With passage of the law of April 7, 1933, the Third Reich barred Jews from holding civil service positions. The exclusion of Jews from certain occupations thus began, ultimately extending to law, medicine, teaching, farm labor, and many other vocations.
The German Ruling Party—the Christian Democratic Union, or CDU—passes without either debate or dissent a resolution that would prohibit Scientologists from civil service positions. The CDU resolution follows the path of a CDU-sponsored measure to prohibit Scientologists from certain types of employment, which was declared illegal by a German court just last week.
he CDU-controlled German government is irritated because the Church of Scientology insists on telling the truth in public. The CDU wants us to stop letting everyone know that, both within the party and within the government it controls, that what’s happening to Scientologists today in Germany reminds everyone with open eyes and alert ears of an era that Germany should prefer not to repeat. The CDU hates the fact that, in public information statements such as this, the Church of Scientology refuses to use euphemisms to describe the obvious.
In the 1930s, the Nazis turned more than their propaganda machine loose on Germany’s Jewish population. They unleashed their legislative weaponry as well. All told, they enacted some 400 statutes and decrees targeting Jews for one form of invidious discrimination or another.
The first such pronouncement, on April 7, 1933, was given the euphemistic title of “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.” “Civil servants of non-Aryan descent must retire,” that law said.
This past Tuesday, the CDU adopted a resolution that is basically a reprise of the April 7, 1933 law. While wordier, the dismissal of Scientologists who are civil servants is precisely the focus of the CDU resolution:
“It cannot be compatible to be a member of Scientology and being a civil servant.... Thus the Federal Ministry of Interior is asked to establish the prerequisites with the laws on service and salary so that members of Scientology can be excluded from a post in the civil service...”
The outrage of that resolution is unspeakable. It was completely unprovoked. No Scientologist violated any law. No incident sparked this reaction. There is not even an allegation that this is a response to any wrongdoing. In fact Scientologists weren’t even seeking such jobs. The simple fact is that the resolution is insane. Bigotry always is.
There’s just no way to sugar-coat it. The old mind-set is at it again. Consider this:
The Church’s ad that ran in this space last week provoked the outrage of the German government. “Falsehoods!” they exclaimed when our advertisement placed their acts side-by-side with Nazi outrages and revealed them to be carbon copies.
Did their denials echo history? Consider what Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, recorded in his diary two weeks before the Nazis banned Jews from civil service:
“We shall only be able to combat the falsehoods abroad if we get at those who originated them or at those Jews living in Germany who have thus far remained unmolested. We must, therefore, proceed to a large-scale boycott of all Jewish business in Germany. Perhaps the foreign Jews will think better of the matter when their racial comrades in Germany begin to get it in the neck.”
What did Germany’s CDU do only one week after the American-based Church of Scientology exposed to public view the symmetry of their campaign against Scientologists and Germany’s dark past? They passed the resolution to ban Scientologists from civil service.
The CDU, of course, will again cry foul and deny their civil service ban against Scientologists is parallel in both timing and substance to the Nazis’ civil service ban against Jews. But they will utter that denial to a skeptical, educated world ready to recognize the CDU’s conduct for precisely what it is.
Why are German officials discriminating against Scientologists? Scientologists haven’t done anything wrong. There is no legitimate reason, just as there was no legitimate reason for the persecution of the Jewish people and other minorities in the 1930s.
The German officials want the Church of Scientology to stop its public information campaign. The solution is very simple. If they were to stop their hate campaign, the comparisons that make them so uncomfortable would not come to anyone’s mind. However, so far German officials have refused every request by us to engage in dialogue to resolve the discrimination occurring in their country.
Germany Then and Now