American Jewish Conference Leaders Report on Jewish Activities at San Francisco

The problems that confronted the delegation of the American Jewish Conference at the San Francisco conference of the United Nations were outlined here today by members of the delegation addressing a meeting at Town Hall.

Henry Monsky, president of the American Jewish Conference and one of the consultants to the U.S. delegation at San Francisco, said that back of the language in the article of the chapter of the security charter dealing with trusteeship of mandated territories “is a dramatic story which cannot yet be told in full, a story of service to Israel.”

“That language in the charter represents a complete vindication of the position taken by the American Jewish Conference from the outset of the San Francisco meeting,” Mr. Monsky reported. “We recognized from the very beginning that our objective, in line with the agenda of San Francisco, was to seek the inclusion of such language in the charter as would preserve existing Jewish rights to Palestine, and pave the way for the implementation of these rights in the future.

“The foregoing achievement,” he pointed out,” was the result of the united position of the American Jewish Conference, the Jewish Agency, the World Jewish Congress, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Jewries of Argentina and Mexico, supported by the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Lebor Committee and the Agudas Israel. Thus, the American Jewish Conference’s position on Palestine at San Francisco became the rallying point for all responsible and recognized Jewish bodies throughout the world.”

Dr. Israel Goldstein, a member of the American Jewish Conference delegation to San Francisco, also emphasized the fact that “Jews were not as disunited as may have appeared on the surface.” He said that the program of the American Jewish Conference for the rehabilitation period new commoncing in Europe includes the following;

1. The establishment of an authority to confer status upon stateless Jews.

2. The appointment by UNRRA of personnel who will understand the special religious and cultural needs of Jews who come under UNRRA’s program.

3. Restoration of confiscated Jewish funds and property to the Jewish Agency for Palestine in all cases where the former owners are no longer alive, so that these resources may be used to provide homes abd futures in the Jewish National Home.

4. The outlawry of anti-Semitism as part of the Bill of Human Rights.

5. An international loan to help the resettlement of the dislocated millions in Europe and the allocation of a proportionate amount to the Jewish Agency for the resettlement of Jews who wish to go to Palestine.

Other speakers at the meeting included Louis Lipsky, Judge Morris Rothenberg, Herman Shulman and Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein who acted as “associate consultants” to the U. S. delegation.