Sixty years ago, on Shabuoth, Dr. H. Pereira Mendes, Rabbi Emeritus of the Spanish-Portuguese Congregation, preached his first sermon as an active Rabbi. During these sixty years Dr. Mendes has enriched Jewish life by his cultural and spiritual contributions, by his dignified, earnest and eloquent sermons, by his sincere, wholehearted devotion to the best causes in Jewish life, and by his uncompromising idealism in the service of his fellowmen. Dr. Mendes has always taken and is still taking a profound and active interest in all that concerns the Jewish people anywhere.
Modest, genial, lovable, Rabbi Mendes has nobly adorned the rabbinate, inspiring the younger rabbis and the people by his high ideals and his genuine faith. On this occasion we extend to him best wishes for many more years of happiness in the spiritual service of his people.
A PRAISEWORTHY CHOICE
Appointment of Harry L. Glucksman as chairman of the administrative committee of the relief drive for the United Jewish Appeal is praiseworthy. The executive director of the Jewish Welfare Board is one of the ablest and most far-sighted among the Jewish social workers. He deals with the problems of his organization with sympathetic understanding. His splendid executive ability will be extremely helpful in making the relief drive a great success.
There is no excuse for any Jew to decline aid to the victims of the ######### regime. Relief for the victims is not the only answer to Hitlerism, but it is one of the effective answers which the Jews of this country are called upon to make.
DUAL ALLEGIANCE
Hitler is apparently not satisfied with being known merely as the chancellor of Germany. His ambition is to be the chancellor of the Germans wherever they are. And his ambition also is to spread Hitlerism to other lands. His agents are working energetically in this direction.
Wilhelm Frick, Reich Minister of the Interior, declared in a speech before the League of Germans Abroad that the “German nation” extends far beyond the boundaries of the German state and indicated that it includes all Germans, wherever found, irrespective of citizenship. He recognized only the German-speaking Swiss and Austrians as belonging to other nations, since they have German states of their own.
The leader of the League of Germans Abroad thus explained the Germans’ allegiance to the Fatherland:
“Even if our German brothers beyond our borders have had to accept alien citizenship, they have remained members of our folkdom. If they belong to the German race they belong to Germany, for Germany extends wherever Germans are living.”
He said that while the population of the Reich is sixty-five millions, more than one hundred million Germans are scattered in twenty states of Europe and fifteen million overseas, and “all of them compose the German people.”
The Nazis regard the German Americans as Germans, regardless of their American citizenship. We wonder what the mass of German Americans will think of the Nazi interpretation of this dual allegiance.
There is no doubt that Nazi agents in America are promoting the Hitlerite scheme in the United States. A recent program of a Nazi affair given on one of the North German Lloyd boats contained the warning, below the North German Lloyd advertisement, that if German Americans are asked whether they are interested in the fate of their Fatherland, they should answer that they are not concerned about it.
The Hitlerite agents in this country are hoodwinking some of the German Americans and are misrepresenting the majority of them. The exports of Nazism in its varied forms of savagery will find no market in this democracy.
There is no room for Hitlerism, its racial hate and warmadness in the United States.
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.
