Page 76

Article seventeen of the program prescribes the severest punishment for those from whose exploitation the people suffer, such as usurers and their like, without regard to creed or nationality. What then is the Germans' offense if some Jews habitually collect money in this way and enrich themselves through this harmful exploitation?

Article twenty-eight of the program demands that the heads of newspapers and magazines be children of the country, and calls for the confiscation of newspapers that fight the nation. Jewish publishing in Germany played a well-known role for which there was no effective remedy except its elimination.

Article twenty-four, however, guarantees freedom of religion and equality among creeds so long as they do not conflict with the people's interests, morals or rights, or with the Germanic race. Some Jews joined other sects and parties and played roles that enabled them to attain positions of leadership. Some sought to do so by embracing other religions. But the Nazi Party closed its doors to them and stated the reason in its program: it did not relate to their persons but to their spirit, which did not accord with its slogan of the individual's self-sacrifice for the welfare of the whole. That slogan, it said, did not accord with their Jewish materialistic spirit, nor with the sins of exorbitant interest,