A resolution calling for the establishment of a “central body representing the entire American Jewish community,” to be its spokesman in domestic and international affairs, was adopted here today at the closing session of the five-day convention of the American Jewish Congress.
In another resolution, the A.J. Congress voiced a complaint of “indifference” by the United States Government to “affronts” against American citizens by Arab countries and called on the executive and legislative branches to prevent racial or religious discrimination by foreign nations against American citizens.
President Eisenhower was urged by the delegates to exercise the authority recently granted in the Douglas Amendment to the Mutual Security Act to withhold U.S. aid to any country that obstructs the use of international waterways to countries friendly to the U.S.
The convention appealed to the Soviet Union to reinstate “full cultural and religious facilities” to Russia’s 3,000,000 Jews, to end anti-Jewish discrimination in education and professional advancement, and to remove all restrictions on emigration “for the purpose of reuniting broken families.” Other resolutions urged:
1. Federal aid should be given to education “but not to parochial schools or school districts in violation of the principles laid down in the Supreme Court decisions condemning state-imposed racial segregation.”
2. Political candidates should be Judged not on the basis of their religious belief or church affiliation but on their positions regarding major issues, “including the separation of Church and State.”
The convention expressed “concern” at what it termed the “continuing deficiencies in German public life,” including the role of ex-Nazis in positions of influence and the “essential failure” of the German educational system to promote an understanding among German youth of the brutality of the Nazi regime.
Dr. Joachim Prinz was re-elected national president of the American Jewish Congress. to serve a second two-year term. Nathan L. Edelstein of Philadelphia was elected chairman of the newly formed Governing Council, which will be the agency’s policy-making body. Paul Annes of Chicago was elected co-chairman. Shad Polier was re-elected a national vice-president and named again to head the Commission on Law and Social Action of the Congress, which he has headed since its establishment in 1945.
At today’s final session, the convention voted to re-establish two functioning commissions–the Commission on Jewish Affairs to undertake programs aimed at strengthening Jewish self-knowledge and Jewish identification; and a Commission on Community Interrelations to study the causes of and to trap strategy to reduce intergroup tensions.
Dr. Israel Goldstein, vice-president of the World Jewish Congress, told the convention that the world is entering a “new phase in which the moral shock of the Hitler period seems to be wearing off and a considerable receptivity to anti-Semitism exists–even in those societies we had thought were immune to its spread.”
Citing the worldwide “epidemic” of anti-Semitic outbreaks since the first of the year, Dr. Goldstein said that the Eichmann trial in Israel would have a “salutary effect in reminding the German people and the world of the horrors of the Hitler era.”
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.
