Education: Anti-Semite Department

• Share

From once-famed University of Berlin came news last week of the recent dedication of a new "anti-Semite department," named for Nazi Germany's front-rank anti-Semite, Julius Streicher. Present to open the first university course in Jew-baiting was Namesake Streicher himself. "Professor" Streicher, wearing puttees and carrying a riding crop, delivered a two-and-one-half-hour lecture on "Science and Jews." Keynote: "Any concept of history that records a Jew as a learned man or genius is false."

Reminding his pupils that it was not university men but illiterates in the streets who raised Adolf Hitler to power, Herr Streicher, no university man, flayed learning as "academic twaddle," screamed: "I am no academic lecturer, but I shall lower myself for once to speak from an academic rostrum. ... It is no honor to me to speak here. But this room is honored by my presence."