The division of time into convenient spans for the purposes of review is, historically, a strictly Jewish concept. The New Year of the Hebrew calendar is not, as is well known, an occasion for hilarious celebration, but a day of judgment. The Auditor on High opens on Rosh Ha’Shanah the “Sofer Hazichronoth.” Solemnly and fearfully “all creatures pass in review” before their Creator. Their record of achievement or of failure, within the period under review, is the basis for the award of merit or the infliction of punishment. Individually, the Jew has thus been trained to a knowledge of the facts affecting his own life, to a rigorous discipline of strict accountability in relation to God and fellow man. Diaspora life has made this system of meticulous accounting almost imperative with regard to the acts, facts and conditions affecting Jewry as a whole. Too frequently the view and review have been localized and narrow.
It is to the birth of our national movement and to Zionism in particular that we owe the habit – instituted by Max Nordau at the early Zionist Congress – of assembling the facts of Jewish life from all four corners of the globe and of preparing Jewry’s national balance sheet. For this purpose, the totality of the Jewish scene, as reflected in the events within a given time, had to be studied and reviewed. At the turn of the century and for decades afterwards – how incredibly good those “good old days” now appear by comparison! – the world would hear from the platform of the Zionist Congress a detailed account of events affecting Jewry everywhere. With a penetrating analysis and in lucid accents, the unforgettable Nordau would, on the stones of Jewish misery, hew in relief what the immortal Herzl had diagnosed in brief as the “Juden-not.” On the basis of the facts he would make a presentment before the bar of public opinion, which, in every detail, constituted a true indictment of humanity’s inhumanities to the Jew. Charging the Jewish will to survive with new energy for self-aid and redemption through a national rebirth, his word-picture of the Jewish scene would simultaneously carry with it a ringing challenge to the conscience of a civilized world.
The reviewer of events in 5696, no matter how tenaciously optimistic his belief may be in the ultimate triumph of right, cannot delude himself with the hope that his reader will, however indirectly, derive a measure of dubious comfort that usually fills the heart of the aggrieved in relation to the wrongdoer. The defendant before the bar of public opinion does not deny his guilt; on the contrary, he boasts of it. In a world that cherished liberty, still clinging to the ideals proclaimed by the American and French Revolutions and pretending to be guided by them, there was comfort as well as hope in an appeal to its conscience, although that “conscience” reacted hesitatingly and rather grudgingly to an appeal for right that was not buttressed by might. What comfort or hope, it may seem, can there be found in a world which is driven by fear, consumed by hatred and guided by madness on a road that leads to certain disaster unless the unforeseeable and the miraculous happen? Where is the ray of light to be found on a horizon which is dominated by the nightmare of a Nazism apparently triumphant?
He who contemplates the 5696 scene is not, however, without cheer. That cheer has its origin in the reassurance – call it faith or life instinct – that resides in a people which looks at the world and its history from the height of 5696: a people that has a recorded history of three thousand years, having survived and triumphed over oppression and tyrannies in preceding dark ages.
Nazism Spreads Out
The events which cast their shadow over the 5696 scene may thus be reviewed and understood in their proper relation if the scene is divided into two distinct zones: the areas which have been infested or affected by the Nazi disease; and that fortunately larger part of the globe where quarantine measures, taken in time, have been successful in keeping out or at least in preventing the spread of the plague. From the outset it may be stated that the year under review witnessed a series of amazingly successful moves on the part of the Hitler machine to spread out its tentacles far beyond the frontiers of the Third Reich. Having established itself on a firmer basis within the Reich, Hitlerism put an abrupt end to the gains of the emancipation era obtained by German Jewry after a long struggle. The legal, cultural and economic status of the Jew in Germany has been completely destroyed.
The year opened with the enactment of the infamous Nuremberg Laws which virtually transported German Jewry back to the dark ages. In September, the Reichstag, convening in that ancient German city, “affirmed” Adolph Hitler’s decree which deprives the Jews of their citizenship, excludes them from the army, forbids what has been described as “race shame” (any relations between a Jew and an Aryan), prohibits the employment by Jewish housewives of Aryan female servants up to an advanced age, and imposes numerous other restrictions, all of which have as their purpose the degradation of the Jew to the status of a pariah.
