American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith Secede from Ncrac

The American Jewish Committee and the B’nai B’rith, parent body of the Anti-Defamation League, tonight officially announced their withdrawal from the National Community Relations Advisory Council. Their action followed adoption by the national plenary conference of the NCRAC earlier this month of a plan for reorganization of work in the community relations field. Both organizations had strenuously opposed the plan, adoption of which was inspired by the Maclver Report on Jewish community relations.

Jacob Blaustein, president of the American Jewish Committee, and Frank Goldman, president of B’nai B’rith, made the formal statements announcing secession by their organizations from the eight-year-old agency.

Mr. Blaustein declared that “the fundamental basis for the American Jewish Committee’s withdrawal from the NCRAC is our rejection of a regulatory body with compulsory powers to which national agencies are subordinated. No central body.” he asserted, “can presume to have a mandate to speak as the ‘official’ voice of American Jewry.”

He declared that the resolution adopted at the Atlantic City session of the NCRAC “purported to be a compromise but was no compromise because it advanced the same proposition for centralized control which we had been steadfastly rejecting. The essence of that resolution would be to prevent American Jews from having the determining voice over the policies and purposes of the organizations of their choice.”

PLAN WOULD ‘FRAGMENTIZE’ VETERAN AGENCIES

To accept this, he said, “would have committed the American Jewish Committee to abandon its founding principles; yield its autonomy; ignore its responsibilities to its members, and jeopardize the methods of combatting anti-Semitism and all forms of prejudice and discrimination which we have laboriously evolved through nearly 50 years of experience.”

Mr. Goldman, in his statement, charged that the reorganization plan “holds out the prospect of fragmentizing agencies with the longest and greatest record of service.” He said it would “throttle voluntarism and injuriously dismantle the defense structure.” The B’nai B’rith’s executive committee voted the action unanimously, it was announced.

Mr. Goldman warned that “to accept the terms of dismemberment and control would debase the ideals of freedom and voluntarism which we hold dear. We are certain that as an inevitable consequence of such acceptance, the Jewish community of America would suffer grieviously. We are convinced that the fight against anti-Semitism, which is of transcendant importance, would be weakened irreparably.”