A resolution endorsing the State Department’s request for a $16,000,000 Congressional appropriation for education in Germany and support for a Congressional investigation of the forces of neo-Nazism in that country was adopted here today at the spring executive meeting of the American Jewish Committee, which was attended by 150 Jewish leaders from all parts of the country. The session also opposed the Mundt-Nixon Bill, declaring that essential freedoms must not be endangered in the maintenance of national security.
A third resolution pledged the A.J.C. to “join our efforts with all who work to build a Jewish communal life in this country in harmony with American ideals and the vital teachings and traditions of Judaism.” It also promised “friendly assistance” to Israel and cooperation in aiding Jewish communities throughout the world. Finally, the resolution expressed opposition to the idea that only in Israel can a free and flourishing Jewish community be maintained and to those who regard sympathy toward Israel as inconsistent with the obligations of American citizenship.
The resolution on relationships within the Jewish community was adopted following a speech by Jacob Blaustein, president of the Committee, in which he expressed confidence in the strength of American ideals and the soundness of the attitudes of American Jews toward their future as Americans and as Jews, and called for all Jews to work together to build a Jewish communal life in the United States.
Mr. Blaustein further asserted that “it is certainly consonant with these ideals for American Jews to continue to give every friendly aid to Israel in its program of adjusting its great influx of immigrants to a democratic and constructive way of life.” However, this should not and must not be confused with world Jewish nationalism. There is no question,” Mr. Blaustein declared, “that there can be no single spokesman for world Jewry, no matter who.”
On the American scene, said Mr. Blaustein, “we shall continue to work with men of good will to expand American democracy and to make the actual facts of American life more closely resemble the ideals. Overseas, we shall cooperate in extending aid to Jewish communities in their effort to rebuild their institutions and to integrate themselves in the lands of their choice or birth.”
Irving M. Engel, chairman of the executive committee of the A.J.C., stated that the Kilgore-Ferguson Bill on displaced persons’ immigration recently passed by the Senate would not only afford relief to many victims of war and oppression still confined in camps overseas, but would also remove from the statute books the un-American provisions contained in the Revercomb Bill of 1948.
Herbert B. Ehrmann of Boston, chairman of the administrative committee, emphasized that since the closest relationship exists between the civil liberties of all citizens and the protection of the civil liberties of members of the particular groups constituting the American population, the American Jewish Committee must concern itself with serious instances of impairments of civil liberties. Arthur L. Mayer, formerly an advisor to the Allied Military Government in Germany, warned that there has been a tremendous resurgence of reactionary and radical nationalism with strong Nazi overtones.
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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.
