The Nuremberg Laws: German News Agency on the Nuremberg Laws

After years of struggle the new Laws passed by the Reichstag at the Party Congress of Freedom...establish absolutely clear relations between the German Nation (Deutschtum) and Jewry. Unmistakably clear expression has been given to the fact that the German people has no objection to the Jew as long as he wishes to be a member of the Jewish people and acts accordingly, but that, on the other hand, he declines to look on the Jew as a fellow-member of the German Nation (Volksgenosse) and to accord him the same rights and duties as a German.

The International Zionist Congress has just been in session in Switzerland, a Congress which also put an end very plainly to any talk of Judaism being simply a religion. The speakers at the Zionist Congress stated that the Jews are a separate people and once again put on record the national claims of Jewry.

Germany has merely drawn the practical consequences from this and is meeting the demands of the International Zionist Congress when it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national minority. Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is again possible to establish normal relations between the German Nation and Jewry. The new Laws give the Jewish minority in Germany their own cultural life, their own national life. In future they will be able to shape their own schools, their own theater, their own sports associations; in short, they can create their own future in all aspects of national life. On the other hand, it is evident that from now on and for the future there can be no interference in questions connected with the Government of the German people, that there can be no interference in the national affairs of the German Nation.

The German people is convinced that these Laws have performed a healing and useful deed, for Jewry in Germany itself, as for the Germans. Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for itself and is offering State protection for this separate life of the Jewish minority: Jewry’s process of growth into a nation will thereby be encouraged and a contribution will be made to the establishment of more tolerable relations between the two nations.

Juedische Rundschau, No. 75, September 17, 1935.

* Written by the editor, A.I. Berndt.

Source: Yad Vashem