Dr. Edwin R. A. Seligman implied yesterday afternoon that persecution of the Jews under the regime of the Nazis in Germany was a major factor in provoking his refusal to take part in the work of the Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation, made public in a letter from him to the foundation in Philadelphia. Dr. Seligman is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Columbia University.
While he said he would prefer to have his communication stand without elaboration, Dr. Seligman would not deny that Hitlerism treatment of the Jews was one of the things in his mind when he washed his hands of the foundation.
In explanation of his stand he wrote:
“Carl Schurz was an intimate friend of our family almost from the day of his arrival in this country, so that I came, as a young man, to know him very closely. He was, as every one knows, much opposed to the political ideas of Germany at that time and to the very end never lost his political distrust of the Fatherland. More important, however, if he were alive today, he would be the first to repudiate virtually everything that has recently happened in the academic, intellectual, social and cultural life of his country.
“It seems the irony of fate that the name of a great man should be associated with the opposite of everything that he lived and strove for. Carl Schurz loved the Germany of old, but he would view with alarm and sadness the Germany of today, and would, I am quite sure, deprecate any attempt at the present time to renew the old-time sympathy between his native and his adopted countries.”
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.
