Chapter 14
CHAPTER VIII. THE PERSECUTION OF JEWS. PART I. One of the first acts of the new nationalist government of Thuringia was the dissolution of the Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith within the territory of the Thuringian State. The following statement was issued by the government in explanation. Quote,
One of the chief objects of the Central Union is to fight anti-Semitism. As there is no anti-Semitism in Germany, the Central Union no longer has any justification for its existence. It is therefore dissolved as from today. End of quote.
We are here dealing with questions of fact. Authentic reports and depositions relating to tortures, acts of brutality, and outlawry directed against Jews living in Germany will show clearly enough where the boundary lies between atrocity stories and the appalling reality. It will become evident that although in some particular cases the so-called atrocity stories
may have been inexact and exaggerated, yet they have also to some extent understated the actual facts of brutality. For example, there has been a report that a certain Herr Kohn had his hairs pulled out one by one. But it turned out that this Herr Kohn had been out of Germany for some time and had not suffered at all. But on the other hand, that a certain Herr Levy not only had his hair pulled out,
but had one of his eyes put out and has been in a hospital for some weeks in danger of death. Mistakes in names and in places where incidents took place have come to light. But for every case reported which on investigation proved to be incorrect or exaggerated, there are a hundred cases of torture, murder, and robbery which have not come to light at all, for the reason that the people concerned have been threatened with death if they tell the truth about the crimes which are being committed every day in Hitler's Germany. The reports of actual incidents can stand by themselves without any reference to the problem of the Jewish question. Many attempts, written from various standpoints, have been made to present an analysis of the
situation in Germany in regard to the Jews. Here, we deal with this wider question very briefly, but it is essential to say something of the inseparable connection which exists between the Hitler movement and anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is one of the foundations of National Socialism. It is an old practice of the ruling class to distract the attention of the people from their actual sufferings. It is not possible here to deal in a scientific way
with the reasons why attacks on the Jews have, for many centuries, served as the basis for distracting the people in this way. Why throughout the Middle Ages the Jews were attacked as a religious community, and more recently, for the most part, as a race. The analysis made by Marx in the Jewish question has been followed by many subsequent writers, who have treated the question from a social standpoint. At the present time, it is impossible to approach the Jewish question
as a confused complex of race, nationality, people, and religion. It must be regarded as a social question containing racial, national, and religious elements. Antisemitism in modern Germany. Hitlerism is a characteristic form of the process of dissolution of the lower middle class in the age of industrial capitalism, and it has its parallel in the past. Anti-Semitism in modern Germany dates from the movement which developed under Adolf Stocker,
a court chaplain in the last quarter of last century. The basis of that movement was economic. There was a period of unrestricted speculation in the years when German industry was being built up after the victorious war of 1870-71, and this was followed by a severe economic crisis, which directly affected the lower middle class as well as the working class.
Adolf Stocker found the new gospel of salvation in a campaign against the Jews. Ernst Ottwald, in his brilliant study, Germany Awake, writes of Stocker as follows, quote, without any regard to fundamental economic facts, Stocker ascribed to Jewish influence everything within the German empire which seemed to him unhealthy and harmful. In the indebtedness of the peasant population of the provinces of East Prussia, which was an inevitable consequence
of the increasing world production of grain, Stocker could see only the Jew who gave credit to the peasant in order to drive him from hearth and home a short time afterwards out of diabolical wickedness. He saw in the wretched position of the German industrial workers not the greed of a type of capitalist which had been brought into being by the advance made in the means of production, but the existence of Jewish capitalists, and the Jews were responsible for everything.
End of quote. Bismarck, the servant of the Jews. The anti-Semite propaganda achieved a certain success. The first revolutionary upheaval of the duped lower middle class was concentrated on the weakest point, that is to say, the Jewish minority. But when Adolf Stocker began to attack the rich and powerful Jews also, the solidarity of the possessing class was roused. Bismarck himself intervened, and the court chaplain who would become an agitator fell out of favor.
