Egotistical Bernstein

In Hamburg last week the Nazi judge of non-Aryan Shipowner Arnold Bernstein (TIME, Nov. 29, et ante) made sure that the Fatherland will secure possession of the Red Star and Arnold Bernstein Lines (Garage Ships). At the end of a complex trial the court fined him $400,000, sentenced him to two and a half years in jail.

In the dock Prisoner Bernstein had confessed to many technical sins of omission & commission, such as can scarcely be avoided by anyone doing big business through the Fatherland's bewildering network of foreign exchange restrictions. The State had demanded a fine of $1,800,000 and imprisonment for five years. Hence

Nazis were proud that "Bernstein got off easily," proud of his trial.

"The word 'Jew' probably has not been used once during this trial," declared the court proudly. "Herr Bernstein did not stand in the dock as a Jew but simply as a businessman who had broken German law."

His most heinous offense, in Nazis' eyes, was to have in effect conspired to pile up in Manhattan a secret fund of some $100.000 which otherwise would have gone partly to other U. S. creditors, partly to Germany in taxes. "This Bernstein did," snorted the judge, "for purely egotistical purposes!"

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