Background: The following essay was published in Der Angriff, 10 December 1928, during the Christmas shopping season. Goebbels satirically suggests that Germans should only buy from the Jews. The title is a takeoff on a common Nazi slogan: “Germans: Don’t buy from the Jew!”
The source: “Deutsche, kauft nur bei Juden!” Der Angriff. Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1935), pp. 331-333
by Joseph Goebbels
Why? Because the Jew sells cheap and shoddy merchandise, whereas the German sets a proper price for good merchandise. Because the Jew cheats you, whereas the German treats you fairly and honestly. Because you can buy all sorts of trash from the Jew, but the German sells mostly only quality goods.
The Jew is your blood brother, the German the enemy of your people. The Jew provides for you by the sweat of his brow, the German is a lazy good-for-nothing. The Jew stood alongside you at the front for four years, shoulder to shoulder, and risked his life for Germany’s fame and greatness, but the German skulked about in the rear echelon. The Jew died so that Germany could live. Where can you find a Jew who did not lose everything he had in the war and revolution, and where a German who did not grow rich and arrogant? Isn’t it true that the German nailed Jesus to the cross and the Jew transformed his teaching of love into reality?
Buy only in Jewish department stores. What does the small German merchant matter to you? He should go to Palestine and sell his wares there. He does not belong with us in Germany! We are tired of this constant chattering about dying small businesses. It is so comfortable and cozy in the Jewish department store. Every kind of cheap trash is available. Such palaces are found on every street corner. Their lights shine in the dark night, the Christmas trees sparkle in the show windows, the angels swing over a sea of Kitsch, the children laugh and clap their hands, and the benevolent Jewish merchant stands in the background rubbing his hands with glee. Where can you find such a generous and energetic German merchant? What do you mean by saying that the German also wants to make a living? Why? Who does he think he is? He should go on relief like the rest of us. Why should some Germans have it better than the rest of us? That after all is the right of the Jews in Germany. Why do we have a republic if not to benefit the Jews?
Six hundred small businesses have gone bankrupt due to Jewish department stores this Christmas season in Berlin alone! Are there still that many Germans around? Quiet — by next year there will be fewer. There is not much left to go bankrupt in Germany any longer. That is how it should be. Germany for the Jews! That is what we fought and bled for. We’ll spend our last penny to that end.
Set out the Christmas tree. Daughters of Zion, rejoice! The good Germans are forging their own chains from their hard-earned coins. The Jewish financier will use them to impose eternal slavery on Germans. Who would not want to help advance world Jewry’s great benevolent work? Why do we have a neck, if not to bear a yoke? Germany has been for sale for ten years. Who does not want to help? Does anyone ask if the toy under the Christmas tree came from the Jew Tietz or the German Müller? The Jew will grow fat from the coins you give him, the German will starve. So what? Let the light shine on the Jews, let the Germans dwell in darkness. That is what the Lord of the Jews wants, as does his lackey Finance Minister Hilferding. Property is theft, as long as it does not belong to the Jew. Not a penny for the nobility, everything for the bank and stock exchange and department store swindlers!
Christmas is the festival of love. Why should we not love the poor Jews, even make them fat? Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you! When was the Jew not our enemy? When did he not hate and persecute and slander and spit on us? Who would be inhuman enough to demand that we should treat him according to the law he applies to us: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?
The child whose birthday we will soon celebrate came into the world to bring love. But Christ the man learned that one cannot always get by with love. When he saw the Jewish moneychangers in the temple, he took a whip and drove them out of the temple.
Germans, buy only from Jews! Let your fellow citizens starve, and go to the Jewish department stores, especially at Christmas. The greater the injustice you do to your own people, the sooner the day will come when a man comes to take up the whip and drive the moneychangers from the temple of our fatherland.
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