The German-American Volksbund, numbering between 6,600 and 8,300 persons, promotes distribution of anti-Semitic literature, teaches members to regard Jews as inferior and boycotts Jewish stores, it is shown in a report of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on its investigation into the Bund conducted last year and made public yesterday.
The report, comprising 14 volumes compiled after a year of investigation, reaches no conclusion as to whether the Bund violates any Federal law and does not indicate definitely whether or not the organization is controlled by Berlin. The report has been studied by the Justice Department and submitted to the Dies Committee on Un-American Activities.
Evidence of anti-Semitic activity in the report includes: anti-Jewish literature is distributed in the Bund schools; Hans Neubeck, leader of the Buffalo local of the Bund, is quoted as saying that members are “taught not to associate with unreliables or inferiors such as Jews” and that one of the members was expelled for keeping company with a Jew; Neubeck is also quoted as stating that Buffalo Bund members did not intend to purchase any merchandise from Jewish stores and “undoubtedly other members of the Bund felt the same way.”
The Bund, the report states, is seeking to instill and perpetuate in German-Americans “pride of German background and love of Germany.” While Federal agents reported Bundesfuehrer Fritz Kuhn’s insistence that the Bund was “not a part” of the Nazi Party, they found that Kuhn had participated with Adolf Hitler in the “Beer Cellar Putsch” in Munich in 1923; that German is the mandatory tongue in Bund schools; that the stars and stripes and the swastika are raised and lowered together in Bund camps; that one camp was dedicated as “a little piece of German soil in America.”
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.
