224
T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
July, 1933
and faces the great hills: ‘I do not know why! I know that we are needed . . . W e are slaves—-the slaves of righteous ness, o f the ultimate humanities, o f the moral energy whose name is Love.’ ” "W h y ?” “ Why?” "W h y ?” How often has that word oozed through bated breath, or burst as an agonizing cry from the lips of the wanderer of the cen turies. None but the prophets o f Israel themselves have an answer to that “ why.” “ We are not wanted anywhere,” sadly said a Jew re cently. He is right. A t best, in the lands where he has suffered least, he is only tolerated. Even in America, Jews in our universities are being put more and more sharply on the defensive. Jewish influence in many departments of our activities— the theater, the press, music, finance— is deprecated. “ In twenty-five, in fifty years at most,” said Lewisohn, “ we shall, if the present confusions o f the world continue, have a situation that resembles the German situation at all points.” The current may not appear to the casual observer on the surface o f affairs in America. It is an underlying current that may rise to the surface with a mad rush, in a day, in this rapidly changing world. Shadows Falling upon the Jews in Germany Consider what is happening in Germany even as you read. And yet, just a few short years ago, when the Ger man armies overran Poland, the German high command issued an appeal in Yiddish to the unhappy Jews in Poland: Our flags bring you j ustice and liberty and equal rights, religious freedom, liberty to work undisturbed in all departments of both the economic and the cultural life of your own spirit. Too long have you groaned under the iron yoke o f the Muscovite. . . . Clear our road to de feat the enemy and bring the victory of liberty and justice! And that appeal was signed by Ludendorff, archfoe o f the Jews and a right hand man to Hitler in their present persecution! No sooner was the war over than Ludendorff and his allies murdered Rathenau and conspired with Hitler to expel all Jewish professors from their lecture rooms. What matters it now to the rulers of Germany that less than a score o f years ago,, the Jews threw themselves into the defense lines o f the Fatherland in Flanders and France and Poland with unprecedented valor, and soaked the fields of those unhappy countries with Semitic blood ? What matters it that it was a Jew who wrote the “ hymn o f hate” against England ? What matters it that it was a Jew who quenched the flow of blood and healed' the hurt o f ten million Teu tonic wounds by making the surgical war service o f Ger many the best in the world? What matters it that it was a Jew who, after the armistice, was the first to lecture in England and in America to reestablish the honor o f the German name? A Modern Pharaoh And now consider! For six years past, the head o f the great German nation, Adolph Hitler, has sought to inspire his storm troops to increasing violence and atrocity against these same Jews, guilty of no offense save the “ crime” of being born with the blood o f Israel in their veins! Several years back, Hitler declared that if once the Nazi came into power, they would move for the sterilization o f all the Jews in Germany! When, on March 5, Hitler became Germany’s Chancellor, immediately hatred o f and violence toward the Jew became the established official policy o f the nation. In a recent speech, the Nazi archfiend announced that to that date “ the price o f Germany’s freedom” had been 330 killed, 40,000 injured, and 100,000 commercially ruined. Jewish tradesmen have been boycotted, and their stores picketed to keep shoppers from entering. From all the avenues leading to a livelihood, Jews have been evicted
wholesale— doctors and nurses from hospitals, judges from their benches, journalists from their desks, and professors from their schoolrooms. No firm may have more than three per cent of its employees o f Jewish blood. It is reported that only 20,000 Jews are to be permitted to work to keep alive the rest. The complete pauperization o f 650,000 Jews is imminent. More than thirty thousand of them are already in the bread lines, who never before asked bread of any man— scholars, musicians, lawyers, scientists of high and even international reputation. Germany seems bent on destroying her best brains. The German press is rigidly censored. Jews are frequently forced to sign statements for world consumption to the effect that the reports of their mistreatment are false— “ atrocity stories used as propaganda against Germany.” An espionage system is in vogue that rivals the G.P.U. of Russia. Human beings almost fear to breathe. Yet reliable reports leak forth of continued and indescribable insults, indignities, and indecencies perpetrated upon the properties and persons o f the Jews. The “ Brown Houses” are noth ing less than torture chambers from which Jews reel forth, bruised, bleeding, and lacerated human wrecks, with minds dazed or blank. Men and women speak only in frightened whispers o f what their eyes have seen. One Jew hanged by his feet, head downward, until dead. Another Jew died from knife stabs from “ Brown Shirts” who “ took turns” at the “ fun o f it.” Fathers and sons are compelled to beat each other into masses o f bruised flesh. Jews disappear only to be found in the morgues. Even their dead have been outraged— their corpses exhumed and exposed, and the German Fascist (Nazi) emblem, the swastika, printed on their tombstones. When living Jews would leave for more friendly regions, passports are refused. This modern Pharaoh will neither let the people go, nor will he permit them to live if they stay. Thus the hands o f the clock turn back thirty-five centuries in the most scientifically advanced nation of man’s boasted civilization. What a commentary on the high-swelling intellectualism o f our age! God pity the world if we must look to science, philosophy, art, music, education, or any other culture to save it ! What Meaneth This? But what is the portent o f all this? Jesus Christ Him self gives the only reason for the anti-Semitic hate that has filled the breast o f the Gentile nations through the cen turies : “ The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me” (John 14:30)— “ in m e ” a Jew and "the King o f the Jews.” “ Ye know that it [the world] hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18). “ Salvation is of the Jews” said He (John 4 :22 ). Therefore, so long as Satan is not “ cast out” from the kingdoms o f this world (Rev. 12 :9, 10), just so long will Israel continue to suffer from his venom. Students o f the prophetic Scriptures have reminded us that when the disciples o f Jesus asked for the “ sign” of His “ coming and of the end o f the age,” Jesus replied that there would be wars, famines, pestilences, and earthquakes, such as the earth never witnessed before (Matt. 25:3 -7 ), and that these we have seen since 1914. But they do not so often remind us that Jesus continued to say unto those inquiring Jews: “ Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill y ou : and ye shall be hated of all na tions for my sake” (Matt. 24 :9 ). “ Impossible!” cried the unbeliever just a few years back. “ The world has advanced too far for that! Science, education, and modern civilization would not permit such barbaric intolerance!” But what shall they say now when they see at the very heart of our scientific world, men en throned who, in cruelty, vie with savages and surpass wild animals ? “ The sure word of prophecy” again is vindicated!
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker