Germany Needs Workin:
A Jew's Account Berlin, June 1l.
Caused by the huge rearmament programme and the fortification works pursued in the west and east, the Reich's manual labour shortage has in turn caused the employment of Jews on common labour projects.
Israelite intellectuals, no longer able to pursue their professions as doctors, lawyers and merchants, are now st work demolishing condemned blocks of buildings in Berlin, "cooperating" with the authorities in iheir plans to beautify the capital.
Other Jews are also employed in confectionaries, bakeries and similar places where skilled labour is required.
A former lawyer, one of the Jewish workmen now handling a pick and shovel, declared in an interview that it was not a case of forced labour, but that Jews who "wish to work here in the yards and who address the labour offices, (ind employment rather easily."
"At the beginning the work is hard," he said, "for physical effort for an intellectual requires a great change in habit and living methods.
"But human nature is such that after a while, the organism adapts itself to the new situation, Today, most Israelites are counted good workmen by their foremen.
"The average pay is a_mark and ien pfennigs an hour. The normal working day is eight hours. Then there are overtime hours at the same rate, "Fathers of families receive special indemnities.
"Our position is not brilliant, but many of us prefer to work hard at tasks to which we may not be used rather than go without work altogether" he concluded It is because of this new turn in the situation that many Jews who had their emigration papers all in order at the last moment remained in Germany and signed contracts for several years with firms short of Aryan labourers.—Havas.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.