Greek Government Assures B’nai B’rith on Easing Decrees Aimed at Jews

A promise by the Greek Government to modify its new regulations will ease restrictions on the Jewish community of Greece and “allow it to administer its own internal affairs,” Dr. William A. Wexler, president of B’nai B’rith, said today. He expressed satisfaction with an official statement that the new Greek regime would rescind several decrees it had adopted last month which would have imposed non-Jewish representation on the directorates of the Jewish community’s major functioning bodies.

Dr. Wexler and Herman Edelsberg, director of the B’nai B’rith International Council, met separately with Greek officials and representatives of the Jewish community in Athens last week. They received assurance that the rulings — which would have placed two non-Jewish Government officials on each of the five-member boards governing KIS, the central committee for Greece’s 13 local Jewish communities, and OPAIE, which administers heirless properties of Jewish victims of Nazism, are to be amended, Dr. Wexler said. B’nai B’rith is active in Greece, with lodges in Athens and Salonika.

Dr. Wexler said that the pledge to alter the decrees indicates that the Greek Government “has accepted the view that appointment of non-Jews to administer the organized religious, cultural and educational activities of the Jewish community would have created a debilitating and intolerable condition.”