An executive of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith criticized today a retraction by General U.S. Grant. 3rd, chairman of the U.S. Civil War Centennial Commission, of material Gen. Grant had circulated defaming Jews in connection with the Civil War.
The article. “Abraham Lincoln and the Rothschilds. ” purported to show that Lionel and James de Rothschild conspired with Disraeli in London to split the United States and that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was inspired by Jewish “international bankers.” It was previously printed in Father Coughlin’s “Social Justice” and other anti-Semitic periodicals. It was published by Gen. Grant in the bulletin of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States of which he is commander-in-chief.
General Grant, after more than two months of insisting on the validity of the material, wrote to Joseph F. Barr, national executive director of the Jewish War Veterans, Wednesday, that he had learned that the material had been “contradicted.” He said he had found that it contained “several allegations and implications that are unsupported by sound historical authorities and so are probably false.”
Herman Edelsberg. Washington director of the ADL, said today the issue was “far from closed. ” He noted that “this was no academic controversy that could be settled on the basis of a cagey, half-hearted, so-called apology. The sad fact is that a notorious anti-Semitic canard, which until recently was circulated anonymously in the gutter, is now being circulated by professional anti-Semites on the authority of Gen, Grant.”
Mr. Edelsberg added that “the most primitive sense of decency and honor requires that an individual who put such a counterfeit article into circulation should withdraw and repudiate it without qualification.” He added the hope that scholars of the Centenial Commission would obtain the publication in the official newsletter of a real repudiation that would destroy the effect of the fabrication once and for all.”
He said that Sen, Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania had already asked colleagues on the Centennial Commission to do “just that.”
The ADL official said that Gen. Grant was persuaded to accept the defamatory article by Philip M. Allen, editor of the Loyal Legion Bulletin, Edelsberg identified Allen as “a man whose open anti-Semitic career extends over 20 years. “Edelsberg said American Jews could not be “complacent”as long as Gen. Grant “continues to protect Allen and maintains him as editor of this official publication.”
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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.
