B’nai B’rith Elects Monsky President; Maps Fight Against Anti-Democratic Influences

Henry Monsky, Omaha attorney, was tonight elected international president of B’nai B’rith to succeed the retiring president, Alfred M. Cohen of Cincinnati, who held the post for thirteen years, as the Order’s fifteenth triennial convention drew to a close.

The constitution was amended to provide for three vice-presidents instead of two. They were elected as follows: George I.M. Golden, San Francisco, first vice-president; Archibald Marx, New Orleans, second vice-president, and Louis Fabricant, New York, third vice-president.

Mr. Monsky, who is 48 years old, is a past president of B’nai B’rith’s District 6, and is active in the National Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, the National Conference for Palestine, and several local and national civic organizations, having founded Omaha’s Community chest. He has been a leading official in Omaha drives of the Joint Distribution Committee and was chairman of the committee which initiated B’nai B’rith’s Wider Scope fund-raising plan, serving as chairman of the $2,000,000 campaign from 1927 to 1929. He is a member of the executive committee of the Committee on Cooperation, representing the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress and B’nai B’rith.

Last night a resolution was adopted which grants the executive committee a free hand to proceed with an aggressive program of combating "subversive" and anti-democratic influences. The resolution, described by Mr. Cohen after last night’s session as "not a reversal of policy," gives the executive committee authority to devise ways and means aggressively to carry out its purpose and intent. Mr. Cohen stated that the issue of the anti-Nazi boycott issue did not arise at the closed meeting. He denied knowledge of any specific plan to bring up the boycott issue, but could not give assurance that it would not arise.

The resolution states: "In the interest o protecting democracy against its enemies, the executive committee is directed to continue all efforts to crystallize public opinion and further to enlist the aid of the liberty-loving people of the world, men of all creeds of whatever nativity, in a definite program to prevent the press and destroy the effect of all subversive, sinister and threatening influences alike to Jew and Christian, our nation and our civilization, and inimical to the happiness, welfare, peace and security of the people of all democratic nations."