A resolution declaring that Soviet anti-Semitism spells “imminent danger for the 2,500,000 Jews behind the Iron Curtain” and urging American Jews to give maximum support to the United Jewish Appeal to aid victims of the Soviet anti-Jewish drive and to place Israel in a position “to receive and settle all who come to it from lands of danger and persecution,” was adopted here today at the conclusion of a two-day National Labor Conference of the UJA. The conference was attended by 800 delegates of labor Zionist groups in this country.
Addressing the concluding session, Bartley Crum, noted American lawyer, told the audience that “Soviet harassment of Eastern Europe’s Jews and its propaganda drive against the State of Israel are directed against the entire free world and are not matters of exclusive Jewish concern.” He emphasized that “the Kremlin’s base resort to anti-Semitism under the guise of an anti-Israel and anti-Zionist policy is no erratic decision on the part of the Soviet leaders but represents a new phase of their cold war against the United States and its allies.”
Dr. Nahum Goldmann, in a cabled message from Paris, told the Conference that although “the exits of the Soviet world are sealed for the desperate multitudes of our people, the UJA must be ready against the day when the Kremlin might be forced to respond to the unremitting demand that it let its Jews go.” The Jewish Agency chairman declared that American Jews must give the United Jewish Appeal the funds it needs “for the deliverance of our persecuted brethren crying out of the bondage of 20th century Egypts.”
David Hacohen, a leading labor member of Israel’s Parliament, declared that the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe “can give evidence that they do not intend to follow the road that Hitler took by allowing their 2,500,000 Jews to emigrate to Israel at the earliest time.” He told the Conference that Israel has no illusions nor will it “adopt any ostrich policies” in the face of the Communist drive against Jews. He expressed his pride in coming from a country “whose gates are open and will stay open to receive all who can be brought out of lands of persecution.”
Dr. Joseph J. Schwartz, executive vice-chairman of the U.J.A., contrasted the “grim hopelessness of Jews who had no place to go as Hitlerism ground them down and the hope that stirs in the hearts of Eastern Europe’s Jews as they look to the State of Israel for sanctuary and freedom. The great and significant difference between 1933 and 1953,” Dr. Schwartz declared, “is that today there is a haven and a homeland for all Jews in danger.”
Other speakers at the conference included Rabbi James G. Heller, chairman of the UJA Labor Council; Baruch Zuckerman, leader of the American Zionist labor movement; Dr. Sara Feder, president of the Pioneer Women of America; Meyer L. Brown, president of the Labor Zionist Order; Louis Segal, general secretary of the Order; Devorah Metlitsky, delegate to the Pioneer Women from Israel’s National Council of Working Women, and others.
Justice Benjamin Shalleck, chairman of the Council of Organizations of the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York, addressing a conference of leaders of the 7,000 organizations affiliated with the Council today, said; “Our help is still needed for the relief of the distressed hundreds of thousands of our people in the danger spots of the world–particularly in countries where a virulent, reawakened anti-Semitism endangers their lives–as well as to provide homes and a future for the tens of thousands of orphans of our hallowed martyrs.”
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.
