From The Fraternal Visitor Christadelphian Magazine (1938):
Until quite recently the Jews in Germany found that Berlin was the most tolerant city in the country, but towards the end of June they became the objects of violence and outrage. Hundreds were arrested during the week-end of June 18th-20th, they are now excluded from the Stock Exchange, and recent decrees on Jewish business destroy their last chance to make a living. It is thought that these excesses, the responsibility for which clearly rests upon the German Government, are designed to impress upon other countries the necessity of drawing up some effective plan of Jewish emigration at the Conference at Evian in July, convened by President Roosevelt. In Vienna, the plight of the Jews is deplorable. Every Jewish employee in that city has been given 14 days’ notice of dismissal from office, factory or shop, and it will soon be well nigh impossible for a Jew to retain any sort of employment. Jewish employers have been told to dismiss Jewish servants and engage no more This affects many thousands of men and women in greater Vienna, where Jews number nearly 300,000 in a population of just over 2,000,000.
- The Fraternal Visitor, July 1938
The latest act of callous inhumanity against the Jews is the expulsion at a moment’s notice of thousand of Polish Jews from Germany at the end of October. This action was taken because it was thought that they were going to be deprived of Polish citizenship by the Polish Government and would become a liability on Germany. It provoked a threat of retaliation against Germans in Poland and this put an end to the expulsions but not before 6,000 Jews had been driven destitute into Poland and 4,000 left homeless and starving between the frontiers. There is justice in the “Spectator’s” comment that “the most significant factor in the whole situation is the cynical contempt shown for human, as distinguished from political rights; loss or cancellation of a passport turns human beings into homeless animals whom no man need respect, without any protection against the most brutal mistreatment. Central Europe contains millions of Jews living under Governments which take this view of them, and unless other countries interest themselves in their fate they may soon have no choice but to be starved and tortured to death. The Jewish problem, in all its horrors, shows how far Europe really is from the era of peace and reconciliation between men that politicians so hopefully predict.”
- The Fraternal Visitor, November 1938
GERMANY’S vengeance for the murder of Herr von Rath by a Polish Jew in Paris has been terrible indeed. On Thursday morning, November 10th, by a plan which must have been concerted, thousands of Jews were beaten up, their shops were wrecked and looted, and nearly all their synagogues were burned to the ground. Government action then began by the arrest and consignment to the concentration camps of thousands of innocent people. Everywhere the Jews went in fear of their lives, leaving their homes and seeking shelter from their persecutors. A collective fine of about £80,000,000 has been imposed upon the Jews in Germany and they have been compelled to make good the damage done to their property by Nazi mobs. Henceforth they will excluded from all economic activity in Germany, and new restrictive laws are imposed daily which make it more and more difficult for the Jew to stave off pauperisation and starvation. Seldom has the common instinct of the civilized world been so deeply aroused as by Germany’s treatment of the Jews. The immediate impulse to help the victims of persecution is widespread and is an antidote to what the Archbishop of York described as the world’s “moral numbness.” The Australian Government has decided to admit 15,000 refugees during the next three years. International consultations are now in progress for the purpose of solving the refugee problem. Most of the democratic countries are willing to take a small number of refugees, but the aggregate effort can only alleviate the distress. Colonisation requires capital, and when Germany permits the Jews to lave that country they cannot bring more than their personal necessities, £500 per family is by many experts considered a minimum figure for colonisation, and when this fact is applied to the number of Jews in Germany needing relief––nearly half-a-million––the magnitude of the task becomes apparent.