Although it was stated at the time that legislation as to the economic position of the Reich’s Jewry was being postponed to a later date (presumably until after the Olympic Games), a ruthless and relentless process of “liquation” (synonymous in present-day German with practical confiscation) of Jewish business enterprises in various fields was going on throughout the year. Particularly was this process severe in the smaller towns and cities, where the eyes of foreign observers could not easily penetrate. True enough, the Olympic games which Hitler was anxious to retain in the face of a strong opposition abroad, and particularly in the U.S., have served a humanitarian purpose. They provided the bleeding Jews of the Reich with a comparative breathing spell from more drastic measures.
As it was, the pressure upon German Jewry was of such crushing force that, according to a reliable estimate, 100,000 Jews (of whom 35,000 settled in Palestine) left the Reich since the advent of Hitlerism. Within the same time, the number of Jewish deaths exceeded the number of Jewish births in the Reich by 25,000. The problem of the 400,000 Jews still remaining in the Reich was thus reduced to the terrifying formula: emigration or extinction. Coupled with this process was the systematic cultural segregation of German Jewry which now lives in a virtual ghetto. A separate Jewish school system has been established to which a majority of Jewish children have been transferred.
These conditions led the Hon. James G. McDonald, the outstanding American publicist and statesman, to resign from his post as League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Jewish and other) from Germany. His letter of resignation, addressed to the League Council, contained a scathing denunciation of Nazi barbarities and appealed for the League’s intercession. This unprecedented persecution aroused the warmest compassion of Jews throughout the world for their kinsmen. It also led to two acts of violence: an assassination and a suicide. David Frankfurter, a Jewish student, shot and killed Wilhelm Gustloff, chief Nazi propagandist in Switzerland. This occurred in February at Gustloff’s home in Davos, Switzerland. Frankfurter is to be tried for murder by a Swiss court in October. In July, a Jewish newspaperman from Czechoslovakia committed suicide while attending a public session of the League as a means – according to a note left by him – of drawing the attention of the assembled statesmen to the bitter fate of German Jewry.
But the Nazi regime has not remained satisfied with its successes within the Reich. Parallel with its violations of international treaties and the revival of the old dream of a Mittel-Europa under the German heel, a gigantic Nazi propaganda machine has been working overtime on all fronts. Seeking its own political ends and exerting its vilest influence to entangle its near and distant neighbors in its design for conquest and world domination, the Nazi machine used its “exemplary” solution of its Jewish problem as the most effective bait as well as screen. First in the line of the attack came the countries with comparatively compact Jewish populations, where anti-Semitism has had a fertile field even without the example of instigation of the Nazi.
Clouds over the Vistula
Heavy clouds hung over the misty skies on the banks of the Vistula as the Republic of Poland, which had sprung into existence by the magic of President Wilson’s fourteen points, continued its dangerous flirtation with Nazi Germany. While it was doubtful whether the fraternity between Poles and “Szwabs” would withstand the first clash of interests or arms (within the past fortnight Poland has returned to the embrace of its former ally, France), this fraternizing between Warsaw and Berlin has had a most salutary effect on the mood of the Polish urban [masses] as well as [the] rural masses in regard to the three and one-half million Jews of the Republic.
The heirs and successors to the power and glory of the late Marshal Pilsudski cannot be accused of instigating anti-Semitism in a vulgar or wild form. They cannot, however, be exonerated of the charge that governmental policies, often taking the shape of legislation, are directly aimed at destroying the economic foundations of the country’s Jewish population. Nor can they be credited with willingness or ability to enforce law and order – they are somehow very effective when other interests are at stake – when the safety of Jews is being menaced.
And so the year opened with a strong movement in government circles to prohibit the Shechitah in the Republic. A bill to this effect had been introduced in the Sejm by no less a personage than the wife of the speaker of the Polish Senate. A day of fast[ing] and prayer was declared by the Rabbinate of Poland. A wave of indignation and protest against this unjustifiable attack on the Jewish religion swept over the Western world. Suddenly, those interested in the prevention of cruelty dropped their tender feelings for Polish animals. They remained satisfied with passing a law restricting the volume of Kosher slaughtering with the result that a great many Jewish families lost their means of gaining a livelihood.
