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Current Events » in reply to Footnote -- Jewish boycott of German goods

Sehr interessant - vielen Dank!
Fox — (archived)

You certainly gave us two entirely differerent perspectives, seeing as the second link was from a "revisionist" site dedicated to the most ludicrous cause in modern historical scholarship: Holocaust Denial.

Assuming that the letter from the RJF you re-quoted is legitimate, it was written two years before the scheisse hit the fan for German Jews - the Nuremberg Laws - and therefore reflects either [a] a well-meaning effort to keep things from getting worse (by placating the bullies, maybe they'll go away...see also Neville Chamberlain); [b] a denial that things not only could, but unstoppably would get worse (e.g., The Wall, by John Hersey, about the Warsaw Ghetto. The conscious, willing refusal to see disaster approaching is common, not just in the history of 20th C. European Jewry); [c] a combination of both.

In any case, five years of gradually increasing anti-Jewish activity by the Reich transpired between that letter from the RJF and Kristallnacht. That letter may have been indiciative of its time, but not of the continuum. I emphasize this as a caution for readers who might, inadvertantly or otherwise, take that letter out of its much larger context.

Thank you for posting on the boycott - I had not known of its existance, though the "survivor's guilt" of American Jews in general (mentioned in the opening paragraph of your first link) is very familiar. Also familiar was the factionalism that plagued the victims and the bystanders (see again The Wall), which that article explains, in part.

And thanks for the link to the Jewish Virtual Library - it's bookmarked now.

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