Andre Siegfried, author of “America Comes of Age,” anti-Semitic excerpts of which were included in a correspondence course sent to American servicemen, resulting in withdrawal of the course by both the U.S. Army and Navy, today denied to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he was anti-Semitic.
“My book is not anti-Jewish,” he asserted, “and I do not have anti-Jewish feelings. I made an objective study of conditions in the United States and noticed the existence in that country of a certain amount of racist feelings as expressed in the immigration laws of 1921-25, which were, to all practical purposes, racial laws seeking to favor immigration of so-called Nordic elements at the expense of Mediteranean and Slavonic elements.
“The racial issue has probably lost its importance in the United States since then,” he continued, “and during my recent stay there (as an adviser to the French delegation at San Francisco), as well as through my contacts with Americans here, I have noticed serious progress in all-around Americanization of the various elements composing the population of the United States, although there still exists a certain amount of anti-Semitism.”
Siegfried charged that “no one but people seeking to further anti-Semitism could have been interested in segregating isclated excerpts from my book in a way that might misrepresent them as an expression of anti-Jewish feeling on my part.”
(In “America Comes of Age,” Mr. Siegfried says, among other things, that “the Gentile fears, and with reason, the competition of the Jew in business, and despises him as a matter of course.” In the same chapter he writes: “The Jew passes through the first phase of his Americanization with disconcerting rapidity. There is something suspicious about his excessive zeal. Caught suddenly into the rhythm of the New World, he is soon more American than the Americans themselves. He joins societies for the promotion of ethical culture, where he mixes with broadminded Protestants anxious about their duty to society.”)
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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.
