Dr. Fritz A. Arnheim, a successful Berlin lawyer, married and with a young son, was dismissed from his job because he was Jewish. This left his family with no regular income. They tried to obtain visas to emigrate to the United States, but were unsuccessful.
Heinz Clausen, a company executive, married and with two young daughters, was dismissed from his job because he is a Scientologist. This left his family with no regular income. Unable to find satisfactory work in Germany despite an outstanding record, he and his family emigrated to the United States.
hroughout the 1930’s, the Nazis systematically excluded the Jewish community from the social and economic life of the nation. A book published in 1937, “The Economic Destruction of German Jewry by the Nazi Regime”, found that “the most serious problem confronting German Jews is their gradual squeezing out from economic life. Other aspects of the persecution may excite more horror ... but in the end the factor that must prove most crushing is the closing to them of every profession, of every avenue of trade and employment, of every path to livelihood or skill in labour for the new coming generation. This side of the campaign is carried through without physical force, without massacre, without bullets, but it means, none the less, decisive destruction.”
This bloodless discrimination is exactly what German Scientologists are experiencing today. Germany’s Federal Minister of Labor, Norbert Bluem, has repeatedly tried to exclude Scientologists from employment because of their religious affiliation. A Bluem edict to the Federal Labor Office in 1994 ordered the revocation of any licenses issued to Scientologists that authorized them to operate employment agencies.
Fueled by such government authority, the bureaucratic gears of discrimination have been grinding at all levels of the country’s economic life. Various businesses, acting on the false propaganda, require that their employees sign unconstitutional and illegal “declarations” confirming that they are not Scientologists. Failure to sign means no job. The discovery that one’s religion is Scientology has led to immediate dismissal. Scientologists are denied bank accounts and in Bavaria, Scientologists are not allowed to bid for public contracts.
When such abuses have reached a court, they have been declared unconstitutional. Undeterred by the judicial condemnations, however, the bureaucrats continue to discriminate.
For example, this past December, a state court called “illegal” and “inappropriate” a Federal Labor Office order which revoked the license of a woman, who ran her own business, solely because she is a Scientologist. Despite this, a Federal Labor Office order surfaced in June 1996 which instructs all labor offices to initiate arbitrary and discriminatory measures against any employers who are suspected of being Scientologists.
This September, a court ruled illegal the dismissal of a Scientologist, on the basis of his religion, from a leading German engineering company. An outstanding employee holding a position of responsibility, the Scientologist had been given only one day’s notice in December 1995 despite a contract extending through September 1996.
In a climate of intolerance created by irresponsible politicians, legality is forgotten and constitutional rights are ignored.
German officials have refused every request to engage in dialogue to resolve the discrimination occurring in their country.
“Never again” must not be an idle slogan, it must be a promise we keep. True, no one has been killed or hauled off to death camps. But history has taught us that we would be at fault if we stood by and did not point out the alarming similarities between the 1930s and today. German officials protesting these comparisons should stop recreating the past and they will remind no one of it.
Germany Then and Now
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