B’nai Brith Declines to Participate in Geneva Conference; Calls for Rescinding Plans

The B’nai B’rith organization, with branches in many parts of the world, will not participate in the forthcoming world Jewish conference in Geneva on August 14, according to a communication received by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from Alfred M. Cohen, president of the order.

In a letter addressed to Bernard S. Deutsch, president of the American Jewish Congress which is sponsoring the conference, Mr. Cohen declines the invitation to participate for the Executive committee of the order, representing seven districts in America and eight districts beyond the seas, and calls upon the Congress to rescind its plans for the conference.

Mr. Cohen prefaces his declination of the invitation to participate in the conference with the following statement:

“Several weeks ago you honored me, together with Dr. Rubinow, with an invitation to a luncheon conference for the purpose of discussing with you and other officials of the American Jewish Congress a subject of Jewish interest. When we met at the Hotel Commodore in your city, you asked B’nai B’rith to join the American Jewish Congress in an invitation to other Jewish organizations here and abroad to participate in a World Jewish conference to be held in August this year at Geneva to consider the advisability of calling a World Jewish Congress in 1933 or thereafter.

“I than said to you without the sanction of the Executive Committee of the B’nai B’rith I deemed myself unauthorized to give definite answer to your proposal. I stated what of course you well know, that the Executive Committee of B’nai B’rith is composed of representatives not only of seven districts in America, but also embraces many countries in which our coreligionists will be directly and therefore keenly and vitally interested in topics likely to be brought to the attention of a World Jewish Conference, and that I believed the views of our representatives in those countries ought to be thoroughly known to us in America, who in acting on the proposal would naturally be largely influenced by their opinion.

“I have communicated with all the members of my Executive Committee and this definite answer to your proposal follows as speedily as possible the receipt of answers from those widely scattered correspondents.

“The answers received from the foreign districts are unanimously unfavorable to B’nai B’rith’s participation in a world Jewish conference at or near the present time,” Mr. Cohen says. “Some go further and altogether disapprove of the holding of a world Jewish conference. They admonish us in America to be careful lest we do them harm and not good.

“With scarcely an exception, the opinion of the American Executive Committeemen coincides with the foregoing,” states Mr. Cohen.

“In the presence of this advice,” he declares, “B’nai B’rith cannot participate in a world Jewish conference to be held as proposed by the American Jewish Congress. Moreover, in behalf of B’nai B’rith, whose widespread membership makes it above all other organizations representative of world Jewry, I politely though none the less strongly, urge the American Jewish Congress (the rectitude of whose motives no one may question) to recall and rescind its plans for holding the conference in August. A meeting of that character should only be held after all influential bodies in world Jewry decide that such a meeting is in the interests of world Jewry. In the absence of such mandate, a Jewish World Congress can be such in name only. When B’nai B’rith learns from its membership spread over the continents that the united voice of Israel may help to right existing wrongs, it will be among the first to heed their cry.”