It is amusing to find that the anti-Semitic movement of that period also attacked Bismarck, denouncing him as the servant of the Jews. A pamphlet published in 1878 contains the following, quote, the credit for having raised the Jews and their associates into a ruling clique in Germany must be given to Prince Bismarck. The protection of the Jews is one of the blackest pages in Bismarck's glorious empire, with its consequences in the impoverishment of the working class,
the demoralization of all sections of society, and the disgusting fusion of money with the aristocracy by birth. Prince Bismarck succumbed to the influence of the Jews. The society in which he moved was composed of Jews and the associates of Jews. They were always with him and where his political advisors and the champions of civilization on whom he mainly relied. End of quote. This popular movement of the time inevitably found expression in excesses.
The signal was given by the burning down of the synagogue in the little Pomeranian town of Neustetten. Then, too, the national indignation was roused by an act of incendiarism, and then, too, it was not the incendiaries who were brought to trial, but Jews, who were alleged to have burnt down their own temple out of vindictiveness. Pogroms followed, and when the popular movement had already begun to flag,
when the economic crisis was over, this anti-Semitism took legal shape in the form of parties, and also found people who could supply the necessary ideology. Professor Eugen Düring, with his work on the Jewish question as a question of racial character, opened a new era of anti-Semitism, racial anti-Semitism. Since then, a great deal of ink has flowed in order to prove that the Jews are a race, and an outlandish, inferior, and
criminal race at that. Apart from Chamberlain's ingenious assertions, this science has, for the most part, been content with coarse jests. Now, in Hitler's Germany, the science celebrates its triumph, and no doubt there are a good many people who will be able to earn their bread in this shameful way in the Third Empire. Antisemitic parties. Germany was the country in which antisemitism was first organized on a party basis. These parties were the German Social Party,
the Antisemite People's Party, and later the German Reform Party. They had no other object than antisemitism, which was the sole aim and purpose of their existence. It was characteristic that their fortunes varied with the economic situation. But in any case, anti-Semitism remained parliamentary for nearly three decades. During this period, it was a sociological rather than a social phenomenon. With the economic catastrophe of the post-war period, however,
anti-Semite parliamentarism once more developed into a popular movement. The traditional anti-Semitic parties disappeared, but there were no fewer than 260 anti-Semitic organizations in post-war Germany. These were all united by the National Socialists. The National Socialist Workers' Party of Germany is indecisitably linked with anti-Semitism. In fact, it is quite unthinkable without it. Anti-Semitism was one of the foundations and the constant companion of National Socialism
from triumph to triumph up to the seizure of power. Forms of anti-Semitic agitation Recent German antisemitism, of which Hitler's victory is the fulfillment, has never worried itself over much to find scientific justification. It is one of the special characteristics of this movement that, from the very beginning, it has never proved anything, but always merely asserted. Its success depends on confusing and distracting people from the actual state of things.
This antisemitism has always found expression in the most repulsive forms of incitement. During the Kap Putsch early in 1920, the curious anti-Semitic symbol, the Hakenkreuz swastika, was first publicly exhibited on the steel helmets of the Erhard Bergried. On that occasion, too, the Nazi songs were first publicly sung. Then, also, a real national man made speeches entirely composed of expressions such as
Rathenau, the Jewish sow. On the streets, the children were learning anti-Semitic songs. Now, in the Third Empire, they all know the glorious battle song whose refrain runs, quote, When Jewish blood spurts from under the knife, things will be twice as good as before.
End of quote. For 15 years, in tens of thousands of meetings and tens of thousands of articles in the press, the Jew has been presented by Hitler's party to the duped masses as the most utter abomination. The Jew is responsible for everything, for the war as well as the peace, for capitalism as well as the revolution, for poverty as well as wealth. The National Socialist
agitation sees the Jew lurking everywhere and helping on the work of Judaism to reach its aim of world domination. And to Hitler and his followers, this is equivalent to the destruction of the world. Here we can only give some examples of the absurdity and vileness of this anti-Semitism. Hitler on the Jews. We take these examples from the most official statement of National Socialism, Hitler's book My Fight, which is now circulating in many hundreds of thousands of copies.
