“What has happened in Germany has convinced me more and more of the value of Zionism for the Jew,” declares Thomas Mann, famous non-Jewish German novelist and Nobel Prize winner, in an interview appearing in the September issue of the B’nai B’rith Magazine, out next week.
“I am certainly no nationalist,” Dr. Mann told David Ewen, the interviewer, “and I look forward to the time when all national boundaries will be eliminated. But it is unfair to ask the Jew to suffer now, and for years to come, as the first step to the attainment of the ideal. Because I would not want the Jew to surrender his heritage and his customs—both of which are too rich; and because I would want the Jew to remain faithful to his past and to his history, I realize that a homeland becomes more and more essential. As long as there will be reverses and calamities in this world, so long will the Jew be made to suffer. If he is to avoid, in the future, what has happened in Germany, he should have a home of his own where, amidst those of his own kind, he can peacefully give out to the world all the wealth and richness that is within his blood.”
Dr. Mann declared that Jews the world over should protest against German anti-Semitism, but not through the use of the boycott.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
