boycott Jewish Businesses
This database includes 4,061 articles about this event
Tags: Gannett full page downloadable; Early Acts of Persecution
Article Type: News Article
Newspaper: The Daily Times-News
Location: Burlington, North Carolina
Page Section and Number: 1
Author/Byline: UP
Article Text: Washington. Mar. 27.—(UP)—Leaders of the American Jewish Congress today advised Secretary of State Hull that the United States embassy's report from Berlin "confirms our fears," that Jews have been mistreated and discriminated against.
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The Nazi party launched a campaign of retaliation against German Jews today because of "atrocity propaganda" being circulated throughout the world.

Reassurances from German officials that Jews were not being subjected to persecution mingled in the day's news with protests in many parts of the world against the German government's treatment of Jewish citizens.

In the United States, Orthodox Jews observed a day of fasting and mass meetings will be held in 300 cities tonight. Approximately 100,000 were expected at a mass meeting in New York where prominent Christians and Jewish leaders were to speak.

In Warsaw, the Polish government announced its Berlin minister had handed the German government a memorandum showing that 101 Jews who were Polish citizens had been beaten.

In Jerusalem prayers for German Jews were heard along the wailing wall. Jews observed a day of fasting and a boycott against German goods had been called.

In Washington, the State Department made public a cable from the American embassy in Berlin reporting that physical mistreatment of Jews had "virtually terminated." A diplomatic protest was thought unlikely.

In Berlin, it was understood the government was prepared to countenance retaliation against German Jews in exact ratio to the countenancing of "atrocity propaganda," by foreign governments. Dr. Ernst Hanfstaengl, chief of the foreign press section of the Hitler organization, told the United Press that ousting of the Jews from influential positions would be continued.

"If we had wanted to conduct a program against the Jews it would all have been over now," he said.

"The Jews who already have been ousted were put out because they were morally and politically, unfit to safeguard German interests."

Asked the basis of the current wave of anti-semitism in Germany, Dr. Hanfstaengl said:

"In the last 14 years Jewry achieved positions of influence which it has grossly misused morally, financially and politically in an unheard of manner, with the result that the German people crumbled morally, financially ana politically.

"The same Jewry now is seeking smirch Germany's renaissance.

"Anti-Semitism is not based on strictly religious grounds and is not directed against the Jewish faith as such. However, all German Christians resent and denounce the fact that the Jews have been the chief advocates of atheism. They have influenced the workers' children through the communist youth organizations, of which they are the leading spirit to abstain from divine service in Christian schools.

"Briefly the Jews methodically have destroyed and rendered despicable what was holy to the Germans.

"What happens now is the result of Jewish godless propaganda.
History Unfolded Contributor: Katherine V.
Location of Research: Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com)