862.00 P.R./237
Political Report of the Chargé in Germany (Gilbert)2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5. Anti-Semitic Action. The tendency toward the exclusion of Jews from German economic and professional life which moves forward in periodic waves received a new impetus with the announcement on January 5 that doctors of Jewish race, as defined by the 1935 Nuremberg Laws,3 had been forbidden, as from the beginning of the year, to treat patients belonging to the employees sickness insurance system. This system, to which its members pay a slightly higher contribution and thereby possess a wider choice of doctors than those enrolled with the ordinary compulsory sickness insurance fund, comprises about three million patients. The German press has indicated that the order will affect between 3,000 and 9,000 Jewish doctors throughout Germany, 900 of whom reside in Berlin. A further order published January 16 forbade Jewish dentists, as from the twentieth of the month, from treating patients enrolled with the Ersatzkrankenkassen, or various insurance systems, including that for employees, which serve as substitutes for the compulsory system. For the present, Jewish doctors are to remain with the ordinary government compulsory insurance system, or Ortskrankenkassen, a circumstance which is ascribed to the current shortage of doctors in Germany.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
- Transmitted to the Department by the Chargé in Germany in his despatch No. 3832, January 17, 1938; received February 5.↩
- For Citizenship Law of September 15, 1935, see Foreign Relations, 1935, vol. ii, p. 406.↩