Thousands of persons gathered tonight in the Madison Square Garden, in a rally under the auspices of the American Jewish Congress, Jewish Labor Committee and several cooperating organizations, to hear Christian and Jewish leaders condemn Nazi terrorism in Poland and elsewhere and to adopt resolution protesting against the Lublin Jewish “reservation” and other aspects of Reich persecution.
The audience cheered speeches and resolutions which branded Germany as an enemy of civilization, warned that Nazi oppression threatened not alone the Jews but Christians and all of mankind, and called for renewed efforts to safeguard democracy and equal rights in this country.
A memorial prayer for the victims of war and oppression was a feature of the meeting, chanted by the members of the Jewish Ministers-Cantors Association, under the direction of Joseph Rumschinsky.
“In the name of the American people, ” William Green, president of the America Federation of Labor, condemned “Adolph Hitler’s savage persecution of the Jewish people.” He called for “mobilization of the moral strength and power of the universal in opposition to the madmen of Europe.” Condemning the Soviet-German alignment, Green warned that as soon as it suited Stalin’s “purposes to terrorize the Jews, Soviet Russia will start playing the same anti-Semitic game as Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.”
Herbert Hoover, in a message from Palo Alto, Calif., declared in part: “In common with the overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens I have been outraged by the bestialities visited upon the people of the Jewish faith. And today hundreds of thousands of Catholics and Protestants, as well as Jews, are homeless and helpless before the forces of unbridled evil.”
Samuel McCrea Cavert, general secretary of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, declared that “at last we begin to see that Christians are in jeopardy when Jews are attacked.” He reported on “the authority of an eminent European Christian” that within a few months “non-Aryan” Christians would probably be deported to the Lublin “reservation.”
Others on the speakers’ list were Alfred M. Landon, speaking by phone from Topeka, Kansas; Mayor LaGuardia, Dr. Charles H. MacFarland, Dr. Stephen S. Wise, presiding; Adolph Held, Abraham Cahan, Dr. Samuel Margoshes, Max Zaritsky, Chaim Greenberg, Jacob Patt, I. Baskin, Louis Segal and Max Wolff. Messages were received from many individuals and organization, including Senators W. Warren Barbour, Arthur Capper, Bennett Champ Clark, Theodore F. Green, Henry C. Lodge Jr., Robert A Taft, Arthur H. Vandenberg and Burton K. Wheeler; Federal Securities Administrator Paul McNutt. Bishop William T. Manning, Governor Herbert H. Lehman, Thomas Mann
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.
