Critic Hits Administration for Failure to Protest Anti-jewish Bias in Russia, Poland

The author of a book that accused the Roosevelt Administration of “apathy and inaction” while Hitler massacred six million Jews in Europe during World War II, charged here today that the U.S. Government is still derelict with respect to the plight of Jews in Soviet Russia and Poland, Arthur D. Morse, author of the current best-seller, ” While Six Million Died,” declared that while the United States had a record of intervening on behalf of persecuted peoples abroad — the Armenians in Turkey, the Jews in Czarist Russia — “this country has yet to protest the ongoing religious and cultural repressions of the Jews of the Soviet Union and the current anti-Semitic campaign in Poland against so-called Zionists.” The American people is against these repressions, Mr. Morse said, “and the U.S. Government, through the State Department, ought to say so forthrightly.”

The author spoke at a seminar session of the 39th annual convention of the National Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs, an affiliate of the United Synagogue of America. The convention was attended by 750 delegates representing 350 synagogue clubs in the United States and Canada. Mr. Morse charged the State Department with “deliberate misrepresentation” during World War II by concealing behind a “facade of protocol and politesse” the failure to rescue Jews who might have been saved. He declared that the same situation prevails today. The State Department is “still up to its old ways” in dealing with the Middle East, Vietnam and other areas, he said. He voiced suspicion that the State Department’ Middle Eastern personnel “are still selected from Arab-oriented sources.”

In another address, Rabbi Harry Halpern, of the East Midwood Jewish Center of Brooklyn who is a member of the New York City Human Rights Commission, scored the Johnson Administration’s “do nothing” response to the report of the President’s National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders None of the Commission’s recommendations to curb urban unrest have been the subject of suggested legislation by the President, Rabbi Halpern said, and so far Congress has failed to act on its own initiative.

Speaking at an earlier session of the convention, Rabbi Joel S. Geffen, advisor to the National Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs, declared that it was a “misnomer” to refer to last June’s Arab-Israel conflict as the Six-Day War. “In reality, the Israel-Arab war is 20 years old,” he said.