Prayers & Atrocities

Up rose Col. Josiah C. Wedgwood, Laborite, in the House of Commons last week.

"May I ask," he cried, "whether the Prime Minister is acquainted with the steps the American Government has taken in order to put an end to this state of things in Germany, and whether he has any confirmation of a story that 1,400 people have been put to death in Hamburg alone. . . . What has taken place recently in Germany has completely converted pro-German England into pro-French England!"

That ardent Tory, moon-faced Winston Churchill, jumped up to second him:

"During this anxious month there are a good many people who have said what I've been saying for years: Thank God for the French Army!"*

The story of the 1,400 Hamburgers was undoubtedly the week's high for atrocity stories. There were plenty of others. Filtering slowly through the German Press censorship the world Press gradually got a picture of what had been going on in Naziland:

Few if any Jews had been killed. Physical violence was on the wane, though for a few days, after the Reichstag election March 5. hundreds of Jews were beaten, Jewish homes raided. Conductor Bruno Walter was banned from the concert platform. Former Socialist Premier Braun of Prussia fled to Switzerland. Reports of the torturing to death of one Otto Lenz, Jewish storekeeper in Straubing, Bavaria, seemed authentic. Far more common than actual attacks on Jews was their dismissal from government and business posts and the picketing and boycotting of their stores. Nazi picketing was not limited to Jewish shops. U. S.-owned Woolworth stores were a particular object of attack.

Since the beginning of the War, great numbers of Eastern Jews have emigrated from Poland across Germany to the Palatinate, a province between French Alsace and the southern Rhine. Last week Palatinate Commissioner Birker issued an order freezing all postal savings and bank accounts of Jews in the province until their outstanding debts had been paid. This was explained as a move to prevent a wholesale dodging of obligations by a Jewish hegira over the French Border.

In Frankfort, ancestral home of Rothschilds and Schiffs, Hitlerite Police Chief von Westrem announced:

"Let the German Jews return to Palestine and rob each other reciprocally. No National Socialist attacks a Jew because the Nazi knows the Jew is inferior."

In Berlin hundreds of frightened Jews besieged the British consulate seeking visas to visit the Holy Land.

For a few days the Hitlerite Government ignored all stories of Jewish oppression, but the promptness and violence of world protest seemed to take them by surprise. Handsome Adolf's invaluable assistant, Minister Without Portfolio Hermann Goring, summoned foreign correspondents to his apartment for an angry, hour-long speech to the effect that the Jewish reign of terror had not taken place --but that it would stop at once.

"There is not one person in all Germany," he cried, "from whom even one fingernail has been chopped. It is true that some Storm Troopers have terribly beaten up this one or that one, but you must remember the terrible bitterness that has prevailed among men who have been persecuted for ten years. . . . Travelers from elsewhere coming here this summer will enjoy the fullest freedom and witness a nation proud of its resurrection."

A more sensible move was to rush correspondents to the city prison where Police Chief Rudolph Diehls showed them various Communist leaders that had been reported beaten to death, executed or exiled at different times in the past week. In the first cell sat Ernst Thalmann, Communist candidate for President in last year's election (TIME, April 18, 1932). Like a guide, in the zoo the Police Chief orated:

"You will observe that Thalmann looks physically fit. That he is not spiritually comfortable need not surprise you. . . . He further complains that he does not like the reading matter supplied to him."

Herr Thalmann smiled and held up a copy of Jolly Tales from Swabia.

In a nearby cage was Editor Werner Hirsch of the Communist Rote Fahne (daily).

"Have you anything to complain about?" he was asked.

"Nothing except that the evening papers yesterday claimed that I denied having-seen anybody badly handled. On the contrary I saw people with bloody eyes and other injuries delivered here from Nazi barracks. . . ."

To New York went a flood of denials of terrorist acts from German sources, many of them Jewish. Secretary of State Cordell Hull studied reports from U. S. consuls and the embassy in Berlin, and announced:

"Mistreatment" of Jews in Germany may be considered virtually terminated."

World Reaction-But it was too late. In the U. S. some 300 cities held protest meetings, the most important of which, in New York, was attended by almost everyone from Rabbi Stephen S. Wise to Bishop Manning and Alfred E. Smith. Rabbis throughout the country announced a day of fasting and prayer. Wholesalers cancelled-thousands of dollars worth of orders. The Europa announced that at least 25 steamship cancellations were due to Nazi terrorism. Other German lines admitted as many but claimed that the banking moratorium-had had more than a little to do with it. French & British importers and steamship agents rubbed their hands.

In Britain, too, mass meetings were called. Shopkeepers placed posters in their windows: BOYCOTT GERMAN GOODS! The Archbishop of Liverpool asked British Catholics to come to the aid of the Jews. In Lambeth Palace the Archbishop of Canterbury pondered over what step the Church of England should take.

In Paris a committee of Jewish aid was formed under former Premier Painleve, assisted by Baron Edmond de Rothschild and the chief Rabbi of France, Rev. Israel Levi.

*The team of Wedgwood & Churchill was also effective last week in scoring Ramsay MacDonald's tour of Europe in behalf of peace and the Mussolini Four-Power Pact (TIME. March 27). Said Winston Churchill: "We have got our modern Don Quixote home again, with Sancho Panza at his tail, bearing with them these somewhat dubious trophies which they have collected amidst the nervous tittering of Europe."

Of Premier MacDonald's very vague speech on the results of his mission Colonel Wedgwood remarked: "It reminded me gentlemen, of Robert Browning's Sordello, a poem which contained only two intelligible lines, the first and the last."

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