A proposal that American Jewry rush material aid to the British people by a gift of 200 mobile kitchens for relief of air-raid sufferers was enthusiastically received at a conference on American Jewish aid to Britain under the auspices of the American Jewish Congress, today at the Hotel Astor.
The project, requiring the raising of $400,000, at $2,000 for each kitchen, was outlined to the conference by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, chairman of the Congress. The importance of this help was underlined in addresses by Rabbi Maurice L. Perlzweig, of London, chairman of the British section of the World Jewish Congress, and by Frederick W. Gehle, chairman of the fund-raising division of the British War Relief Society.
Winthrop W. Aldrich, chairman of the British War Relief Society, has written to Dr. Wise that his organization will undertake to ship American Jewry’s gifts to England or to transfer funds there, if contributions take that form.
The conference recessed late in the afternoon to allow a committee to frame a resolution setting up the machinery for dispatching American Jewish donations to Britain. It was Dr. Wise’s plan that this be done through affiliation of the Congress with the newly-formed Inter-Faith Committee for Aid to the Democracies. Dr. Henry A. Atkinson, secretary of the inter-faith committee, had written to Dr. Wise inviting the Congress to become the Jewish representative body in the committee.
In his address to the conference, Dr. Wise declared that “American Jewry ought to stand out in any effort for help to the fighting democracies” and should register its “unlimited support of Great Britain.”
The conference adopted a resolution pledging fullest support to Great Britain whose victory, it declared, “will be the beginning of a new world order based on right and morality,” and expressing hope that Britain’s “pledges with respect to the Jewish National Homeland in Palestine may at along last be-satisfied.”
Another resolution recorded the determination of American Jewry to co-operate with President Roosevelt and all government agencies in the “total defense program” of the United States.
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.
