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The Holocaust History Project.
The Holocaust History Project.

WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
 
 
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trusted advisers? Isn't Judge Rosenman, who writes the President's speeches, a Jew? Isn't Morgenthau a personal friend as well as a neighbor in Hyde Park? Isn't Mrs. Morgenthau one of Mrs. Roosevelt's closest friends, and doesn't she see her every day? Aren't Mr. and Mrs. Morgenthau Jews? …

That memorandum must have been entirely to Kiesinger's liking, for he sent the Propaganda Ministry a copy on November 22, 1941. Thus he fulfilled his duty of stirring up anti-Semitism abroad while "the final solution of the Jewish problem" was getting under way in his own country.

The Foreign Ministry's Germany Department shared Kiesinger's concern for the effectiveness of Nazi propaganda, and so did the S.S., as is shown by this example of their agreement as to its character. At the Krummhübel conference of April 1944, attended by the press attaches from the various embassies, Eberhard von Thadden, the head of the division of racial problems in the Germany Department, advised that in anti-Jewish propaganda abroad "we must keep everything we issue within the bounds of reason." Von Thadden, who was to be deeply implicated on the diplomatic level in the Eichmann trial, guaranteed the execution of the "final solution," leaving it to Kiesinger to prepare worldwide opinion to accept the liquidation of the Jews.

In addition to regular broadcasts, Kiesinger's department was responsible for the dissemination abroad of anti-Jewish propaganda programs over the stations of German embassies. On December 1, 1943, for example, Kiesinger's department advised the German Embassy in Lisbon to take the following line in its broadcasts to Latin America:
Give details on the people's attitude toward the Jews, their growing opposition toward Jewish immigrants, information on illegal operations and machinations on the part of Jews. Generalized statements are not enough; cite definite cases. For example, in Brazil, the case of the Jew Itzig Lowenstein, who emigrated from Lodz a year or two ago dressed in rags, yet was able to make a fortune within a short time in foodstuffs or textiles or some other area by finding loopholes in the law or by exacting illegal rates of interest.

Kiesinger even intervened personally to keep a Danish singer named Bendix from getting on the German air waves because he was half Jewish.

One of the duties Kiesinger performed best was circulating evil
     
   
 
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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