Fifteen thousand persons joined the boycott of German-made products and lined up with the forces opposing Adolf Hitler and the Nazi government, when they gave voice to their condemnation of the Nazi regime at a mass meeting held in the Chicago Stadium yesterday afternoon.
Cheering the speakers who phrased their attacks on Hitlerism in scathingly denunciatory language, the crowd, assembled by the Chicago Committee for the Defense of Human Rights Against Naziism, eagerly approved the labels prominent leaders of Jewry, Protestantism and Catholicism used to describe the present power in the Third Reich.
The boycott was enthusiastically given the support of the crowd “until the curse of Naziism is weeded out of the German government.” Speakers insisted that the assemblage was one of Americans, and not of Jews and Christians, who were simply organizing against a threat to their liberty.
Speakers included Salmon O. Levinson of Chicago, chairman; Dr. Paul Hutchinson, managing editor of The Christian Century, president of the League; Dr. John A. Lapp, distinguished Catholic layman of New York; John Haynes Holmes, pastor of the Community Church in New York; Dr. Charles Clayton Morrison, editor of The Christian Century; Dr. James Mullenbach, NRA labor arbitrator; Copeland Smith, radio preacher and former Methodist minister; Colonel Raymond Robbins; Martin Plettl, of the executive committee of the German Federation of Labor and international president of the Garment Workers of the World, and Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland.
Dr. Holmes called the Nazi regime “one of savages, destined to endure unless the world-wide opposition for years to come is pushed vigorously.” He added with conviction that the Hitler government and its policies “are destined to wreck the entire world if allowed to flourish.”
Rabbi Silver warned that the success of the Nazi anti-Semitic program would mean that the position of the Jews the world over would be in hazard.
A resolution passed by the gathering based its condemnation on the Nazi government as having “appalled the civilized world, blotted out the liberty of millions of German citizens, shattered and destroyed the rights and institutions of labor, confiscated property and denied the privileges granted in civilized countries, reduced the woman to a household drudge, ostracized the flower of the great Christian and Jewish scholars of Germany.”
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.
