The American Jewish Conference concluded its three-day session here tonight following the adoption of a decision, by 198 votes to six, to convert the organization into a permanent representative body of American Jeway.
The B’nai B’rith, one of the major members of the American Jewish Conference, will still have to decide whether it will accept membership in the new organization. However, Frank Goldman, B’nai B’rith president, voted, as an individual delegate, in favor of the permanent body. Also voting as individual delegates were Dr, S####, president of the American Jewish Congress; Mrs. Joseph M. Welt, president of the National Council of Jewish Women; Col. Julius Klein, president of the Jewish War ##rans; Louis Segal, leader of the Zionist Laborites; and Dr. Israel Goldstein, General Zionist leader.
A new interim committee is slated to be elected within two weeks to carry on the affairs of the conference and to implement its resolutions. The interim committee was authorized to elect within 30 days a national board of elections to draft ##ing rules and fix a time and place for the first session of the permanent body to be convened before Jan. 1, 1949.
The resolution recommending the conversion of the American Jewish Conference from a war-time organization into a permanent agency to act as spokesman for all Jews in the United States on domestic and foreign problems provides that “an organization, democratic in structure and representative of the American Jewish community, shall be established to secure and protect the rights and to promote the general welfare of the Jewish people here and abroad; and to enhance the contribution of the Jewish community to American democracy.”
On the issue of including the domestic scene, principally the fight of anti-Semitism, within the purview of the proposed American Jewish Conference, the proposal that the organization act through the civic defense agencies was carried. Defeated was an amendment by Rabbi Max Nussbaum, of Los Angeles, to strengthen the Conference. Goldman led the opposition to the Nussbaum amendment which would eliminate the language “invite reports by the civic defense agencies to the Conference” and substitute that the Conference would “recommend proposals to achieve its objectives in these fields.”
ADDRESSES SEVEN-POINT RESOLUTION TO BIG FOUR PEACE PARLEY
A special seven-point resolution was addressed to the Big Four Foreign Ministers, who are now meeting in London. It urged: 1. That provisions be made in the Austrian and German peace treaties for reparations payments to authorized Jewish bodies for the injuries done the Jewish people; 2. That the treaties include specific sections outlawing anti-Semitism; 3. That provision be made for the punishment of war criminals; 4. That the economic rights of the Jews be restored, including compensation for losses and the turning over of heirless Jewish property to recognized Jewish organizations; 5. That the Jews be given full citizenship rights in those countries; 6, That the countries be forced to maintain the DP’s within their borders; 7. That representatives of the Jewish people be given the opportunity of presenting the Jewish case before the Foreign Ministers conference.
The Conference also called on the Allied governments to compel several neutral governments to turn over some $25,000,000 in German assets to the relief and rehabilitation of the victims of Nazism, as they had agreed to do in negotiations with the Allies.
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