There we find, quote, the black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours, satanic joy in his face for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood and thereby robs from her own race. They were and are Jews who brought Negroes to the Rhine, always with the same aim and idea in their minds of destroying, through the bastardization that must inevitably result, the white race which they hate, of bringing it down from its high cultural and political level, and themselves getting the mastery over it. In culture, the Jew defiles art, literature, and the theater, destroys natural sentiments, undermines all ideas of beauty and dignity, of nobility and goodness, and drags humanity down
under the spell of his own base mode of life. If the Jews were alone on this world, they would smother themselves in dirt and filth just the same in their attempts to get advantages over each other and destroy each other, insofar as their complete lack of any sense of self-sacrifice, which finds expression in their cowardice, did not turn the fight into a farce. When the Jew wins political power, he casts aside the few wrappings which he still has.
The democratic Jew of the people becomes the Jew of blood and tyranny. He tries in a few years to root out the national carriers of intelligence, and by robbing the peoples of their natural intellectual leadership, prepares them for their lot as slaves in permanent subjection. End of quote. It must be borne in mind that these phrases occur in a book which is certainly representative and was written with the consciousness that it was representative.
The extracts given in fact illustrate only the mildest and most restrained form of anti-Semitic agitation. A different and much clearer language is used in meetings and in articles in the press. For years, the typical headlines in the National Socialist Papers have been at the udders of the Jewish sow, the Jewish plague in the world, and so forth. And finally, it must not be forgotten that the main battle cry of the Hitler movement is Perish Judah.
In the Guide and Instructional Letter for Functionaries of the National Socialists, dated March 15, 1931, we find, quote, the natural hostility of the peasant against the Jews and his hostility against the Freemason as a servant of the Jew must be worked up to a frenzy. Day of Reckoning It is necessary to recall all this in order to realize the ridiculous character of the Dementius
issued by the National Socialist members of the government in connection with the reports of the persecution of Jews and the grotesque nature of the statement that the Jews would suffer no harm under Adolf Hitler's protecting rule. For 15 years, the Jews have been spoken of as a world plague, as the most brutish of sub-men, and the adherents of the National Socialist Movement have been given license to calumniate and persecute the Jews. Hatred of the Jews has been systematically nurtured. For 15 years,
a day of reckoning has been promised. Is it strange that this sowing of murder should bear fruit when the so-called National Revolution developed? Every young National Socialist has been ceaselessly told that it is a moral act and his highest duty as a National German to extirpate the Jews. How is it possible to make these young National Socialists understand that now, when they are in power, they are to protect the Jews? So they are given a free hand, and very willingly too,
for of all the things which they have been promised, the only thing they can be given is the satisfaction of their lust for murder. The government cannot give all National Socialist supporters bread and work, nor can it improve the economic situation or redeem any of the promises it made. But so long as it allows the lower middle class to persecute and beat up the Jews, it can distract them from the tremendous imposture of which they too have been the victims.
For this reason, the campaign against the Jews is given its head in Hitler's Germany. It would be a terrible mistake to think that the persecution of the Jews was only a transitory phenomenon of the period when Hitler took power. It is a political measure systematically carried out and necessary for the tremendous deception of the people. Minister Goebbels, in a pamphlet called The Nazi Sozi, says that, quote, the liberation of the German nation can only be
carried out against the Jews. It is true that the Jew is also a man, but the flea is also an animal, but not a pleasant one. Our duty to ourselves and to our conscience requires us to make him harmless. End of quote. Jews are watching you. To show that the anti-Semitic propaganda has not in any way stopped, but that it is being carried on in an organized way, making use of every available means, we quote only one of the publications which have appeared since Hitler took power.
