The Nazis are preparing to strike at the German Jews for the assassination of Wilhelm Gustloff, Nazi leader in Switzerland, by a Yugoslavian Jewish medical student.
On the heels of the banning of Gustloff’s party in Switzerland, it was learned today that measures of retaliation against the Jews will be definitely taken up at a special conference of Nazi Party leaders in Munich on Thursday.
The conference will be held preceding the celebration of the anniversary of the founding of the National Socialist Party on February 24.
It is not yet known whether the reprisals will be announced after the session or whether they are to be proclaimed during the celebration. The Nuremberg anti-Jewish laws were promulgated during a similar celebration last September 15.
It is assumed that the reprisals will have a profound effect on the economic existence of the Jews in the Reich. The field of business and commerce remains as perhaps the only one where the status of the Jews has not been completely fixed.
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’ newspaper, Der Angriff, declared in an editorial that the Nazi Government would turn a deaf ear to foreign opinion in connection with the ousting of the Jews from commercial life of the Reich. This was taken as an additional indication that such laws were impending.
Urging that the Jews be eliminated first from trading in raw materials, the paper asserted that “the cry which will then break out should not influence us.”
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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.