Hitlerism was branded as “the gravest menace to peace, civilization and democracy” by more than 20,000 persons who jammed the Madison Square Garden tonight to review the four-year record of the Nazi regime in Germany.
Gathered under the auspices of the American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee, the crowd cheered to the echo attacks on Hitlerism for suppressing labor, destroying freedom and persecuting Jews and other minorities, and pledged renewed support for the boycott on German products and services.
A resolution condemned the Nazi government for “seeking the destruction of American democracy” by propaganda and by rearing a private Nazi army here, while John L. Lewis, head of the Committee for Industrial Democracy, urged labor and farmers to support “industrial democracy” to prevent the rise of Fascism in the United States. The resolution also asked Americans to support the boycott.
Others on the speakers’ list included General Hugh S. Johnson, former NRA administrator; Dr. Henry N. MacCracken, president of the Vassar College; Frika Mann, daughter of Thomas Mann; Dr. Frank Bohn, the economist; B.C. Vladock, chairman of the Jewish Labor Committee; Dr. Stephen S. Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress, and Dr. Joseph Tenenbaum, chairman of the Joint Boycott Council, who presided.
The resolution, presented at the conclusion of the rally by the Rev. John Haynes Holmes, was in the form of a four-point indictment of the Nazi Government, finding it has “destroyed all vestiges of democracy, and human and civilized procedure in Germany and substituted for law and order a reign of oppression borrowed from the barbarism of the Middle Ages.”
It accused the Hitler regime specifically of using the instruments of the state to destroy political freedom and institutions of labor subordinate the church to its doctrines, vanquish scientific truth and artistic integrity, persecute the Jews and “through its policies to drive the world to the precipice of a new war.”
The Nazi government was also charged with “making an onslaught upon democratic society everywhere” and “seeking to advance the Nazi doctrines of the totalitarian state throughout the world.”
While pleading poverty, the resolution said, the Nazis are using billions of dollars owed to holders of German bonds to finance rearmament, support anti-Semitic groups throughout the world and seek to destroy American democracy.
Mr. Lewis devoted about half of his address to describing the suppression of labor in the Third Reich and the degradation of the Germans’ standard of living. He then turned to the United States with a warning that if political democracy is to be preserved, industrial democracy must be established.
“It is our belief,” he asserted, speaking for the C.I.O., “that the establishment of industrial democracy in America might tend to counter-balance the reactionary movements which are sweeping the world today. If this is true, we shall not only be fulfilling our duties as citizens of this nation, but we shall be fulfilling our duties as men to the civilization of which we are inheritors.”
Messages of support for the purposes of the meeting were received from seven state governors, 47 senators and representatives and a host of other leaders in various fields.
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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.