It is a book by Dr. Johann von Leers with the title Jews Are Watching You. It is a somewhat random collection of photographs which are presented to the German people by way of a warning. Among some 60 photographs of Germans and people of other nationalities, there are pictures of Karl Liebknecht, who was a descendant of Martin Luther, of the Catholic leader Erzberger, of Willi Munzenberg, in whom there is not a drop of Jewish blood, of Grzynski, of the Catholic
mayor of Cologne, Adenauer, of Erwin Piskator, son of a clergyman, who are all, on the National socialist racial theory Germans of pure race, but this is characteristic. In Hitler's Germany, no one takes the trouble to check up even the most simple facts which are supposed to be the basis of statements made. It is quite enough to make assertions and calumniations. Anyone who is inconvenient to the Hitler regime is a Jew, so far as this regime is concerned. That is all there is
to it. The conception of responsibility is completely alien to these national socialist writers. If anyone asks for any proof, the National Socialist storm troops are good enough to silence any inconvenient questioner. This is the reason why no one dares to challenge even the most nonsensical statements, and as no one contradicts them, the masses believe everything. This book, which we hope will get a very wide circulation, as it is really a revelation of the
spirit of the new regime, contains also photographs of Rosa Luxemburg, Professor Einstein, Georg Bernhardt, Leon Fuchtwanger, Theodore Wolfe, Emil Ludwig, Max Reinhardt, Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Kerr, and the American banker Otto H. Kahn. No one who is not a national socialist will find anything repulsive in these photographs. For the most part, they are splendid heads of clever and serious people of real intellectual standing. The only repulsive things about the photographs
are the titles which Dr. von Leers has provided. Under Rosa Luxemburg is printed, executed, Levine, executed, Erzberger, executed at last. The young Germans who shot him were released from persecution after the National Revolution of 1933. For Einstein, there is the laconic remark, unhanged. This is a favorite observation of the compiler of the book. He uses it for everyone who has not yet been murdered. For Reinhardt, his second rate and soulless art, etc. Chaplin is
described as a little sprawling Jew, as boring as he is repulsive. It is said of Tuller, promptly locked up after Adolf Hitler's seizure of power. But not even this is true, as by that time Ernst Tuller was already out of Germany. Erwin Piskator is called a Bolshevistic artistic Jew. The bankers Max Vorborg and Dr. Karl Melchior are said to be extremely dangerous. Among these Jews, there is a young man of the name of Schlesinger, who once in desperation carried out an attack on
a train which cost many lives. Later on, he was released on an amnesty. In the course of the trial, it came out that Schlesinger was not a Jew, but a German of pure race. Anti-Semitic propaganda made use of the name at the time, but subsequently had to drop its attacks when it was proved beyond question that this Schlesinger was of pure race. But Dr. von Leers writes under his photograph, quote, moved by greed and unconcealed race hatred, he caused the terrible railway accident at Lefford,
end of quote. But what does it matter? One lie, more or less, makes no difference to these people. Parish Judah Herr Hans Stengel, foreign press chief of the National Socialists, gave a semi-official interview on March 27, 1933, to the American representative of the semi-official Telegraph Union press service. In reply to the question, Are the reports of alleged maltreatment of Jews true or false, he said,
quote, a few minutes ago, when I met the chancellor at the Munich airport on his arrival from Berlin, he authorized me to tell you that these reports are one and all base lies, end of quote. Humphstangl's answer to detailed questions about the persecution of Jews was, quote, the Berlin embassies of Sweden and Holland have investigated and have found that not a single Jew has been killed, end of quote. 43 murdered. The list of Jews shot or beaten to death by the storm troops
has been checked by us, and it shows a total of 43. These 43 are the cases in which the victims were murdered primarily because they were Jews, not because they were Marxists. These 43 authentic cases, which have been examined in every detail, represent only a small part, a fraction of the real number, which will undoubtedly come to light in the course of time, when it becomes possible to get more exact information on the actual incidents which have taken place in Hitler's
Germany. These 43 names are selected from many hundreds of names. All cases, which up to now it has been impossible to check satisfactorily, are left out of account. We do not want to estimate or think, but to prove actual facts. A few detailed examples are taken from the massive material before us. Quote, on the 18th of March 1933, a tragic doom claimed our dearly beloved and promising son, Siegbert Kinderman, baker's apprentice who had just completed his 18th year,
Moritz Kinderman, sign painter, and his wife, Franseka Strass of Five. Funeral, Sunday, March 26, 1933, 2 p.m., Vicency. No visits of condolence by request. End of quote. The Jewish apprentice Kinderman, whose tragic doom this inconspicuous notice announces, was attacked in 1932 by National Socialists because he was a member of the completely non-political Jewish sports society Bar Kokhba. In connection with this attack, a National Socialist was charged and convicted.
