Replying to allegations that R. H. Macy & Co. received last week a shipment of German-made products, Edwin I. Marks, vice-president of the department store, yesterday released a copy of the letter of denial addressed to the anti-Nazi Minute Men of the United States.
Last Friday a contingent of Minute Men, headed by Joseph Rosen, stood at strategic points nearby Macy’s store, and distributed circulars containing the charges. The circular also appealed to readers to boycott Nazi goods.
In the letter to the Minute Men organization the allegations are denied entirely by Mr. Marks. He asked for an immediate reply as to the Minute Men’s intentions in the matter, in which he says the organization was probably “irresponsible” inasmuch as it permitted itself to be “misrepresented.”
Mr. Marks’ letter, dated July 23, follows:
“You today distributed a paper on Thirty-fourth street bearing a heading ‘Buy American, Boycott Nazi Goods.’
“On this list you listed R. H. Macy & Co. as having received a shipment of sixty-three packages on the S. S. Manhattan, June 14 from Hamburg. The inference that this was German merchandise is unmistakable.
“It so happens that every dollar’s worth of this shipment came from Czechoslovakia, Austria and Poland—a fact that we can easily prove and a fact that you could readily have verified at Macy’s had you cared to.
“You will note that the shipment was made on an American boat. It is impossible to ship goods from many interior countries except through the port of Hamburg.
“I am reluctant to believe that your organization is so irresponsible that it would knowingly lend itself to this sort of misrepresentation. I shall expect an immediate reply as to your intentions in the matter.”
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.