Political and economic pressure on the Jews of Poland has become so heavy that this vast population, which has had its deep roots in the country since the middle of the 9th century [Christian Era], is literally in a state of a bottled-up exodus. The economic misery of Polish Jewry simply cries to heaven for relief. And while Polish statesmen are not at all adverse to manifesting sympathetic interest in the matter on the international arena (they are preparing now to raised the issue of Jewish emigration at the September session of the League Assembly; incidentally, this may place in their hands an additional powerful argument in support of Poland’s demand for oversea colonies), the authorities that exercise power in the country have done little, if anything, either to alleviate the oppressive conditions or to curb the organized attempts at intimidation, which often take on the character of an anti-Jewish terror.
Illustrative of these conditions, which are particularly acute in the smaller towns, were the events which took place in March in the small town of Przytyk, Poland. Following the prolonged agitation among the local peasantry, a mob attacked the Jewish community in broad daylight. With unusual ferocity, Jewish homes were ransacked, two Jews brutally murdered and scores wounded. The Jewish population throughout the Republic declared a one-day strike in protest against the Government’s failure to prevent the attack or to hold the mob in check. Non-Jewish labor groups joined in the protest. Subsequently, 14 Jews and 43 Poles were tried on charges arising out of the Przytyk events. What ensued cannot be regarded in any other manner but as a mockery of justice, for the Polish judge saw fit to free the murderers of the two Jewish victims while a Przytyk Jew who shot and killed one of the attackers in self-defense was sentenced to death. Stale falsehoods against the Talmud, long disproved, were aired in court by counsel for the defense.
Under the Swastika
The shadow of the Swastika fell gloomily and menacingly on the Jewish communities of Austria, Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
Austrian Jewry lived through a year of high tension intensified by the unfriendly and discriminatory attitude of the Schussnig government as the Fascist but not officially Nazified regime carried on its zigzag policy of swaying now toward Rome, now toward Berlin. The near future does not appear too bright, now that Berlin and Vienna have become closely linked through the recently concluded pact.
Romania, whose Cuzists and anti-Semites are of many varieties have never ceased to engage in the daily task of annoying and harassing its Jewish population of one million, has welcomed a new addition to the anti-Semitic family: the Iron Guard. The Nazi parentage of this new Romanian offspring is clearly discernible. The country, long an ally of France, has during the past year been torn between two powerful blocks: the pro-French and the pro-German. After a year of extensive Nazi propaganda in which Jew-hatred a la Hitler played no small part, the pro-French forces, headed by the former foreign minister, Titulescu, were pushed into the background. Romania, governed by a new Cabinet in which the Titulescu party has no influence, may definitely be placed in the Nazi column. What this means to the safety and status of Romanian Jewry needs hardly to be pointed out.
In Czechoslovakia, whose government under that truly great statesman, Edouard Benes, maintains the friendliest attitude toward Jews and Jewish problems, the Nazi menace assumed considerable proportions. The Henlein party, professing to represent eight million Germans in the Republic, with irredentist leanings, scored a great victory at the polls in the last general elections. But here, the Jews are not alone, as the growth of the danger is an equal menace to the existence of the Republic [itself].
The saddening picture presented by the state of affairs in the countries enumerated above has its happy contrast in conditions on the Balkan Peninsula. The Balkans, once the powder keg of Europe, are now in close economic connection with Nazi Germany. Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey are Germany’s best buyers. Germany is also their best customer. And yet quiet prevailed on the Balkan front, except for a minor anti-Jewish disturbance in Yugoslavia and the decree issued by the Greek government prohibiting the teaching of modern Hebrew in the Jewish community school for some unexplainable reason.
Turkey absorbed a considerable number of Jewish scientists, refugees from Germany, making room for them on the faculties of its institutions of learning.
Interest in Zionism and emigration to Palestine have grown considerably in Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey, even though the country of which Palestine was formerly a province still looks with disfavor on [the] Zionist movement. The Turkish government is placing great obstacles in the way of those Turkish Jews who immigrate to the Jewish National Home.
On the other hand, it should be noted that the tentacles of Nazism have reached as far as South Africa, where Hitler’s agents carried on extensive propaganda in the former German colonies. Nazi influences were also rampant in Shanghai, China, where a strong pro-German and anti-Jewish movement was noticeable in certain press organs.
In the South African Union, where Jews enjoyed tranquility and prosperity, the government officially took a stand against the boycott of Nazi goods and services fostered by Jews. There was also on foot a strong movement pushed by the nationalists to close the Union’s gates to the small stream of refugees from Germany that had been trickling in.
