Children…

Jewish businesses terrorised
Following local initiatives throughout Germany to boycott
Jewish businesses, in April 1933, the Nazis organised
the first national effort to strike an economic blow
against the nation’s Jews.This included “warnings” plastered
on Jewish shop windows, medical surgeries and
lawyers’ offices, urging “Aryans” against visiting.
Doctor Hertha Nathorff, a Jewish medical practitioner,
wrote in her diary of an event from April 1933:
“This day is engraved in my heart in flames.To think
that such things are still possible in the twentieth century.
In front of all Jewish shops, lawyers’ offices, doctors’
surgeries and flats there are young boys with signs
saying, ’Don’t buy from Jews’, ’Don’t go to Jewish doctors’,
’Anybody who buys from Jews is a traitor’, ’Jews
are the incarnation of lies and deceit’. Doctors’ signs on
the walls of houses are soiled, and sometimes damaged,
and people have looked on, gawping in silence. They
must have forgotten to stick anything over my sign. I
think I would have reacted violently. It was afternoon
before one of these young boys visited me at home and
asked: ’Is this a Jewish business?’ ’This isn’t a business
at all; it’s a doctor’s surgery’, I said. ’Are you sick?’ (…)
In the evening we were with friends at the Hohenzollerndamm,
three couples, all doctors. They were all
quite depressed. One of the company, Emil, the optimist,
tried to convince us: ’It’ll all be over in a few
days.’ They don’t understand my anger when I say,
’They should strike us dead instead. It would be more
humane than the psychological death they have in
mind…’ But my instincts have always proved right.”
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