Rulandseck, November 1938, Herbert Heinemann: The Three Rulands, Reichssender Hamburg, November 23, 1938 (00:00-1:58)

English Translation

    [piano music]

    [singing]
    Haven’t you seen little Cohn?
    Have you seen him during inflation?
    How he grubbed dollars,
    Managed every kind of graft?
    Everything was for a purpose
    Every little bit of filth!
    For
    In art just as in ready-to-wear clothing
    Everywhere little Cohn once has
    Done his business,
    Hoarding goods.
    But today every Tom, Dick, and Harry knows:
    We have put a stop to it.

    [voice:]
    It has only just become public knowledge that the seven hundred thousand Jews This figure is greatly exaggerated. According the the results of the census, in May 1939 there were still 302,000 ‘Jews by religion‘ (‘Glaubensjuden‘) living in Germany and Austria. If one takes into account that after the November 1938 pogrom, many Jews began to flee in panic, the number of Jews living in the German Reich in November 1938 was probably somewhere between 350,000 and 400,000.
    still remaining in Germany still own a fortune of eight billion marks.

    [piano music, melody “Ten Little Indians”]

    [singing]
    Eight billion bucks
    Is what they had left,
    One of them was paid as fines,
    And then there were only seven.
    [piano music, end of song]
    [singing]
    Abroad they are outraged about it,
    And they rant: Have you heard?
    No, what is it?
    Oh, it is terrible For those poor people
    Only have seven billion marks left
    Oh, how they have suffered,
    And now, indubitably
    Their businesses will be trimmed, too
    No, you don’t say. One cries;
    And our Western fortifications
    Are opposed by thick wailing walls
    now.
    Yes, outside
    They run with the pack,
    They scare and they are horrified,
    Well, fine.

    [piano music]

    [singing]
    Haven’t you seen little Cohn?
    Have you seen him during inflation?
    How he grubbed dollars,
    Managed every kind of graft?
    Everything was for a purpose
    Every little bit of filth!
    For
    In art just as in ready-to-wear clothing
    Everywhere little Cohn once has
    Done his business,
    Hoarding goods.
    But today every Tom, Dick, and Harry knows:
    We have put a stop to it.

    []

    Source Description

    This is an excerpt from a cabaret program broadcast monthly by various radio stations under the title “Rulands-Eck.” A trio of singers who called themselves “The Three Rulands” [“Die Drei Rulands”] were responsible for writing the program. This episode of “Rulands-Eck” which was broadcast by the Reichssender Hamburg on November 23, 1938, only a few days after the November pogrom of 1938, is devoted exclusively to antisemitic propaganda. The trio was accompanied on the piano by Herbert Heinemann, who used a repertoire of popular melodies (“Hab’n Sie nicht den kleinen Cohn geseh’n,” “Zehn kleine Negerlein,” and “Was kann der Sigismund dafür?”).
    This is the first part of the broadcast; the entire episode was almost seven minutes long. It makes direct reference to the anti-Jewish measures the National Socialist regime had taken in the aftermath of the November pogrom. These measures and their consequences are played down and at the same time justified indirectly by the “Three Rulands.”
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    Recommended Citation

    Rulandseck, November 1938, Herbert Heinemann: The Three Rulands, Reichssender Hamburg, November 23, 1938 (00:00-1:58) (translated by Insa Kummer), edited in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History, <https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:source-96.en.v1> [December 30, 2024].