Democracy Stands Guard
Democracy stood guard over its cherished liberties, refusing to fall for the Nazi bait of anti-Semitism in the expansive English-speaking world, in France, in Holland, in Belgium, and in the Scandinavian countries.
In the United States, a marked decline was noted in the public activities of the Nazi societies among the German Americans. Our country was also the battleground for the most energetic fight against the participation of American athletes in the Olympics. This gallant fight, led by the Hon. Jeremiah T. Mahoney, although it failed of its purpose, has served as an occasion as well as an indicator for the abhorrence in which the overwhelming majority of the American people held the Nazi practices.
While the undercover attempts to inject anti-Semitism as an issue in the current presidential campaign may be ascribed to the usual eruptions of the political volcano and may be expected to evaporate after November, considerable concern has been aroused by the emergence of what seems to be a native American anti-Semitic movement with a strong Hitler tinge. Interest is centered in the influence of the none-too-friendly, although only indirectly anti-Jewish radio-priest, [Father] Coughlin. Secret terroristic bands, of which the Black Legion, recently exposed and suppressed in Michigan, have also made their appearance in what may rightfully be described as the anti-Semitic underworld.
British Jewry, too, has had for the first time in decades to take special measures of defense against anti-Semitic agitation and attempts at violence inspired by Fascists. Mosley’s Black Shirts and kindred groups developed a propaganda of growing extent. Attacks on Jewish passersby in the East End of London have had their repercussions in the House of Congress. The ritual-murder accusation was revived and made use of by one of the Jew-baiting journals.
The world watches with the greatest interest the developments in France, where Leo Blum, Socialist and Jew, rose to power as Prime Minister of the Popular Front Government. It is the irony of history that the year which witnessed some of Hitler’s great impudences should be coincidental with the period of the rise of Leon Blum as France’s leading statesman and defender. On the success of the Blum “new deal” policies depend not only the fate of democracy in France, but also the lot of French Jewry. The first Jew to occupy this high position, Blum has been the target of attack on the part of reactionary forces in the country where De La Roque’s “Croix de Feux” had previously developed a not inconsiderable later of anti-Jewish feeling.
The fate of some 30,000 Jews in Spain and in North African positions is bound up with the outcome of the civil war now raging in the country. Tragically enough, some of the Jews in Spain now awaiting with anxiety the outcome have but recently left the land of the Nazis.
U.S.S.R.
In Soviet Russia, where anti-Jewish hooliganism of the old type seems indeed to have been stamped out, the cultural and religious disintegration of a once-virile Jewry continued under the Communist dictatorship. Safe in body, the spirit of Russian Jewry as known for centuries is slowly but surely taking on a new aspect.
Much expectation was aroused by the avowed intention of the Stalin regime to implement a new Soviet Constitution under which freedom of religious worship will be guaranteed. This, it was thought, may possibly lead to the lifting of the severe restrictions on the instruction of Hebrew and to the repeal of prohibitions on Zionism. It was also hoped that under a more liberal procedure the Zionist exiles would be allowed to return home from their internment in the Solovetzky Islands. But the new fundamental law has not yet been implemented and what course events will take is merely a matter of speculation.
Biro-Bidjan, which is now a Jewish Autonomous Region and is slated to become a Jewish Republic within the Soviet Union, if and when its population growth and upbuilding progress warrant it, has not a population of 50,000 souls. Of these, 15,000 are Jews. A considerable number of the first pioneers who could not adjust themselves to their new environment returned to their native towns and villages in the other parts of the Union. Negotiations were, however, under way between the Moscow authorities and Jewish groups abroad with a view to allowing and encouraging the immigration to Biro-Bidjan of non-Soviet Jews.
The swift executions which followed the Zinovieff-Kameneff trial, and the ensuing mass arrests of Trotskyites among whom many Jews were to be found, gave rise to an opinion in some quarters that the Stalin regime is determined to “purge” the party of the influence of its Jewish members.
Constructive Defense
Under the impact of the attack on the status of the Jew and under the pressure of the swiftly occurring events, Jewish life in 5696 took on the aspect of a people fighting with its back to the wall, but exerting every effort for defense of its position. Parallel with the defensive action, there were numerous efforts at reconstruction: relief in the Diaspora countries; constructive upbuilding work in Eretz Israel.
