

Tuesday, February 28, 2012


In February of 1920, the German Workers' Party began to hold its first mass meetings, and on February 24, 1920, Hitler outlined the Twenty Five Points of the German Workers' Party. They were its political platform, which included: the union of all Germans in a greater German Reich; rejection of the binding Treaty of Versailles; the demand for additional territories for the German people (Lebensraum); citizenship determined by race with no Jew to be considered a German; all income not earned by work to be confiscated; a thorough reconstruction of the national education system; religious freedom except for religions which endanger the German race; and a strong central government for the execution of effective legislation.
As Hitler went through all of the Twenty Five Points, he asked the rowdy crowd for its approval on each point. And they certainly approved. He recounted,
"When after nearly four hours the hall began to empty and the crowd, shoulder to shoulder, began to move, shove, press toward the exit like a slow stream, I knew that now the principles of a movement which could no longer be forgotten were moving out among the German people…A fire was kindled from whose flame one day the sword must come which would regain freedom for the Germanic Siegfried and life for the German nation."
It was in the summer of 1920 that Hitler chose the symbol of his movement—the red and black swastika…a symbol that Samuel had so often seen with items in the newspaper as this man had gained popularity and been featured so often in the American press.  Hitler had said, "In the red we see the social idea of the movement, in the white the national idea, in the swastika the mission to struggle for the victory of Aryan man and at the same time the victory of the idea of creative work, which is eternally anti-Semitic and will always be anti-Semitic."
It was only this year that Samuel became more than concerned about Adolf Hitler and his political aspirations. On April 7, 1933 Jews were not officially allowed to hold public office or civil service positions, nor were they allowed involvement in the legal field. Two weeks later, Samuel had read where students from education by the “Law against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities.” Then, of July 14, the De-Naturalization Law allowed the Third Reich to remove the citizenship of Jews and other “undesirables.” 

To be continued.