Germany rejects attempts to negotiate with the Inter-Governmental Refugee Committee that was set up after the Evian Conference. Germany insists that Jewish refugees depart the Reich with nothing. The country’s two justifications are that Jews stole or extorted their wealth from Germans, and that the Refugee Committee plan is a politically-motivated attack against Germany.
Nazi Germany broadened its campaign to eradicate all possible traces of Jewry from national life today. Wealthy Jews in Nuremberg, according to reports received in Munich, were forced to sign over 90 percent of their possessions to the German Labor Front and then told to leave the city within three months. A mass eviction of Jews was reported in Vienna. In Berlin thousands clamored in vain for permission to leave while officials debated ways and means of letting them go. Protestant churches in some parts of the country were ordered to eliminate the word “Jehovah,” taken from the Hebrew for God, and Old Testament names of Jewish prophets.
Lay teachers of religion in public schools asked that pastors and priests assume such instruction. They explained no German teacher could interest Nordic pupils in “Jew-written psalms” and Old Testament history. A police order was issued today forbidding Jews to use bridle paths. Authenticated reports accumulated in offices of foreign missions regarding the killing of Jews in anti-Semitic disturbances that followed the slaying of Ernst von Rath, secretary in the German embassy in Paris, by a young Jew last week.
Various envoys asked themselves how many German Jews had paid with their lives for the assassination. Cases on file in one diplomatic office included:
- Hermann Fürstenheim, director of a large firm in Chemnitz, was shot to death in the cellar of his home, and his ashes were delivered later to his family.
- A physician named Lewin of Polzin was shot when he opened his door in response to a knock.
- A Düsseldorf restaurant owner named Markus was forced to watch his property being demolished. Afterward he was killed.
- At Küstrin a Jewish attorney was shot to death.
Germany denies press reports that 200 Jews were executed at Buchenwald concentration camp.
Because he attempted to photograph scenes of anti-Jewish violence in Berlin last week, Rafael Jaramillo, Colombia’s new minister to Germany, is being refused a chance to present his diplomatic credentials to Reichsführer Hitler. This was disclosed today. Jaramillo was scheduled to be received by Hitler on Thursday, but the ceremony was postponed. Diplomats reported that German official quarters have said that he will not be recognized as his country’s representative in Germany.
All South American diplomats accredited to Berlin were indignant. They described the incident as an insult to South America. They saw in the treatment of Jaramillo the ” same high handed Nazi tactics” which have caused anxiety in their ranks on previous occasions. Jaramillo and the Colombian chargé d’affaires were driving down the Kurfürstendamm during the anti-Jewish disorder and sought to take pictures of the scenes. A mob turned on them and the police, despite the fact the Colombians were traveling in a car marked with diplomatic letters, detained them.” The foreign office told the police Jaramillo “was not accredited to the German government.” The willingness with which European powers have compromised with Germany apparently aroused Berlin’s expectations that South America and other nations would bow to the Reich’s slightest wishes.
15,000 Jews have lost jobs in Italy since November 10. Virtually the only occupations left open to Jews are the operation of small businesses and manual labor. Presumably the 15,000 now are looking for those types of work. The Italian press noted that few Jews are laborers. Immediate economic distress of the displaced Jews was believed averted by a provision that discharged Jews are to receive the usual legal indemnity of one month’s salary for every year of service and pensions where they have earned them.
Dr. Ernst Neumann, Memel German leader, announced today the formation of a uniformed German youth movement similar to the Hitler Youth in Germany and declared he would follow Nazi racial policy in the Memel territory. Dr. Neumann spoke at the opening of his campaign for Memel diet elections December 11. As long as Lithuanian safety police remain in Memel, he said, and certain Lithuanian regulations are not withdrawn, “negotiations with our adversary are impossible.” Germans demand autonomous police and executive authority for Memelland. The Memel territory, an area of 1,099 square miles, was detached from Germany by the treaty of Versailles and handed over to Lithuania in 1923. Within the territory is the important Baltic port of Memel. The population of the Memel territory in 1937 was 151,960.
Ukrainians complain of punitive mistreatment in Poland, due to conflicts in east Galicia.
Polish or Hungarian terrorist clashes kill six in the Ruthenian area of Czechoslovakia. Hungary claims 39 Hungarian gendarmes were killed in the revolt while trying to restore order.
The mayor and a councilman of Lydda, Palestine, both members of a party in opposition to the Mufti of Jerusalem, are assassinated.
The Egyptian government initiated a major armaments program. Egypt’s King Farouk commits the country to expanded defense. New bills for mandatory army service and increased funding are before Parliament.
Virtually complete returns from the November 8 congressional and state elections reveal the full sweep of the Republican tidal wave that jolted the New Deal and submerged two radical third parties. In addition to gaining 8 senators and 14 governors the Republicans, the final figures disclose, added 81 seats in the Seventy-Sixth Congress to the 89 they had in the seventy-fifth. Recounts of votes in progress may increase the House gains of the Republicans to 83 seats. The Republicans gained one senator in each of the following 8 states: Connecticut, Kansas, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
The U.S. Navy Department will spend $33.4 million to increase its own facilities and modernize those of contractors, to support an enlarged shipbuilding program. Eighty ships will be under construction by the end of the year.
The United Auto Workers Executive Board, supporting President Homer Martin, votes to expel the Detroit District Council, which it says is Communist-dominated.
Police in Jersey City take signs from picketers, violating the court order of November 7.
