50,000 for Stretcher

As if to greet a hero, Berliners flocked out to their great Tempelhof Air Drome last week amid blaring brass bands and goose-stepping Special Guards of Realmleader Hitler's crack detachment. Soon a big plane coasted down out of the hot sky. From it stepped a heavy-set Nurnberger with a closely-cropped head. Beneath his scowling brows and knifelike nose twitched a small black "Hitler mustache." Not in Nazi regalia, the hero wore a Palm Beach suit and his perspiring head gleamed hatless in the sun. Snapping to attention, the Special Guard saluted His Excellency Julius Streicher. Governor of Franconia, Big Boss of Old Nurnberg and idol of all Germans who hate Jews. In his heavy right fist Herr Streicher gripped his personal trademark, the riding whip he always carries and is reputed to use on Nurnberg prisoners who vex him.

To honor Hero Streicher, Germany's capital had been plastered with red posters: THE RACIALLY CONSCIOUS PEOPLE OF BERLIN GIVE STREICHER A HEARTY WELCOME --MORE THAN 20,000 JEWS HAVE MOVED TO BERLIN RECENTLY STREICHER WILL HELP US GIVE THE RIGHT ANSWER TO THE HEBREWS --EVERYBODY MUST BE IN THE SPORTSPALAST TONIGHT.

From 6 p. m. onward massive Berlin males and their ample women ambled perspiring into the city's greatest sport arena until it was jampacked, then gathered about loudspeakers in adjoining squares until fully 50,000 were ready for the evening's treat. As a prelude massed Storm Troops chanted an earnest little Hymn of Hate. Cried the choral leader: "We must unite against the Enemy of Humanity." Chorus: "It is the Jew!" Leader: "We must crush those who combine everything bad." Chorus: "It is the Jew!"

Doves & Lambs v. Lions & Tigers-- As usual Hero Streicher had prepared no speech, indulged in some extemporaneous lush German sentiment: "The other day at the zoo I saw some German children watching the play of doves and lambs. Their faces were radiant with happiness. Then I saw some Jewish children and their Jewish teachers. They had eyes only for the beasts of prey, lions and tigers and the slinking lynx! Why? Because blood calls to blood! For thousands of years the Jews have lived by preying upon other people."

Orator Streicher warmed up the crowd by salting his remarks on Jews with jocular allusions to sex, always good for a laugh in Germany. Men guffawed, women flushed and giggled as he cried: "You can't make a Jew out of a German by getting him circumcised in a synagogue! . . . Thank God that, although there is yet no law to prevent race pollution, we have judges who send men to jail for defiling the proud German race! . . . The priests will marry even a Negro and a German woman, providing they are both Catholics, but after nine months what do we have in the basket? A child with every stigma of darky blood. ... In America almost every week a Negro is lynched for assaulting a white woman. We in Germany say it serves him right! . . . But in Germany has a single Jew been shot?"

"No!" roared the crowd in answer,

"Nein!"

''They call me in the foreign press 'The Bloody Tsar of Nurnberg'. Now look at me!" boomed Herr Streicher. crushing his doubled riding crop in upraised hand. "Ja, I confess that I sometimes cut myself while shaving!" (Guffaws.)

Disraeli & Lord Blackstone. "I don't want to speak to intellectuals, to students and to professors--they fail in all crises!" onetime Country Schoolteacher Streicher declared amid cheers. "I want to talk to people whose heart is in the right spot, to people who can be as simple as children." That that was the sort he was talking to appeared when the 50,000 listeners failed to notice the howler Herr Streicher committed when he spoke of Britain's late, great Jewish Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli not as Lord Beaconsfield but as "Lord Blackstone." The crowd did look troubled, however, and only a few answered "Ja" when Orator Streicher asked: "Didn't Christ say that the father of Jews is the Devil? Doesn't it stand that way in the New Testament?"*

Jews Indoors. Since Julius Streicher is rivaled for the distinction of No. 1 Jew-baiter by Berlin's new Chief of Police, hard young Count Wolf von Helldorf, the Count took extraordinary precautions last week to keep Herr Streicher from scoring the success of provoking then & there fresh anti-Jew riots in Berlin. Jewish leaders were urged and aided by the Count's police to get Berlin's 150,000 Jews off the streets and behind locked doors for the night. Count Helldorf, seated behind Herr Streicher on the platform, knew that nothing much could happen. So did Jew-baiter Streicher and he trimmed his speech accordingly.

"Shame on gossip mongers who have said that I would like to be Chief of Police of Berlin!" he cried. Then he added archly: "I will gladly plead guilty if it is claimed that I had a part in bringing about that little rubdown in Berlin"--referring to the recent beating of Jews by Storm Troopers escorted by Count Helldorfs police (TIME, July 29).

In the fiery climax of his speech, Hero Streicher urged with a contradiction which seemed not to trouble his audience: "The goal is total suppression of Judaism. The heaviest work has just begun! . . .

But those who beat up Jews and smash their windows are not Nazis and never will be--they are agents provocateurs. . . . Whoever thinks to arrive at a solution of the Jewish problem by such external methods is too stupid to grasp the seriousness of the hour!" Stuffed with this somewhat mystic message, the 50,000 listeners dispersed without disorder, merely shouting as they walked off, "Germany awake! Perish the Jew!" Some frightened passersby with cries of "Where is the Jew? Let's get him!"

*According to the King James version of the Bible (John VIII, 44), Jesus said to the sinners among the Jews in the Temple: "Ye are of your father the Devil."

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