The German radio today announced that Hitler “is determined to annihilate the Jewish race in Europe” in accordance with a Reichstag speech which he made in 1939 prior to the outbreak of the world war.
“The Jews have seen fit to ignore the Fuehrer’s warning that if another world war is brought about by them, it would mean their annihilation in Europe, but now they will be made to pay for their crimes,” the announcer stated.
The Nazi broadcast was made in connection with German approval of the decision of the Rumanian government to expel the Jews in Bessarabia and Bukovina to ghettos in the occupied Ukraine. The Nazi radio rebroadcast the text of an inciting anti-Jewish letter sent by Gen. Ion Antonescu, the Rumanian Premier, to Dr. William Filderman, president of the Federation of Jewish communities in Rumania who protested against the ghetto measure. The letter, according to the Nazi radio, explained that “the measure was justified because of Jewish atrocities against Rumanians.”
“Have you, Dr. Filderman, ever asked yourself how many Rumanians were cowardly murdered by your co-racialists?” the letter of the Rumanian Premier read. “Those deeds of hatred committed against our patients in hospitals are now being remembered by our nation.”
In commenting upon this letter, the Nazi radio today said: “The nations which suffered from Jewish crimes are now giving the Jews the appropriate answer. The Jews, of all people, have the least reason to complain that at last the nations, bled white by them, wake up and find some means of protection. Let us recall what the Fuehrer said in his speech before the Reichstag on January 30, 1939. ‘Let it be perfectly plain,’ he declared. ‘If the international Jewish financiers in Europe and overseas should really again succeed in throwing the peoples into another world war, the result will not be the bolshevization of the world and thus ultimate victory of the Jews, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe’.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.