Breslau (Jan. 24)
Nazi disturbances held sway throughout the day at the University of Breslau as the Hitlerites sought to prevent by acts of physical violence the resumption of the lectures of the Jewish professor, Ernst Cohn, member of the Law Faculty of the University.
Thousands of Nazis assembled outside of the University campus, while Nazi students thronged the corridors of the buildings singing anti-Jewish songs, shouting invectives and demanding the ouster of Professor Cohn.
The rector called in the police who dispersed the demonstrators.
In the afternoon, the Nazis assembled once more, this time armed with stench bombs which exploded with a loud detonation. The explosions alarmed the rector, who summoned the #########.
The Nazi students attempted to escape by seeking refuge in the lecture hall of the Nazi professor. Wegener, who endeavored to prevent their arrest.
Outside the university buildings Hitlerites once more assembled, through loud speakers, shouting “Judaea Perish!” “Away with Cohn!”.
Twenty arrests were made by the police.
Professor Cohn was reinstated today as a lecturer on commercial law at the University of Breslau after a controversy of three months during which Nazi students supplemented their demands for his removal by disturbances which led to the closing of the institution on several occasions.
At first supported by the University Rector Brockelman, Professor Cohn was later attacked by the rector and the University Senate who called for the suspension of his lectures, ostensibly because of the expression of sympathy toward granting Leon Trotsky, the exiled Soviet leader, asylum in Germany. The Prussian Minister of Education, Kachler, intervened, with the result that the University Senate voted for his re-instatement.
For more than a week, negotiations have been carried on with the Nazis by a Committee of professors seeking to secure the latter’s pledge to preserve peace. The renewal of Professor Cohn’s lectures was twice postponed because of the failure to come to terms with the Nazis. It was believed that they would again be postponed today.
Democratic circles have been calling upon the government to take every measure to insure the reopening of the lectures today as a challenge to the Nazis. Unless Cohn’s lectures are resumed, university freedom will be jeopardized by Nazi terrorization, they declared.