Reverend S. McCrea Cavert, the General Secretary of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America at the closing session of the national seminar of Jews and Christians held in Washington (reported in the J.T.A. Bulletin of the 12th. inst.) voiced the moral indignation of the American people against organised ill-will in Germany against Jews becoming the platform of a political party, says a statement issued by Rabbi Dr. Stephen S. #ise, Honorary President of the American Jewish Congress, and Mr. Barnard S. D#utsch, the President of the Congress, commending the protest made by Rev. Cavert.
With the internal politics of Germany, Americans can have no rightful concern, the statement proceeds. But as friends and sincere well-wishers of Germany, Americans are deeply concerned over the Hitler campaign of anti-Jewish ill-will which is in full tide in Germany to-day. The utterance of the seminar on religion ought to be no more than the first of a series of American and Christian reminders to Germany that in its anti-Jewish gospel, Hitlerism means the recrudescence of the barbarity of medieval antisemitism.
The American Jewish Congress believes that the German people, one of the great liberty-loving and justice-revering of the earth, will reject a programme which would commit them to a policy of reaction, touching an element of its population that has been a faithful and enriching part of Germany more than a thousand years. The American Jewish Congress has confidence in the collective will and capacity of the Jews of Germany to present their case aright to the German people and through appeal to the enlightened conscience of Germany to avert the danger which seems to threaten. In any event, German Jews must know that Jews everywhere are anxiously watching the outcome of the course of current events in the German Republic and that we are resolved, whatever betide, to continue to stand at their side.
The one word which I wanted to have the opportunity to express, as a Christian, Rev. Cavert said at the seminar referred to, is one of profound sympathy with our Jewish brethren in what is happening or may happen to their brothers across the sea, to let our Jewish brothers know that what so deeply affects them, affects us too, and especially to suggest that if any of us who belong to the Christian group have influential personal friends in Germany, or organisations that have contact with similar organisations in Germany, we might take the opportunity of letting them know, in all friendliness, but firmly, how the situation in Germany to-day looks to their American friends.
OUR OWN AMERICAN RECORD IN MATTER OF INTER-RACIAL AND INTER-RELIGIOUS GOODWILL NOT SO SPOTLESS THAT WE HAVE RIGHT TO POINT FINGER OF SCORN AT OTHER PEOPLES: STATEMENT BY REV. CADMAN CHAIRMAN OF JEWISH-CHRISTIAN GOODWILL COMMITTEE: NEVERTHELESS WE CANNOT IGNORE DISCRIMINATION AGAINST JEWS ADVOCATED BY HITLERISTS IN GERMANY
If reports coming out of Germany are to be taken at their face value, Rev. Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, Chairman of the Committee on Goodwill Between Jews And Christians appointed by the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, says in a statement issued to-day, followers of Hitler openly proclaim it part of their policy to enact legal discriminations against the Jews. Hitlerites are reported even to be going to the limit of proposing that Jewish citizens be disfranchised and treated as aliens in a land in which they have lived for centuries and to whose life they have made a rich contribution. In the light of the acute distress and suffering in Germany, it is not difficult to understand why many tend to seek national salvation through reviving a spirit of Teutonic racialism and blindly opposing everything which they regard as an extraneous influence. In spite, however, of any extenuating circumstances, no one who is deeply committed to the ideal of goodwill and understanding between the diverse groups of the modern world can help being appalled at such anti-semitic antipathies as Hitlerite nationalism seems to be in danger of creating to-day.
Our own American record in the matter of inter-racial and inter-religious goodwill has not been so spotless that we have any right to point the finger of scorn at other peoples. Nevertheless, any such discrimination against the Jews as is rashly advocated by Hitlerites in Germany has its repercussions in other countries – even in our own – which we cannot silently ignore.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
