First World Congress for Palestine Workers Opens in Berlin Tomorrow; Notable Labor Leaders to Take P

The World Congress for Palestine Workers will open here on Saturday, Sept. 27. Socialist leaders of many countries will address the Congress, in whose deliberations delegates representing hundreds of thousands of Jewish workers from all over the world who are interested in furthering the labor efforts in Palestine on behalf of the Jewish National Home will participate.

Among the prominent Socialists who have already promised to address the Congress are: Jean Longuet, leader of the French Socialist party and member of the French parliament; Eduard Bernstein, veteran of the German Socialist movement; Louis Pieroux, Belgian Socialist deputy and secretary of the International Socialist Pro-Palestine Committee; M. Sasenbach, General Secretary of the Amsterdam Trade Union International; Franz Saucoup, president of the Cezcho-Slovakian Senate and member of the Executive of the Socialist Internationale; and M. Buchinger, leader of the Hungarian Socialists. A representative of the International Labor Bureau of the League of Nations is also expected to address the Congress.

The relation of the Palestine Jewish workers to the Arab workers of that country will be thoroughly discussed at the Congress. Among the other subjects which the Congress will discuss are the Palestine Mandate and the League of Nations, the Jewish immigration problem, the Jewish labor movement, Jewry in Western Europe, Palestine’s capacity to absorb immigration, the youth movement and working Palestine and the social structure of the Jewish people, etc.

More than a quarter of a million Jewish workers in the United States will be represented at the World Congress for Working Palestine. The American delegation consists of Abraham Shiplacoff, well-known Socialist leader and chairman of the Geverkshaften Campaign; Morris Feinstone, vice-chairman of the Geverkshaften Campaign; Joseph Schlossberg, General Secretary-Treasurer of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers’ Union; Meyer Brown, president of the Jewish National Workers’ Alliance; Isaac Hemlin, national secretary of the Gecverkshaften Campaign; and Leah Brown, leader of the Pioneer Women’s Organization.

The Congress is being called by the General Federation of Jewish Laborers in Palestine, or “Histadruth Ha’Ovdim.” The Congress will consider concrete plans for organizing on an international scale social, political and economic aid for the varied activities of the “Histadruth” in Palestine. Methods for cooperation between Jewish and Arab workers on the basis of separate national and autonomous trade unions will be considered.

A call to all friends of Jewish labor efforts in Palestine to participate in the Congress has been signed by a group of noted thinkers and statesmen of Europe and elsewhere. Those who have signed the call include Prof. Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Lion Feuchtwanger, Arnold Zweig, Max Brod, Simeon Dubnow, Leon Blum, Martin Buber, Chaim Nachman Bialik, Sholom Asch, Eduard Bernstein, Julius Braunthal, Oscar Kahn, W. Latzki-Bertholdi, Fritz Naphtali, A. B. Klerkamer and Abraham Shiplacoff.

“Today when the great constructive activity of the Jewish workers in Palestine is being questioned we must more than ever express clearly and unequivocally our interest in its continuation,” declares the call. “The debate over the feasibility of the Jewish National Home has been raised anew. The things that have been accomplished up to now have been placed in a false light, aims are wrongly presented, the possibilities and perspectives are not properly estimated and understood. The social-political relations in the Orient threaten the brotherly cooperation of the Jewish and Arabic peoples. The spread of reactionary tendencies in the world means a hard fight for the preservation and spread of the Socialist achievements of the Jewish workers in Palestine.”