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After
years of struggle the new Laws passed by the Reichstag
at the Party Congress of Freedom...establish absolutely
clear relations between the German Nation (Deutschtum)
and Jewry. Unmistakably clear expression has been
given to the fact that the German people has no
objection to the Jew as long as he wishes to be a
member of the Jewish people and acts accordingly, but
that, on the other hand, he declines to look on the
Jew as a fellow-member of the German Nation (Volksgenosse)
and to accord him the same rights and duties as a
German.
The
International Zionist Congress has just been in
session in Switzerland, a Congress which also put an
end very plainly to any talk of Judaism being simply a
religion. The speakers at the Zionist Congress stated
that the Jews are a separate people and once
again put on record the national claims of Jewry.
Germany
has merely drawn the practical consequences from this
and is meeting the demands of the International
Zionist Congress when it declares the Jews now living
in Germany to be a national minority. Once the Jews
have been stamped a national minority it is again
possible to establish normal relations between the
German Nation and Jewry. The new Laws give the Jewish
minority in Germany their own cultural life, their own
national life. In future they will be able to shape
their own schools, their own theater, their own sports
associations; in short, they can create their own
future in all aspects of national life. On the other
hand, it is evident that from now on and for the future
there can be no interference in questions
connected with the Government of the German people,
that there can be no interference in the national
affairs of the German Nation.
The
German people is convinced that these Laws have
performed a healing and useful deed, for Jewry in
Germany itself, as for the Germans. Germany has given
the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for itself
and is offering State protection for this separate
life of the Jewish minority: Jewry's process of growth
into a nation will thereby be encouraged and a
contribution will be made to the establishment of more
tolerable relations between the two nations.
Juedische
Rundschau, No.
75, September 17, 1935.
*
Written by the editor, A.I. Berndt. |
