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George Messersmith’s Report to the State Department on the "Present Status of the Anti-Semitic Movement in Germany" (September 21, 1933)

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There is transmitted herewith a copy of the questionnaire which must be filled in by all persons who desire to be appointed to any public office in Germany or to hold an office in an official or semi-official organization. The interesting questions are found on page 4 where the applicant is required to give very detailed information with regards to his parents and grandparents. All German officials, high and low, are being required to fill in this form and they are carefully examined. Those who cannot prove their Aryan origin by supporting documents or who are not accepted under the “Beamtengesetz” are separated from their office.

As an indication of the extent to which the anti-Semitic movement is carried, it is interesting to note that a new telephone alphabet has been published by the German Post Office, which is to be effective throughout the country. It was customary when spelling names on the telephone, to use “Samuel” for the letter S, but this must now be “Siegfried”; and instead of “Nathan” for N, it must now be “Nordpol”.

The Department is aware of the steps which have been taken in various universities and throughout the various cities in Germany to exclude from the libraries books written by Jewish authors. In this connection the following order issued by the appropriate Prussian Ministry to universities, high schools, etc., is of interest:

“For scientific libraries, the confiscation or destruction of Jewish or Marxistic books does not come in question. The lending, however, of such books is to be carried on with the greatest care in the future. Such books can only be given out when the lender can show that he needs the books for serious scientific investigational work.”

As indicative of the popular sentiment, I wish to bring to the Department’s attention a meeting which took place in the Sport Palast in Berlin on the evening of September 18. The meeting was addressed by Dr. Habicht, whose speech was reported in a number of the Berlin newspapers. He was followed by Schultze Wechsungen, who is the National Socialist propaganda chief for the Berlin district. Some 6,000 persons were present at this meeting and listened with interest and enthusiasm to the speech which Mr. Wechsungen made attacking the Jews. He advocated increasing the total of 40,000 persons now in the concentration camps by sending there large number of Jews, as this would help the unemployment problem. He demanded the further persecution of the Jews in Germany and advocated the beating of German women who dared to appear in public with Jews. He states that far too many who belong in the concentration camps are still free but one by one they will go there. He added that the Jews have good reason to thank their God that Hitler is the National Socialist leader. If Hitler were not their leader the Jews in Germany would no longer exist. He went on to say that as propaganda chief of the Berlin district he decreed that in the future every Aryan German girl who is seen in a restaurant or on the street with a Jew, must be given a good beating. “The municipal administration must keep the drainage system working. The Storm Troopers of the National Socialist Party have to take care of the other purifying measures.” This speech was so outrageous that not a single newspaper in Berlin carried an account of it and only one newspaper made any mention at all that Wechsungen had spoken at the meeting. A correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune and [a correspondent] of the International News Service were present at the meeting and took stenographic notes of Wechsungen’s speech.

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