Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Jews in Communist Germany, Aug. 1950

2015; Oxford University Press; Volume: 60; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/leobaeck/ybv015

1758-437X

Rabbi Steven S. Schwarzschild,

Communism, Protests, Social Movements

Even people who ought to know – and who either have frequent occasion to speak at length to Jews living in that part of the country or who may themselves often go there– as soon as they are asked about the situation of the Jews in that part of Germany which lies “behind the Iron Curtain” usually make a number of stereotyped statements which include the following: 1. “Whatever you may think of communism, you must admit that the Jews are not persecuted as such.” 2. “The fact of the matter is that, whereas no less than 250 tabulated desecrations of Jewish cemeteries, including those of the former concentration camps, have taken place in Western Germany, none have occurred in Eastern Germany.” 3. “Whatever one may think of communist political methods generally, there is no resurgence of Nazism in the hierarchy of the Eastern German state.” 4. “It is a fact that a number of Jews have attained to prominent offices in the ’German Democratic Republic’ (the name of the Eastern German state).” 5. “No such intentional and continual postponement of restitution as has become the hallmark of the Federal German Republic (the technical name of the Western German state) has occurred in the East; the Veit Harlans, the Ilse Kochs and their ilk would not have gone scot-free if they had been tried under Eastern German auspices.”1