Outstanding on the defense front was the event which took place in the month of August in Geneva, Switzerland. There the first session of the World Jewish Congress was held with the participation of about 300 delegates representing five to six million Jews who reside in 32 countries. The World Jewish Congress, an idea and ideal which occupied the thought of Jewish democracy for several decades and became the subject of bitter controversy, particularly in the United States, was finally fashioned, under the leadership of Dr. Stephen S. Wise and Louis Lipsky, into an authoritative agency for the defense of Jewish rights and the protection of the Jewish position. The sessions, which were held in the League of Nations Assembly Hall and were conducted on a high and dignified level, attracted world-wide attention and resulted in the formulation of constructive plans and the establishment of an apparatus that, it is hoped, will soon be fully equipped to cope with the great responsibilities entrusted to it.
The various plans to cope with the problem of German Jewry through coordinated emigration – a subject which had impelled Sir Herbert Samuel, Lord Bearsfed and Simon Marks to undertake a special trip to the United States for the purpose of conferring with leaders of American Jewry – have finally crystalized into the creation of a Council for German Jewry with Sir Herbert as Chairman of the British section and Felix M. Warburg as Chairman of the American section. The Council is to undertake the gigantic task of transferring 100,000 Jews, up to the age of 35, from Germany to Palestine and other lands. Fifty percent of that number is to be directed to Palestine. A revolving fund of $15,000,000, to be contributed by British and American Jewry, is to be placed at the disposal of the Council.
Plans for extending the scope of Jewish emigration from Eastern and Central Europe have also been formulated and special steps taken to extend immigrant aid service at the HIAS-ICA Emigration Association Conference held in the early part of July in Paris. Representatives of emigrant and immigrant aid societies from 30 countries attended this conference, which marked the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the HICEM, a partnership in service to the cause of the Jewish wanderer between American Jewry’s HIAS and the Jewish Colonization Association.
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which has a distinguished record of service in the field of philanthropic aid to Jewish communities in many parts of the world, has continued its work during the year under review.
The boycott on Nazi goods and services, adopted by numerous Jewish organizations in cooperation with labor and liberal groups, as a measure of defense against Hitlerism, has continued. Valuable services have been rendered in this field by the Non-Sectarian League, the Boycott Committee of the American Jewish Congress,[1] the Jewish Labor Committee, and the American Federation of Labor. It should be recorded that in the past year the prosecution of the boycott has met with growing difficulties in many countries caused by the political maneuvers of the respective governments.
The American Jewish Committee, the Alliance Israelite Universelle and a number of other organizations have drafted and submitted to the League of Nations a document of international importance relative to the status of German Jewry under the Nazi regime. The document, which bears the form of a petition, urges the intervention of the League and it is expected that one of the leading European powers will sponsor this move at the forthcoming session of the League Council.
Zionism Gains Momentum
Zionism, as the expression of the Jewish people’s will to live, has scored even greater gains during the past year, notwithstanding the disquieting and even alarming reports coming out of Eretz Israel since April 19th, the beginning of the Arab terror.
In the United States, Zionist fundraising agencies have been consolidated into the United Palestine Appeal, which, seeking to raise the amount of $3,500,000, has presented to American Jewry the claim of Eretz Israel to a position of parity in the planning of Jewish communal budgets. Notable has also been the progress made by the Jewish National Fund,[2] which attained an income unprecedented since the peak year of the prosperity period. Corresponding gains have also been recorded by the Keren Hayesod and Keren Kayemeth in their fundraising activities in all parts of the world.
A notable event in the annals of American Zionism was the 39th Annual Convention, held in Providence, Rhode Island, which resulted in the election by acclamation of Dr. Stephen S. Wise as the President of the Zionist Organization of America.
The unshakable faith of Jewry in the Zionist ideal and in the ultimate attainment of the Zionist goal in Eretz Israel, notwithstanding temporary difficulties and setbacks, was demonstrated in the attitude of the Jewish communities toward the events in Palestine during the progress of the Arab campaigns of terror. Admiration for the strength of the Yishub in the face of provocation-protest against the vacillating policy of the Palestine Government and a demand upon the Mandatory Government to live up to the letter and spirit of the Mandate have been the notes, sounded with confidence, courage and hope, in the mighty echo which has vibrated throughout Diaspora Jewry in response to the events in Eretz Israel.
[1] William Z. Spiegelman was the head of the American Jewish Congress’ Boycott Committee in 1934.
[2] William Z. Spiegelman had been the head of the JNF’s publicity campaigns in the U.S. since 1930.
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