A fund to establish a memorial for Rep. M. Michael Edelstein as “a martyr to tolerance” was started today by Dr. Mario Julia, prominent Puerto Rican physician and vice-president of the San Juan City Council, who deposited a $100 check for the purpose with the National Cathedral Post of the American Legion. Edelstein was a member of the Legion in New York.
The move came as funeral services were being held in New York for the Congressman who died of a heart attack in the House lobby on Wednesday after making a speech reply to a statement by Rep. John A. Rankin that Jews were attempting to drive the United States into war.
Dr. Julia, who is not Jewish and who never met Edelstein, presented the check to Frank Buckley, prominent Catholic layman and vice-commander of the American Legion post, who likewise never met the New York Congressman. The Puerto Rican expressed hope that “other people who believe in real tolerance will follow my lead.”
“I did not know Congressman Edelstein,” Dr. Julia said, “but due to the circumstances surrounding his death, I regard him as a martyr to tolerance. In defending his own race against an attack in the Congress he spoke for all races and all creeds and reasserted a principle that belongs among the things most vital to democratic government.
“Because a member of our great national law-making body has given voice to whisperings that have been prevalent among the little people of the nation, and among those who espouse the cause of Hitler, and because these whisperings are un-democratic and un-American, and because the American Legion is a citadel of tolerance in the nation, I entrust this sum to one of its posts.
“If a memorial to Congressman Edelstein is erected, I should like to have it stand as the categorical answer forevermore of the real people of America to those in the world who raise a barrier against fellow-humans who happen to have been bom of a particular race or creed.
“I should like to see inscribed on it, ‘All men are created equal regardless of race, creed or color.” Because the American whose lifework it would commemorate was of Jewish extraction, I should like to see funds for its erection come from people in America of all races and all creeds.”
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.
