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Five Nationality Groups Protest Slurs on U.S. Jews by Syrian Envoy

November 23, 1955
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Leaders of five nationality groups protested today to Secretary of State Dulles the attack on American Jews made in a recent speech by the Syrian Ambassador to the United States, Farid Zeineddine.

“As Americans of various ethnic origins,” they declared in a telegram to Mr. Dulles, “we should like to record with you our feelings of shock and concern with the unseemly insult directed against our fellow Americans of Jewish religion. To us, the substance of the Ambassador’s remarks was, in many ways, virtually indistinguishable from Nazi racial theories which, within all our memories, have brought about such ruin and loss to the world.”

The ethnic leaders pointed out that the purpose of the telegram “is to deplore the fact that any Americans singly or collectively, should be subject to this type of wanton, unfair and harmful insult. We believe that Mr. Zeineddine at the very least has abused American hospitality and exceeded his diplomatic privileges,” they told Mr. Dulles.

The five signatories of the telegram are: Andrew J. Valuchec, publisher of “Dennik,” Czechoslovak New York newspaper; Joseph Triner, president of the Czechoslovak National Council of America; Aloysius Falussy, director of the American Hungarian Federation; Joseph A. L. Errigo, chairman of the National Anti-Defamation Committee, Order of the Sons of Italy in the U.S.A.; Mary Kizis, director of the American Lithuanian Information Center; I Morawski, editor of the Polish newspaper, “Nowy Swiat”; and Stephen Jarema, executive secretary of the Ukrainian Congress Committee.

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