Hitler became Chancellor of Germany just over a week ago, on Jan. 30.
This evening, 200,000 people participate in the largest-ever political rally in Berlin, reports Sigrid Schultz of the Chicago Tribune Press Service. The protest against Hitler and Fascist rule was organized by the Socialists. Opponents of the Nazis are urged to unite. The legislature has been dissolved, with an election scheduled for March.
Defiance of the government was voiced by the speakers, who urged the Socialists to fight “with new and more militant methods to defend the civic rights of the masses and democratic freedom.”
Meanwhile, as Germany is participating in a disarmament conference at Geneva, Hitler has secretly told the top military brass of his plans for conquest.
Today he informs his cabinet that “every publicly supported project for creating employment must be judged by one criterion alone: is it or is it not requisite for the restoration of the German nation's fighting capacity?....Everything for the Wehrmacht.”
(Source: Lord Cecil and the Policy of Principle, 1932-1935, by J. Kenneth Brody, p. 101)
Anti-Semitic violence has spread to other nations. In Latvia, an attack is made on a ZIonist club in Riga today by a group calling out, “Heil Hitler!” Other attacks come against Jewish shops and individuals. Fortunately, no deaths result.
*******
In Lvov, Poland, a baby girl is born today who will survive a term in a Nazi labor camp to make her way to France and New York City. Writer and artist Yala Helen Korwin will become the author of a heartbreaking poem, “The Little Boy With His Hands Up,” and other works which I cannot bear to quote. This is part of her poem titled "I Dreamed Him Homeward":
...Walk, walk, my brother,
I’ll guide you where you want to go!
My voice was a rumbling of waves.
.
A day after the dream,
a postcard, his hand: “We are
cooped here forever. No toilets.
Most are sick. The boat unseaworthy,
but the Turks wouldn’t let us land.”
Mother pressed the letter
to trembling lips:
"Thank God. He lives.”
.
Walk, walk my brother
where you want to go.
No entry papers needed anymore.
********
This is part of a series of “on this day” diaries begun on impulse at someone’s suggestion.
I claim no expertise. Corrections and additions are welcome.
Yesterday’s diary: "NBC Responds To Complaint About Nazi Commentator"