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REHEARSAL FOR REVOLT
What The Nazi Attack On Jews
Means Is Told By A Famous Exile
By Arnold Zweig
In til recent years recog
nized by till Hermans as one
of their great modern lit
erary figures, Arnold Zweig
is now an exile from his
native lan<l. In Palestine,
where he has found a new
home, he wrote the follow
ing analysis of events in
(iermany, here published by
special arrangement with
l)ie .Yeue H'elt huehne, lib
eral Herman weekly in
Prague, ('zechnsl<w<ikia.
TTTiiat is the essential signili-
VV cance of the crushing of
German Jewry by the Nazi
spirit, as seen from the heights of
Mount Carmel after four years of
successful assaults? It emerges
clearly as nothing more or less than
a dress rehearsal for a bloodless —
and hence all the more effective-
civil war. The German Jews
who, sociologically speaking, repre
sent a cross-section of tin* German
population, including all strata from
the poorest to the richest—are
serving as the guinea pigs; they are
the victims of the Central European
social revolution, the early mani
festations of which we can observe
by watching the fate of these Jews.
Citizens are being expropriated by
the State as well as by their local
groups. Citizens are being fought
with boycott and defamation, are
contemptuously removed from the
ranks of those enjoying full civic
rights. All relationships with them
are degraded. Love affairs with
them have become crimes; mar
riages with them render the non-
Jewish partner unfit for full citizen
ship and are unequivocally pro
hibited today. The very necessities
of life are refused citizens who are
Jews: the milkman, the butcher, the
baker is entitled to stop serving
them. They are driven out of
places, villages and cities, where
they have lived for centuries. In
public conveyances, in public parks
and resorts, on the very streets of
their native towns they are exposed
to moral and physical injury. At
the same time they are forced to
concentrate in given places, so that
they can be handled all the more
easily.
The fact that this is happening
to citizens who represented all
shadings of political opinion, and
because they supported the various
political parties before the brown-
shirted regime came to power,
brings out all the more clearly the
civil-war-like character of these
measures. It is obvious, further
more, that these people are to be
expropriated, and that to a large
degree such expropriation has al
ready taken place. Disregarding
all questions of individual provoca
tion or innocence, the disposscssors
lay hands on the property of the
Jew as the representative of his
group.
So skillful arc these methods that
the other nations have not recog
nized, so far, the game that has
been and is being played in (i<*r-
many. Vet the fact remains that,
just as Bonapartism tested the
means whereby a small group of
adventurers possessed of armed
forces was able to extend for
another few years the power of the
already vanquished hosts of the
nobility and the church over democ
racy, so an as yet unknown force,
in the guise of Nazism, is testing
out on the Jews of Central Europe
the tactics of masked civil war,
tactics that are inconspicuous and
effective.
All this did not come out of a
clear sky. The post-war economic
crisis, appearing first as inflation,
ruined the Central European middle
class. Large sections of the people
suffered from a very considerable
degree of poverty and of fear for
their very existence. The older
generation saw no hope of ever again
becoming wage-earners, the youth
saw no prospects of ever becoming
a part of the process of production;
and for students the outlook was
particularly hopeless. The prac
tically unbiased choice of civil
servants, unrestricted opportuni
ties in the liberal professions and
free competition in the literary and
artistic domains had brought about,
in the decade following the world
war, a selection of the fittest. But
the less capable, as well as the con
stantly swelling ranks of newly
trained youth, wanted to eat their
fill and enjoy possession of all the
wares which modern industry so
alluringly displayed to them in the
streets and in the shop windows.
The huge army of general unem
ployed, former petty officers and
adherents of the opposition parties
saw that jobs were filled with
Socialist and Catholic workers and
clerks; they were the first to feel
the full force of the blow. But
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