A committee of sixty Jewish and Christian leaders has awarded the American Hebrew medal for 1936 to Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia of New York in recognition of his efforts to combat race hatred and improve intergroup relations, it was announced here today.
The Mayor, whose name is anathema to the Nazis for his famous “chamber of horrors” and “not satisfaktionsfaehig” raps at Chancellor Adolf Hitler, will be formally presented with the medal at a dinner May 2 at the Waldorf-Astoria.
According to the citation, the medal was conferred upon the Mayor “because of his bold initiative to check Jew-baiting sources of wide range, notably the rabid anti-Semitic incitation of one Robert Edmondson, resulting in the indictment of Edmondson on a charge of criminal libel for traducing the Jewish community; because his record of exceptional civic and communal service was conducive in the truest
sense to the improvement of intergroup relations and constructive citizenship in a community of widely divergent racial and religious affiliations.”
Among the members of the nominating committee were Bishop William T. Manning, Newton D. Baker, Felix M. Warburg, Bernard Baruch, Henry Morgenthau Sr., William Hays, Hugh S. Johnson, Rebecca Kohut, John Dewey, Judge Irving Lehman and James G. McDonald.
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.