John F. Kennedy took his new romantic interest Frances Ann Cannon to New Haven to watch the Harvard-Yale football game. Harvard won 7-0. He also hosted a party at his parents house in Bronxville, New York to celebrate the Harvard-Yale game. In a letter to his close friend Lem Billings (who attended Princeton and later lived a closeted life as a homosexual), he urged him to “get a girl” to bring to the party.
The Yankees give up on pitcher Johnny Broaca and sell him to the Cleveland Indians. Broaca jumped the team in July 1937 and disappeared, not playing the remainder of ’37 or all of 1938.
College Football scores:
Notre Dame, 9; Northwestern, 7.
Minnesota, 21; Wisconsin, 0.
Michigan, 18; Ohio State, 0.
Illinois, 34; Chicago, 0.
Purdue, 13; Indiana, 6.
Nebraska, 14; Iowa, 0.
Duke, 7; North Carolina State, 0.
Michigan State, 10; Temple, 0.
Harvard, 7; Yale, 0.
Pittsburgh, 26; Penn State, 0.
Army, 19; Princeton, 7.
Syracuse, 13; Columbia, 12.
Georgetown, 14; Maryland, 7.
Fordham, 13; South Carolina, 0.
Oklahoma, 10; Iowa State, 0.
Texas Christian, 29; Rice, 7.
Oregon, 3; Washington, 0.
California, 6; Stanford, 0.
Arizona, 20; Marquette, 12.
A strike of electrical workers in five Mexican states is settled after nine days, with the help of compromises asked by President Lázaro Cárdenas.
Japanese authorities say that 200,000 guerillas are active in the triangle between Nanking, Hangchow, and Shanghai, and the Yangtze River will remain closed to commercial shipping to prevent trade with them. A Japanese spokesman said today that despite more than a year of Japanese operations in the Yangtze River valley, more than 200,000 Chinese guerrilla troops and bandits were operating between Shanghai and Nanking. He cited this as the reason for the virtual blockade of the river against non-Japanese shipping. The presence of the guerrillas, he said, made river traffic dangerous and required constant military attention. The spokesman’s estimate of the number of Chinese irregulars was at a rate of about 500 for each mile of both banks of the Yangtze between Shanghai and Nanking. The spokesman asserted the movement of foreign ships would interfere with mopping up operations. He expressed the suspicion that the guerrillas might get munitions and other supplies if third power vessels were permitted to go upstream.
Foreign shipping circles, meanwhile, furnished the names of Japanese vessels, the dates of their passage in the Yangtze, and the nature of their cargoes imported and exported. Questioned in a press conference on these and other phases of the shipping situation, the spokesman finally made this flat statement: “The Japanese control the Yangtze and are using it for military operations.”
Meanwhile, Chinese armies appeared to have fought the invaders to a standstill, at least temporarily, on the Canton, or South China, and the Changsha, or Hunan province, fronts. Japanese announcements sidestepped any claims of advances in either sector. The Japanese have pushed their central front into Hunan province, at a point about 150 miles south of Hankow and forty miles north of Changsha since Hankow fell on October 25. East of Hankow and southeast along the Yangtze the Japanese were attempting to mop up remnants of the army that failed to block their entry into Hankow after General Chiang Kai-shek, Chinese commander in chief, withdrew his main forces. On the South China front, ranging from east to northeast of Canton, the Japanese said they controlled all territory within a radius of from twenty to forty miles about Canton.
The Burma Road, connecting Yunnan with Szechwan, will be opened next month.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 150.38 (+0.45).
Born:
Ted Turner, media mogul and philanthropist, American businessman who founded CNN, owner of the Atlanta Braves and winner of the America’s Cup in 1977, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Henry “Hank” Medress, American doo-wop singer (The Tokens – “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”), and record producer (The Chiffons; Tony Orlando & Dawn), in Brooklyn, New York, New York (d. 2007).
Jerry Stalcup, NFL and AFL linebacker (NFL: Los Angeles Rams, AFL: Denver Broncos), in Rockford, Illinois.
Naval Construction:
The Вое́нно-морско́й флот СССР (ВМФ) (Soviet Navy) Project 1-class (Leningrad-class) destroyer leader Kharkov is commissioned.
She was slightly damaged during the Raid on Constanța a few days after the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June and covered the evacuation of the Danube Flotilla to Odessa the following month. During the Siege of Odessa and the Siege of Sevastopol in 1941–1942, the ship ferried reinforcements and supplies into those cities, evacuated wounded and refugees and bombarded Axis troop positions. Damaged by German aircraft a few weeks before the surrender of Sevastopol on 4 July, Kharkov was under repair until the beginning of August.
Lost 6 October 1943.
During the Battle of the Caucasus, the ship performed the same missions as she did earlier, bombarding Axis positions and ferrying troops into and wounded men out of ports threatened by the German advance along the Black Sea coast. In February 1943, she supported Soviet forces as they made an amphibious landing behind German lines and then provided naval gunfire support later in the month. Over the next several months Kharkov bombarded German-held ports in the Caucasus and Crimea. While returning from one such mission in October, the ship was lost. During the night of 5/6 October 1943 Kharkov and the destroyers Besposhchadny and Sposobny bombarded Yalta, Alushta, and Feodosia and were attacked by Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers of III./StG 3 on their return voyage. Kharkov was damaged by their first attack and had to be towed by Sposobny. The second attack damaged all three ships and Sposobny took Besposhchadny under tow as well. The next attack sank both Kharkov and Besposhchadny. Sposobny was sunk by the fourth wave while trying to rescue survivors. This incident prompted Stalin to issue an order forbidding the use of ships destroyer-sized and larger without his express permission.
Jimmy Dorsey (Bob Eberly, vocal) — “Change Partners”
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