In order to revenge this conviction after Hitler's seizure of power, young Kinderman was dragged to the Nazi barracks in the Hedemonstrasse in Berlin and there literally beaten to death, his body being then thrown out into the street. A large Hockenkreuz was cut in his chest. An example from Castle. Dr. O. M. of Castle reports as follows, quote, on Friday, March 17, 1933, bands of Nazis went all over the town of Castle, dragging off members of the Jewish community whom, for any
reason, they did not like in order to bring them to trial. It should be noted that the victims were not persons who have been prominent in politics of any kind, the reason for their ill treatment was, as a rule, some petty spite on the part of the Nazi leaders. The following were particularly bad cases. Dr. Max Plout, a lawyer, was dragged out of his office by a large gang of Nazis and taken away in a closed car, which drove along the main street. As they drove along, he was forced
to shout Heil Hitler by blows with rubber batons, and each time he shouted, the Nazis roared with Glee. Plaut was taken to the Nazi headquarters, where a so-called court-martial was held and sentenced him for alleged professional shortcomings to 200 blows with rubber batons. He was then taken down to a cellar and strapped to a bench for the sentence to be carried out. He was then most terribly mishandled for almost two hours. After some time, Plaut fainted. Water was then thrown
over him until he revived, and he was given some alcohol by so-called sisters. When he had come to himself the mishandling was resumed. By the time the brutal punishment had been concluded, he had completely lost consciousness and was left covered with blood lying in a corner. Plout was then taken to his flat where he died 10 days later. The doctors who were called to attend him, Dr. Scholl, a nerve specialist, and Professor Tonneson, head doctor of the state hospital, found the most
terrible injuries including serious damage to the internal organs, especially kidneys and lungs. His back and legs gradually turned completely black. Plaut had to be kept on his bed in a permanent state of narcosis, as when he came to consciousness he screamed so terribly that he was heard in the street. After ten days of this, he died.
On another occasion, another lawyer, Herr Dahlberg, was most brutally treated in the same way as Plaut, and at the same place. It should be noted that sometime previously he had had a conflict in court with a lawyer who is now in an official position. This dispute was brought up against him while he was being mishandled.
There can be no doubt, therefore, that the tortures inflicted on Dahlberg were due to direct instructions from this high Prussian official, who had previously been in command of the Castle National Socialists. Dahlberg was so badly injured that for some days the doctors were afraid that one leg would have to be amputated, but fortunately it was found possible to save it.
Dahlberg is still severely affected by the results of his ill treatment. Another particularly bad case was that of a young Jewish merchant, Mosbach, against whom, so far as I know, the only accusation was that he had had relations with a Christian girl, though these had been discontinued. Nazis broke into his flat, and the presence of his mother beat him so brutally that his
head and spine were terribly injured. A doctor was called Dr. Stefan, who is politically on the extreme right, and he stated that even during the war he had never seen such an appalling sight. For a long time, Mossbach hovered between life and death, but his life was eventually saved. On the same day, also at Nazi headquarters, two merchants, Freudenstein and Ball, were beaten and severely injured,
both of them being dangerously ill for some time after. In both cases, the ill treatment was an act of personal revenge on the part of certain Nazis, but I have no details. There was also a case of a banker named Plaut being severely handled, but his injuries were not so severe. He was 60 years of age. The crimes of the Nazis in Hesse were certainly not restricted to Kassel.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that in every village in the province of Kassel where any Jews live, there have been similar cases, some of them appalling. I know that in some villages all the male members of the Jewish community have left their homes and only returned, if they have returned at all, after a long interval. End of quote.
