2 3 6 D O C . 5 7 H O W I B E C A M E A Z I O N I S T
cupies the German public more and more. Meetings, conferences, newspapers
press for their quick removal or internment. The housing shortage and economic
depression are used as arguments to justify these harsh demands. Those facts are
deliberately overstated in order to bias public opinion against Eastern European
Jewish immigrants. Eastern European Jews are made the scapegoats for certain de-
fects in present-day German economic life, things that in reality are painful after-
effects of the war. The confrontational attitude toward these unfortunate refugees,
who have escaped the hell that Eastern Europe is today, has become an efficient and
politically successful weapon used by demagogues. When the government contem-
plated measures against Eastern European Jews, I stood up for them in the Berliner
Tageblatt, where I pointed out the inhumanity and irrationality of these measures.
Together with a few colleagues, Jews and non-Jews, I held university courses for
Eastern European Jews, and I would like to add that our activity met with the offi-
cial recognition and full support of the Ministry of Education.
These and similar experiences have awakened my Jewish-national feelings. I am
not a Jew in the sense that I would demand the preservation of the Jewish or any
other nationality as an end in itself. I rather see Jewish nationality as a fact, and I
believe every Jew must draw the consequences from this fact. I consider raising
Jewish self-confidence necessary, also in the interest of a normal living together
with non-Jews. This was the major motive of my joining the Zionist movement. Zi-
onism, to me, is not just a colonizing movement directed toward Palestine. The
Jewish nation is a living fact in Palestine as well as in the diaspora, and Jewish na-
tional feelings must be kept alive everywhere that Jews live. Members of tribes or
peoples must—under today’s living conditions—have a lively tribal awareness in
order not to lose their dignity and moral rectitude. It was the unbroken vitality of
American Jewry that made clear to me how sickly German Jewry is.
We live in an age of exaggerated nationalism and, being a small nation, we have
to take this into account. But my Zionism does not preclude cosmopolitan concep-
tions. Starting from the reality of Jewish nationality, I believe that every Jew has
duties toward his fellow Jews. The significance of Zionism is of course manifold.
It opens the possibility of a dignified human existence to many Jews who presently
suffer in the hell of Ukraine or decay economically in Poland. By repatriating Jews
to Palestine and giving them a healthy and normal economic existence, Zionism is
a productive activity that enriches human society. But the main point is that Zion-
ism strengthens the self-confidence of Jews, which is necessary for their existence
in the diaspora, and that the Jewish center in Palestine creates a strong bond that
gives Jews moral support. The undignified mania of adaptive conformity, among
many of my social standing, has always been very repulsive to me.
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