Anti-Semites have become “even more dangerous today” in the United States, although their influence has dwindled steadily, Jacob Blaustein, president of the American Jewish Committee, declared today at the Cornell Club during a luncheon ceremony at which he received the Gottheil Medal of the Zeta Beta Tau Fraternity “for outstanding service to Jewry during 1950.”
The anti-Semites of today have adopted a new and more subtle and dangerous line, Mr. Blaustein explained. “They infiltrate into respectable groups honestly concerned with pressing current problems–communism, education, etc. –and they utilize these groups as fronts which disguise their real motivation.”
“Even these tactics might not prove alarming if a certain set of attitudes and climate of opinion did not prevail in America today–that is if there were guarantees that Americans were utterly unreceptive to the lies and distortions of the bigots and agitators,” Mr. Blaustein continued. “Unfortunately, however, that is not wholly the case. The investigations of the American Jewish Committee regarding American attitudes towards Jews, reveal information that gives us pause and demonstrates to us the width of the gap between the American promise and the American performance.”
The award to Mr. Blaustein was made by Col. Harold Riegelman, past national president of the Zeta Beta Teu Fraternity, the largest and oldest college fraternity of Jewish membership in the country with 47 chapters in American and Canadian colleges and universities. Last year’s Gottheil Medal recipient was Bernard Baruch.
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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.