Forced to sign a statement. Leo Krell, 25 years of age, living in the Skalitzerstrasse, Berlin, was attacked by a Nazi storm detachment and carried off to a Nazi barracks, where he was murdered. His body was then dropped in front of the Jewish cemetery. We mention this case because of what followed. His aged mother received a letter asking her to go and identify her son in the mortuary.
It was difficult for her to identify the body, which was mutilated in every way. The Hocken Kroes had been carved in his face and all over his body and burnt into the flesh. All that was left of her son was a mass of bleeding pulp. Faced with this mutilated body, the mother was compelled to sign a statement that her son had died, quote, after a long illness in hospital, end of quote.
Such statements are always demanded from relatives in the case of people who have been beaten to death. If any of the relatives ever hint, even in private, at what actually happened, they can look forward to being brought before a court and sentenced to many months if not years of imprisonment for taking part in an atrocity campaign. As a rule, the storm detachment people concerned tell the relatives that they will suffer the same fate if they do not, quote,
keep their mouths shut, end of quote. A deep silence lies over Germany. The people who are suffering dare not even call for help. That would be treason. 43 mutilated corpses of Jews who had been beaten to death with rubber batons, steel rods, and leather whips have been recorded up to now. People whose only crime was that they were Jews. We do not know the total number of such corpses that have been secretly buried. Perhaps 500, perhaps 1,000, perhaps even more. The future
will bring it to light. It is only after some years that it will be realized that all the reports of the brutalities carried out by Hitler's bandits, which have so far been published, fall far short of the appalling reality. 300 proved cases of barbarous cruelty. 43 mutilated corpses, identified and authenticated up to the present. And how many cases of people beaten almost to death or injured for life? Up to now, we have records of 301 cases of severe bodily injuries
inflicted on Jews, cases in which we have been in a position to verify the place and date of the crime and the identity of the person injured. The actual number of Jews who have suffered ill usage must already be considerably over 10,000. Of the 300 cases which we have been able to verify, we give the following examples. In the middle of April, a number of papers reported that Rabbi Jonas Frankel, who was over 80, had been attacked and severely ill-treated by storm detachment men
at his home in Berlin, Draganerstrasse 37. The government issued a denial of this report. The rabbi's daughter, Ella Frankel, reports the following details. Quote, How my father was to be murdered by Ella Frankel. At about 7 30 on the evening of March 7th, three storm troop auxiliary policemen forced their way into our flat at Draganerstrasse 37. Two of them held me prisoner with their revolvers pointed at my forehead and my breast.
The third shot at my father, who was sitting at his desk. Two bullets struck his head, and my father, streaming with blood, sank unconscious to the floor. One of the Nazis shouted, That's fixed him! Then they broke open the desk and stole all the money in it. My dowry of $5,000 and 2,000 marks. Before leaving, they warned me against calling for help and smashed the electricity connection so that the flat was left in darkness. We later ascertained that these auxiliary police were members of the Draganerstrasse storm troops. I lifted my father from where he was by the desk to the window, and for half an hour was calling for help. The street was cordoned off by Nazis and several squads of police. Anyone who attempted
to leave his house was driven back with blows from rubber batons. Eventually, some police officers came up, followed by officials of the Humane Society, with whom our neighbors had gotten into touch. They wanted to take my father to hospital, but I would not agree. Two days later, we were visited by an official from the Polish consulate. He found the flat still splashed with blood. For two weeks, my father lay helpless. We were afraid every hour that he was going to die.
On April 8th, some Nazis again came to the flat and demanded to see my father. They stated that if my father was willing to certify in writing that he had not been attacked by Nazis but by Jews, he would not be interfered with again. I told them that my father was too ill to write, and that they must come back again in two days' time. They drew their revolvers and forced both of us to give our words of honor that we would give them the certificate two days later.
