CYIL vol. 15 (2024)

AVITUS A. AGBOR were so disgusting to the extent that even devoted Nazis found it difficult to ingest and digest. At the Tribunal, the prosecution assembled Julius Streicher’s speeches and publications as evidence to illustrate the intensity of his portrayal of Jews as the major source of evil, and his insistence on the necessity of their extermination. The prosecution characterised his crimes as amounting to “the removal of opposition through anti-Jewish propaganda and incitement”, which it divided into four parts; first, the anti-Jewish boycott of 1933, directed personally by Julius Streicher, Der Stürmer’ s “ritual murder” propaganda, the anti-Jewish demonstrations and his perversion of youth. 44 Of the vile statements uttered by Julius Streicher, some of them presented by the prosecution included the 1925 speech in which he said “for thousands of years the Jew has been destroying the nations. Let us make a new beginning today so that we can annihilate the Jew”, which, fourteen years later, according to the prosecution, became the official policy of the Nazi government. 45 In April 1932, he wrote: [W]e know that the Jew, whether he is baptized as Protestant or as a Catholic, remains a Jew. Why can you not realize this, you Protestant clergymen, you Catholic priests! You are blinded and serve the God of the Jews who is not the God of love but the God of hate. Why do you not listen to Christ, who said to the Jews, “You are the children of the Devil.” 46 On April 1, 1933, as chairman of the Jewish Boycott Committee, in an article in a Nazis newspaper entitled “Defeat the Enemy of the World”; Julius Streicher wrote that the Jewry wanted this battle. It shall have it until it realizes that the Germany of the brown battalions is not a country of cowardice and surrender...national Socialists! Defeat the enemy of the world. Even if the world is full of devils, we shall succeed in the end. 47 In an article in September 1936, he boasted that his periodical had produced enlightenment for fifteen years, as it “had led to an army of initiated – millions strong – to National Socialism”, stating that [t]he continued work of Der Stürmer will help ensure that every German down to the last man will, with heart and hand, join the ranks of those whose aim it is to crush the head of the serpent Pan-Juda beneath their heels. He who helps to bring this about helps to eliminate the devil, and this devil is the Jew. 48 In September 1937 at Nuremberg, Julius Streicher spoke of the need to rid Germany and the world of Jews. In January 1938, he wrote in Der Stürmer about race pollution as a crime, stating that there were only two appropriate punishments, first, long-term penal servitude for attempted race pollution, and, secondly, death for the complete crime. In September 1938, Der Stürmer carried an article on “The Germ” in which it declared that Jews are pests and disseminators of diseases… Then the non-Jewish people… will recognize that he is not “also a human being,” but a germ. A parasite,

44 Artz 745. 45 Sprecher 517.

46 Ibid 517. 47 Ibid 517. 48 Ibid 517 .

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