The democracies of Europe might have saved themselves “if they had been courageous enough to save the Jews of Germany,” William green, President of the American Federtion of Labor, declared tonight in a speech prepared for delivery at a dinner in his honor at the Hotel Commodore.
The dinner, attended by more than 1,500 persons, raised nearly $40,000 toward the $100,000 fund for establishment of a Leon Blum colony in Palestine. It was sponsored by a committee organized by the Jewish National Fund which included labor and zionist leaders, headed by Max Zaritsky.
The democracies, green declared, should have “said to Hitler at the moment he started his anti-semitic purges: Stop, we will not permit such inhuman persecution. It is a menace to our civilization and a disgrace to the world.”
It was within the power of the democracies at that time to enforce their demands upon Hitler, he said. “They are now paying for having closed their eyes to human suffering.”
The lesson Americans should never forget is that “Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini are partners in international crime and that Nazism, Communism and Fascism are sworn enemies of dejnocracy as practiced by the United States,” Green asserted.
“We can no longer doubt that Russia and Germany are financing, directing and encouraging organized treachery in the United States and in other countries of the Western Hemisphere. They have two slogans in this country, shrewdly aimed to enlist support among well-meaning but undiscerning citizens. The first slogan is ‘The Yankfl are not coming.’ Their second is ‘Maintain civil liberties.'”
Other scheduled Speakers were Governor Herbert H. Lehman, Senator Robert H. Wagner, Mayor F.H. LaGuardia, Matthew Woll, Dr. Stephen S. Wise, David Dubinsky, Zaritsky, Dr. Israel Goldstein, Cbaim Greenberg, Louis Segal and Eliezer Kaplan.
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.