As my father was determined in no case to give such a declaration, the only course left to us was to get away as quickly as possible. Two friends wrapped him up in a rug and took him away in broad daylight to friends living in a distant part of the town. I was almost out of my mind with anxiety. We had previously taken away the two scrolls of the law. Footnote. A scroll of the law consists of two tables of stone, round which is wound a parchment on which the Pentateuch
is inscribed. End of footnote. But we left everything else in the flat. I left the house in indoor clothes and without a hat, as our porter was a Nazi and he would immediately have denounced us. We took the train to Vienna. My father, whose head was covered with bandages, was represented as being very old and deaf. I said that I was traveling to Vienna and had promised to look after the old man on the way. Soon after the train left Berlin, a spy came and sat with us and put
questions to me, but he left the compartment when we reached Dresden as my answers had not made him suspicious. After Dresden, the examination of passengers began. German officials went from compartment to compartment asking, are you Jews? I took up my position at the door of the compartment in which there were only the two scrolls of the law besides my father. The officials had, however, already been given a report by the spy and they greeted me politely and said, ah, you are the
young lady traveling to Vienna and looking after the deaf old gentleman. We have this information already. So we succeeded in getting here and stopped at Reichenberg as my father was quite unable to travel any further then. Later we came on to Prague. My father is still lying here ill. End of quote. We have given this case in detail as it is a very typical one and we refer the reader to the accompanying photographs. A rabbi, 80 years of age, attacked and left for dead and is flat
robbed but the Dementi machine has the effrontery to announce to the press of the world that there was no such person as this rabbi. This case is typical of a thousand dementis of a regime which lies with an unscrupulous brutality equal to that with which it murders. Attacked in the synagogue. We want to state another case, the scene of which was a synagogue. Rabbi Beresh was in the synagogue in Joyceburg at the Divine Service when he was attacked and brutally handled. He was dragged out
through the street and after being wrapped in the black red gold flag was made to run the gauntlet through a crowd of shouting men. Finally he was arrested and the charge made against him was being responsible for public disorder in the street. The rabbi of Gelsenkirchen was driven out of the synagogue during the Sabbath service and with a number of other Jews was taken through the streets to the Nazi barracks. There they were all forced to turn their faces to the wall and
make genuflections. When the rabbi protested against this, he was laid across a ladder and beaten with a stick. Later he was set free and succeeded in escaping across the Dutch frontier. He arrived at Amsterdam so severely injured that he was unable to stand. Before the Nazis set him free, they forced him to sign a declaration that his imprisonment had been due to a misunderstanding. Pogroms. The Frankfurter Zeitung of April 24, 1933, contains the following announcement.
Quote, and informed the police. The police ascertained that the cries for help had come from the flat of Max Castle, a dairyman, 59 years of age. On entering, the officers found Castle lying dead on the floor of one of the rooms. On examination, the body showed bullet wounds which had proved fatal. Further investigations showed that several persons, by breaking in a door panel, had forced
their way into the flat and shot the man as he was running towards the window. The shots had been fired from an army revolver. The investigations did not produce any evidence showing that the motive of the crime was robbery, and the indications are that it was an act of revenge. End of quote. The official report of the second case states that on that Saturday at 2145, the police were called to the flat of a merchant, R, 58 years old, living in Wilhelmstrasse 20.
R was lying on the ground only just breathing. The body showed no injuries. A doctor ordered the man to be taken to hospital, but he died on the way from heart failure. The housekeeper, who was still in the flat, stated that at 2110, two young men had rung at the door of the flat and asked for R. When he came to the door, the two men pushed their way into the flat, and one of them pointed a revolver at R. R fled into another room and fell to the ground. The two attackers then
left the flat without giving any further explanation. According to the woman's description, they were two lads of between 20 and 23 years of age. We mention these cases because they seem to us typical of the actual pogrom which is being carried out. End of chapter 8, part 1.
