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SITUATION IN
GERMANY
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riT^HE Jewish wage earners in Germany have
I been confined mostly to Jewish business
enterprises; very few Jewish workers were
engaged in German enterprises even under the
previous Liberal regime. On the other hand, most
Gcrman-Jewish enterprises, such as the department
stores, chain stores, newspapers and publishing of
fices, small workshops and trading establishments,
readily engaged Jewish labor. Official statistics
issued by the Jewish community of Berlin in 1932
show that approximately 75,000 Jewish bread
winners in Germany were so employed, and they
eked out a poor but honest living by their labor.
With the advent of the Nazi regime the ordeal
of these people has begun. The word has gone
out that these workers must all be “cleaned" out
of German business and replaced by the new Aryan
aristocracy. The first to be dismissed were the
comparatively few Jewish workers employed in
municipal or state positions; then followed the
slightly bigger percentage of those who worked in
German enterprises, and lastly the big drive has
begun for the dismissal of the Jewish workers fioin
the Jewish enterprises as well.
The procedure is for the Nazi “cell," which
operates in every business enterprise now, to de
mand the dismissal of the Jews on the general
ground of “cleansing” German industry and busi
ness and make it “judenrein." No other reason
is advanced. Even the blanket-accusation of
“Communism” and “Marxism” is not deemed to
be necessary. The mere fact of a person having
been born a Jew is sufficient reason for his being
deprived of the privilege of work and making a
living. The Central Government seldom inter
feres officially in these acts, but Jewish employers
know very well that it is- not healthy for their
business to oppose the wishes even of the un
official Nazi “cells,” and to their shame it must
be said, that they largely yield to this cruel demand
without resistance. Only one honorable exception
is known to the general rule of abject cringing on
the part of this Jewish big business before this
particular manifestation of Nazi force. This is
the case of Tietz and Co., the famous German
department store owners who courageously in
formed their Nazi “cells" that they would close
down their business entirely rather than dismiss
their several thousand Jewish shop girls and clerks.
Most other Jewish employers were only too ready
to sacrifice their Jewish employees for their busi
ness and some, like the Mosse Verlag—the pub
lishers of the “Berliner Tageblatt"—were so eager
to ingratiate themselves with the new masters that
they were more sweeping in thtir dismissals than
even the Nazis had demanded.
And thus one of the most pitiful tragedies of
present-day Germany has begun, and is still going
on. Men and women by the thousands are being
dismissed from their positions which some of them
have held for decades. Tens of thousands of poor
family breadwinners are being deprived of the
only privilege to work which they will ever get
in Germany and of the only opportunity for earn
ing an honest living. A new army of unemployed
The Effect of the Nazi
Economic Program
By WILLIAM ZUKERMAN
(Noted Foreign Correspondent)
William Zukerman, distinguished collabora
tor to The Southern Israelite, contributes
this revealing article on the cold pogrom,
carried out by the Nazis without interference
front any civilized agency inside or outside
of Germany.
is springing up, an army not only without work,
but also without hope of ever getting work no
matter what prosperity comes to Germany again.
For German firms seldom engaged Jewish workers
in the past, and Jews will not dare to do so in
the future. The dismissal, therefore, spells prac
tical elimination from honest work forever.
In most cases the people thus thrown out of
employment are not even paid for the usual period
of notice which is legally required in Germany.
For in a recent test case of 115 Jewish employees
of the “Berliner 'Tageblatt” who appealed against
the arbitrary dismissal on the ground of race and
religion, a Nazi Court of “Justice” in Berlin ruled
that not only had the firm a right to dismiss the
workers because they were Jews, but that it did
not have to pay the usual legal compensation for
dismissal.
As yet there are enough employers in Germany
whose sense of justice has not been Nazified, and
the dismissed Jewish workers as a rule get several
weeks’ compensation, and even more. There is
on record the case of the Sheri Verlag (the pub
lishing house of the Nationalist leader, Herr
Hugenberg), which paid its dismissed Jewish em
ployees a full year’s salary. In some firms the dis
missal proceeds slowly, and is spread over a period
of weeks; in others, the Jews are discharged whole
sale and all at once, as recently in the case of the
“E.P.A.” chain stores. Some do it curtly, bru
tally; others politely, with regrets; some even
with tears; (there were even cases of banquets
having been given to the dismissed Jewish em
ployees). But the result is everywhere the same.
Thousands of Jews are left without work and
bread; thousands of men are thrown upon charity;
thousands of women thrown onto the streets, and
all are doomed to swift and sure starvation. For
the German dole lasts only for twelve weeks;
Jewish charity cannot cope with an unemployed
army of such dimensions, and the reserves of these
people, like those of most laboring humanity, are
too low to enable them to keep the wolf from the
door even for a short time. Unlike the persecuted
Jewish business and professional man, the Jewish I
workers cannot retire until the storm is o\er, nor I
can they leave the country. They have nnwhrrrl
to go and nothing to do except to swarm around!
the dole and relief offices for several weeks, and |
then to go down swiftly and surely into the abwl
of beggary and starvation.
There is yet one other aspect of the tragedy I
one w’hich is not generally knowm in the non I
Jewdsh world, but W’hich is of utmost important I
to Jews.
'The centuries of Jewish discrimination and I
Ghetto life have led to the creation of a one-sided I
abnormal Jewish economic life in many coun-J
tries, including Germany. Having been forbidden I
for centuries to engage in agriculture, industry. I
and other forms of productive labor, Jews ha\el
been forced to engage primarily in finance and I
trading. As often happens, the disability has be-1
come a habit; the habit, a special talent, and thi' I
talent has led to tragic consequences for the Jews. I
The fact of the large preponderance of the Jew-
in business and trading has been used by anti-
Semitism throughout the ages as proof of Jewish
non-productivity and has served as the only plausi
ble basis of all anti-Jew’ish movements. Anti
Semitic propaganda has revolved almost wholly
around the exploitation character of Jewish oc
cupations ; the most vicious anti-Jewish pogrom'
were led to the cry of Jewish economic parasitism.
The emancipation of the Jews from the religious
and political disabilities of the Ghetto which be
gan in the nineteenth century was almost from the
beginning accompanied by a parallel movement
within Jew’ry itself for a reconstruction of its
economic life by changing Jewish occupation'
from business and finance to agriculture and laboi-
'This great urge for economic productivization is
probably, the most powerful manifestation ot
modern Jewish life, and has contributed more
tow’ard the real, inner emancipation of the Jews
than all decrees of Parliaments and acts of Revo
lutions. Every great Jewish social movement ot
the last fifty years, from Zionism to Jewish Colo
nization in Sovietv Russia, has striven prim aril'
toward this economic reconstruction. Every con
scious and unconscious effort of modern Jewry in
every country in the w’orld has tended in the same
direction. The rise and the growth of a Jewish
wage earning class in Germany has been one ot
the most hopeful signs of this movement for
economic regeneration. Even the propensity ot
German Jew’s for the professions, which i> the
chief argument of the Nazis for their present anti-
Jewish campaign, is also an expression of the same
general Jewish urge. It is but another manifes
tation of the flight of the modern Jew’ from busi
ness and finance to more useful and productive
occupations.
And it is to this painful struggle of a r *°f '
to free itself from disabilities which centuri s ot
persecution have put upon it that the Nazis have
chosen, of all else in Jewish life, to deal a death
blow. The extermination of Jew’ish Lab< r ’ r
Germany is more than (Please turn to pag< H
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* THE SOUTHERN ISRAE ITS