State Department spokesman Charles Bray said today that if the statement of President Idi Amin of Uganda praising Hitler for having murdered six million Jews and calling for all Jews to be removed from the Middle East had been correctly reported, “obviously one has to deplore them.” He added he could not comment on a question as to whether Uganda was receiving economic aid from the United States.
In New York, a United Nations spokesman said that Secretary General Kurt Waldheim had not received any communication from Amin. The Uganda President had reportedly handed his vitriolic statement to a UN official in Uganda for delivery to Waldheim.
Meanwhile, Jewish leaders urged the US and UN to condemn Amin’s statement. The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith called upon President Nixon “to direct the United States ambassador to the United Nations to seek immediately a resolution censuring Uganda for its President’s outrageously obscene statement.”
In a telegram to Nixon, Seymour Graubard. national ADL chairman, said: “The United Nations came into being as a result of World War II. For Uganda, a member nation, to now praise Hitler and the genocide of six million Jews is a ludicrous perversion of the founding principles of the United Nations which call for peace and the elimination of hatred, bigotry and prejudice.”
The president of B’nai B’rith District 1 called on the UN Human Rights Commission to condemn that “Immoral and reprehensible statement” by Amin. In a telegram to the Human Rights Commission, Dr. Elliot N. Rosenberg, District 1 President, called upon the UN Commission on Human Rights “to take whatever steps are within its power to condemn such despicable fulminations which are in violation of the fundamental principles upon which the UN rests and which are an insult to all humanity.”
The Jewish Labor Committee and the Workmen’s Circle also blasted Amin’s statement. In a message to Waldheim, Jacob T. Zuckerman, president of the Jewish Labor Committee, called on the UN to “take action against terrorism throughout the world–the moment for temporizing has past.” Harold Ostroff, president of the Workmen’s Circle, in a telegram to Secretary of State William P. Rogers, called on the US to protest the Amin statement.
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.
