31st January 1933
Sign of the Times
Jüdische Rundschau: Editorial on the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor
In part: 'As Jews we are confronted by the fact that a power inimical to us has taken over the government in Germany... National Socialism is a movement hostile to the Jews. Its antisemitism is programmatic to a degree that no other party has been. It owes a large part of its propagandistic success to the unscrupulous smear campaign against the Jews... when Hitler was rejected by the Reich President on 13 August and 25 November, we did not in any way appear as relieved and satisfied as did part of the Jewish community that refuses to see the big picture and clings to isolated political phenomena of the day... one can say that, even without Hitler's seizure of power, the exclusion of the Jews was already being conducted under pressure from Hitler's party.'
[An example of this being Leo Kestenberg (1882-1962), dismissed by the Reich government from the head of music in the Prussian Ministry of Culture in 1932]
Continuing: 'When Hitler was rejected for the first time, the Judische Rundschau made striking parallels with the creator of the Christian Social Party in Vienna, Dr. Lueger... who in his time was as much the symbolic figure of antisemitism for the world as Hitler is today...'
[Dr. Karl Leuger (1844-1910), lawyer; practised law in Vienna, 1874-1896; founder of the antisemitic Christian Social Party in Austria, 1891; mayor of Vienna, 1897-1910]
Further continuing: 'The Reich President, who has appointed Hitler, is bound by his constitutional oath, his moral authority, and his international reputation. the civic equality of German Jews is, however, anchored in the constitution of the Reich. We can only repeat what we wrote in these pages on 12 August [1932]: 'If Hitler becomes Reich Chancellor, the programme of the National Socialist Party, with its well known anti-Jewish statutes, must not become the programme of the German Reich. As party leader, Hitler could draw upon the support of the masses he has fanaticised, but as Reich Chancellor he has to recognise that Germany consists of different elements that have a right to respect for their distinctiveness'... It goes without saying that German Jewry will fight with all means and energy against every attempt at formal and factual disenfranchisement and dispossession...'
The Jüdische Rundschau emerged in 1902 as the organ of the Zionist Federation for Germany. It appeared twice weekly in Berlin in 1933. In 1934 it had a circulation of 37,000. Banned in Germany after the pogroms of November 1938, it was published from March 1939 to 1940 in Jerusalem as the Jüdische Weltrundschau.
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