Jew for Nazis

When President Roosevelt was picking his ambassadors he had the thumping idea of sending a Jew to Berlin as the best guarantee that U. S.-Jewish interests would be protected in the Fatherland. But no Jew seemed to want the hottest U. S. embassy. Even rich Gentiles seemed to have no zeal to be Ambassador to Nazi-dom and the President had to coax into service able but impecunious Professor William Edward Dodd (TIME, June 19. 1933). Last week, however, the still thumping idea of sending a Jew as Ambassador to Berlin was executed with a bang by Joseph Stalin.

Adolf Hitler had consented, for no ambassador can be sent who is persona non grata. When the Roosevelt choice was on the fire it was said that the Nazi Chancellor would never accept a Jewish ambassador. By last week he had changed his tune, perhaps because of German fear of further reduction in Soviet Russia's already drastically curtailed purchases of German machinery.

Reds assassinated Count von Mirbach, first German Ambassador to Soviet Russia, in 1918. Some Nazi fanatic may well take offense at the Jew whom Joseph Stalin is sending to Berlin this week--short, dark, wiry Comrade Jacques Suritz. In Afghanistan they remember Jacques Suritz well. He went out from Moscow to Kabul more than a decade ago. He greased the right palms so adroitly that the British Empire's influence in Afghanistan was threatened and ex-King Amanullah today is said to blame Jacques Suritz for having started the seven-year vortex of intrigue which finally sent His Majesty flying for his life (TIME. June 3, 1929). Successful Suritz moved from Kabul to Ankara where he has been Soviet Ambassador to Turkey for the past eleven years. Lodged in a super-modernistic Soviet Embassy with soaring porches like the wings of an airplane. Comrade Suritz proceeded to give the kind of parties which appeal to champagne-swizzline; Turkish Dictator Mustafa Kemal Pasha.

Turkey became the first firm ally of the Soviet Union and Jew Suritz crowned his work last autumn, when Dictator Kemal celebrated the tenth year of his republic. From Moscow an imposing delegation of Bolshevik bigwigs went to Ankara and. as a great exception to Dictator Stalin's ban on junketing, were permitted to take along their wives (TIME, Dec. 4). It was svelte Mme Suritz who turned the trick by having Paris gowns ready for the dowdy wives from Moscow and an expert modiste on hand to fit them. Under Dictator Kemal's critical eye, they shone at his grand ball as "Soviet Cinderellas."

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