Extract from Israelitisches Wochenblatt, on the attitude of Jewish organizations and leaders before the war, the deaths of three million in the war, and the disappearance of the Jewish population in eastern Europe

"ISRAELITISCHES WOCHENBLATT"
27th August 1943.
. Four Years of World War
The fourth year of war is now drawing to its close and the fifth is about to commence. A silver lining can gradually be discerned on the horizon and the postwar problems are already beginning to be considered. The Jews also look backwards and forwards. The war against the Jews has been going on for more than four years. The end of the first decade of the unequal battle was reached in the spring of 1943. The battle was unequal because the Jews had no intention whatsoever of waging war against anybody. They were unprepared in every respect. They had no uniform organisation, but, on the contrary, a large number of parties, factions and associations which could not be unified under even the most stringent circumstances. Those Jews who possessed money only rarely offered it towards the construction of Palestine, where a real aid centre might have been founded. The distinct symptoms of the prewar years made no impression on the majority of the Jews; the largest section of the Jews no doubt belonged by con-M-196
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viction not to any war party but to the "appeasers." In particular, the wealthy upper class of the American and English Jews hoped that for a long time that a settlement would be possible and most Jews believed that "conditions could not become so very bad." The Jews were unprepared, and they had to pay dearly for their thoughtlessness. The Jews of Europe, with the exception of those in England and the lesser Jewish communities in the few neutral countries, have, so to speak, disappeared. Three million dead, the same number outlawed, mentally and physically broken; that is the result of the "new order" in Europe. The Jewish reservoir of the East, which was able to counterbalance the western assimilation, no longer exists. * * *