An SS newspaper on the ‘Jewish question’ (1938)

In November 1938, the Schutzstaffel (SS) newspaper Das Schwarze Korps published this editorial, entitled ‘Jews – What Next?’. It voices its opinion about how to address the ‘Jewish question’ while offering some rather grim examples of Nazi anti-Semitism:

“In 1933 and later, we were simple-hearted and naïve. When so-called public opinion in the world lost control of itself because our “barbaric ways” prevented the Jews from abusing our wives and daughters, then we took it very seriously, and tried to explain the Jewish Question to the others from the beginning what holy simplicity! As though one of these waterproof democrats ever had the least interest in it!

What is the real position? Neither Mr Roosevelt, nor an English archbishop, nor any other prominent diploma-democrat would put his dear daughter in the bed of a greasy Eastern European Jew. Only when it is a question of Germany they suddenly know nothing of any Jewish question; only of the “persecution of innocents because of their religion,” as though we had ever been interested in anything a Jew believes or doesn’t believe.

The real situation and truth is that these diploma-democrats know the Jewish Question very well. We need only look at their immigration regulations and their fear of Jewish immigrants to derive practical conclusions from them – but they pretend to be stupid and ignorant when they think they can harm Germany by this means.

Well then, that might still have surprised us a couple of years ago. Today we react to their screeching as to a continuous noise that is not capable of becoming any louder. It is known that the human ear can hear sounds only up to a certain level of vibration. Sounds and noises of still higher frequencies are not heard. We have become immune to any increase in the great screaming of world Jewry.

There is a view that is heard at every step: if we had solved the Jewish Question completely and by the most brutal methods back in 1933, the outcry would have been no worse than it has been since then, because we are solving the Jewish Question piecemeal, by single measures forced on us by the Jews themselves and their friends. This view is correct in itself. But it had to remain theoretical because at that time we lacked the military might that we possess today. At that time the Jews might have succeeded in inciting the nations into a war of revenge against us; today the loudest of the democratic screechers will be the ones to hesitate the longest.

Because it is necessary, because we no longer hear the worlds screaming, and finally because no power in the world can stop us, we shall therefore now take the Jewish Question towards its final solution. The program is clear. It is total elimination [and] complete separation!

What does that mean? It means not only the elimination of the Jews from the German national economy, a position which they brought upon themselves following their murderous attack and their incitement to war and murder. It means much more!

It can no longer be asked of any German that he should continue to live under one roof with Jews, a race stamped with the mark of murderers and criminals, and deadly enemies of the German people.

The Jews must therefore be driven out of our apartment houses and residential areas and put into series of streets or blocks of houses where they will be together and have as little contact as possible with Germans. They must be marked and the right must be taken from them to own houses or land or a share in either, because it cannot be expected of a German that he should submit to the power of a Jewish landlord and maintain him by the work of his hands.”