GERMANY: Jewish Joke

The Jews of Germany last week had one of their first good laughs at the expense of the Nazis. For the Nazi Teachers League asserted that henceforth Aryan moppets should have their history purged of Christian symbols: Instead of dates such as 490 B. C. and 1870 A. D. Nazi schoolbooks should refer to 490 V. ZTR. and 1870 N. ZTR., meaning VOR ZEITRECHNUNG and NACH ZEITRECHNUNG (before and after “time computation”).

Long ago, when a hunchbacked Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86), grandfather of Composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, introduced German culture to Berlin’s ghettos the Enlightened Jews objected. For “Before Christ” they insisted on substituting “Before the Common Era,” for “Anno Domini” the “Common Era.” At the spectacle of the Aryans following Jewish example nearly 200 years later, Jewish rabbis chuckled in their beards.