Warning of the danger that degradation of Jews would become an accepted part of the normal scheme of things, Leonard Stein president of the Anglo-Jewish Association, today urged Jews in free countries to assert fearlessly and clearly the claim that the Jews’ right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness be recognized as sacred.
Stein addressed the annual meeting of the association, which is entering its 70th year, in submitting the report of the Joint Foreign Committee, of which he is joint chairman. Regarding Poland, Stein expressed confidence that Premier Wladislaw Sikerski’s “far-sighted, statesmanlike” policy would held the field in the long run.
Reviewing anti-Jewish measures all over the Continent, Stein said that protest was pointless since “civilized conduct cannot be expected of a gang of savages.” He denounced the Vichy Government, asserting “Nothing could speak more eloquently of its self-abasement than its mean acceptance of the Nuremberg code of persecution.”
Chief Rabbi J. H. Hertz stressed the necessity of united Jewish representation at the ultimate peace conference and the task of Jews in English-speaking countries for reconstruction of post-war Jewry. Prof. Selig Brodetsky and Robert Waley Cohen also referred to Vichy’s anti-Jewish legislation, the latter declaring: “Here not France is speaking, but the men of Vicky with the voice ventriloquized into them.”
The executive committee was elected without opposition.
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.
