Schwerin, Gustloff's Funeral -- Speech of February 12, 1936

BEHIND every murder stood the same power which is responsible for this murder; behind these harmless insignificant fellow-countrymen who were instigated and incited to crime stands the hate-filled power of our Jewish foe, a foe to whom we had done no harm, but who none the less sought to subjugate our German people and make of it its slave - the foe who is responsible for all the misfortune that fell upon us in 1918, for all the misfortune which plagued Germany in the years that followed. Those members of the Party and honorable comrades of ours all fell, and the same fate was planned for others: many hundreds survived as cripples or severely wounded, blinded or lamed; more than 40,000 others were injured. And among them were so many loyal folk whom we all knew and who were near and dear to us, of whom we were sure that they could never do any harm to anyone, that they had never done any harm to anyone, whose only crime was that they devoted themselves to the cause of Germany. In the ranks of those whose lives were thus sacrificed there stood also Horst Wessel, the singer who gave to the Movement its song, never dreaming that he would join those spirits who march and have marched with us. And now on foreign soil National Socialism has gained its first conscious martyr - a man who did nothing save to enter the lists for Germany which is not only his sacred right but his duty in this world: a man who did nothing save remember his homeland and pledge himself to her in loyalty. He, too, was murdered, just like so many others. Even at the time when on January 30 three years ago we had come into power, precisely the same things happened in Germany, at Frankfort on the Oder, at Köpenick, and again at Brunswick. The procedure was always the same: a few men come and call someone out of his house and then stab or shoot him down. That is no chance: it is the same guiding hand which organized these crimes and purposes to do so again. Now for the first time one who is responsible for these acts has appeared in his own person. For the first time he employs no harmless German fellow-countryman. It is a title to fame for Switzerland, as it is for our own Germans in Switzerland, that no one let himself be hired to do this deed so that for the first time the spiritual begetter of the act must himself perform the act. So our comrade has fallen a victim to that power which wages a fanatical warfare not only against our German people but against every free, autonomous, and independent people. We understand the challenge to battle and we take up the gage! My dear comrade! You have not fallen in vain!