Rabbi Jesse Bienenfeld, of Temple Adas Yeshurun, has taken the local Commissioner of Health, Dr. George C. Ruhland, sharply to task for an interview Dr. Ruhland gave the local press on his return from a short European trip.
Dr. Ruhland stated that while he had only been in Germany four weeks in order to study public health work in Berlin, he had seen little or no signs of anti-Jewish feeling. He declared that he had only seen one sign urging the boycott against the Jews and that he had seen Gentile and Jewish children playing on the streets together. Dr. Ruhland also stated that most of the stories of Hitler’s persecution of the Jews are pure fiction, and that the Jews are suffering little from the highly advertised persecution.
In his open letter to Dr. Ruhland, Rabbi Bienenfeld demanded an apology from Ruhland for the “gratuitous insult offered to the thousands of Jews and Gentiles who gathered not so long ago in the Mizpah auditorium to protest against the Hitlerite cruelties.”
Rabbi Bienenfeld noted that Ruhland’s expenses were paid by the Oberlander Fund and that this in itself made Ruhland a very unreliable witness. He also called attention to the fact that many of the doctors in Syracuse had found it necessary to protest against the German regime. Rabbi Bienenfeld threatened that if Ruhland did not apologize, he would call upon his superiors in the city administration to disavow him.
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.
