view is heightened by the fact that you gave Dr. Adler’s letter of May 3 to the press without his permission and that you gave your letter of May 4 to the press before it had reached him. This conduct in his opinion transcends all the amenities of decent correspondence.
Respectfully yours,
(Signed) Morris D. Waldman
Bernard S. Deutsch, Esq.,
President, The American Jewish Congress,
New York, N. Y.
122 East 42nd Street,
DR. ADLER’S SUGGESTION
Mr. Waldman’s letter followed publication by Mr. Deutsch of a communication from Dr. Adler in which the latter suggested that the proposed demonstration be postponed since the Hitler Government is now in process of framing regulations limiting the rights of the Jews of Germany.
“We are convinced,” Dr. Adler wrote, “that, in view of the tenseness of the situation, any provocative action taken outside of Germany may have an unfavorable influence upon the proposed regulations.”
Mr. Deutsch’s reply, made public before its receipt by Dr. Adler, said it would be “short only of treason to the cause of our people” not to protest “against the horror and shame of the Hitler war upon the Jewish people,” and said the American Jewish Committee concerned itself with the possibility of making “some drastic regulations less drastic.” This point, Mr. Deutsch said, “it may be you choose to raise in order that united effort of the American Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee may continue to be impossible.” He asserted that the American Jewish Congress would continue its protests and demonstrations until the Jews of Germany were restored to equality.
“You are thinking solely of provocative action taken against Germany’ and the effect thereof upon our ‘sorely-tried and harassed brothers in Germany.’ Surely you cannot be uninformed with regard to those policies of ruthless extermination which will be but little affected by what you might consider a mitigation of the drastic regulations visited upon the Jews,” Mr. Deutsch wrote. “Apparently you would be satisfied then if twice thirty-five Jewish members out of the 2,500 Jewish members of the Berlin Bar be permitted again to practice. The American Jewish Congress in all that it says and does will insist upon the restoration of equality of status not only for the Jews of Germany of all groups and classes and professions, but upon something more, of which the American Jewish Committee seems completely to have forgotten, the demand for equality of status for the non-National Jews of Germany, for the most part East European, with all other non-National groups in the German Reich.”
Meanwhile, as plans to have at least two hundred thousand march in a protest parade here next Wednesday—the day which Nazi Germany has set aside for an auto-da-fe of all books by Jewish and “non-Ar-yan” authors—were being formulated, an insistent demand was voiced by the Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary that the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Cogress achieve a “united front for American Israel so that its voice may be felt and respected both here and abroad.”
RECOGNITION OF CONGRESS
In the preamble to a resolution to this effect adopted at the thirty-third annual convention of the Assembly, it was stated: “We recognize that the American Jewish Congress has done invaluable service in channeling and articulating Jewish indignation and protest. We believe, however, that at the present time the methods and activities being pursued by the American Jewish Committee are calculated to achieve the protection of Jewish rights.”
Major-General John F. O’Ryan, commander of the 27th Division of the American Expeditionary Force### will act as grand marshal of the ### test march in New York City ###
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.
