Herman Edelsberg, director of the Washington office of the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League, called on the Federal Government today to end Jew-baiting rallies conducted regularly here by George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party.
Mr, Edelsberg said that “if the centuries-old Anglo-Saxon concepts of disorderly conduct and breach of peace still have any meaning, the Nazi rallies are outright violations of law.”
He said “the constitutional protection of free speech was not designed to cover and does not cover the kind of vile anti-Semitic threats and insults which, week after week, Rockwell continues to pour out.”
At the most recent rally, passers-by expressed fear for their physical safety because of the menacing attitude of the score of swastika-wearing “stormtroopers” who served as an “honor guard” for Rockwell. The stormtroopers took command of an area of the public park and sought to assume police power in threatening and restricting the public,
In addition to his personal “elite” bodyguard of 20 stormtroopers, trouble was caused yesterday by other Rockwell supporters who mingled in the crowd, threatening and taunting Jews.The personal bodyguard surrounded their leader in a military formation reminiscent of the tactics of Hitler’s SS Guards.
(Hearings will begin tomorrow in Kings County Supreme Court in Brooklyn on a motion by two New York State legislators seeking to outlaw Rockwell’s party in New York State. The two legislators, Senator Frank Pino and Assemblyman Irwin Brownstein, have applied for an injunction banning the party from activities in the State, from using the Nazi name and displaying the swastika.)
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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.
