Efforts of the Nazis to involve the B’nai B’rith in the libel suit brought by Jewish leaders in Berne, Switzerland, against local Nazis for spreading the so-called “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” were ridiculed here today in a statement issued by Alfred M. Cohen, international president of the B’nai B’rith.
The trial in Berne will open on Monday, April 29. Mr. Cohen’s statement reads as follows:
“The information brought by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from Berne, that efforts will be made to involve the B’nai B’rith in the “Protocols” trial, which will be resumed next Monday, was not entirely new to us.
“Of course the allegations of the Nazis are preposterously false, just as the ‘Protocols’ themselves are. The Nazis allege that the action described by the ‘Protocols’ took place at a session of the ‘Congress of Jewish B’nai B’rith Order’ and the time they set is ‘the year 1897.’ Our information is that the story involves Hungarian Lodges.
“As a matter of fact, never has there been a B’nai B’rith Lodge in all of Hungary, and the first lodge in Switzerland was not organized until a much later period. The B’nai B’rith is an American institution, and its conventions are as a rule held in the United States. Only once did the executive committee hold a meeting outside the United States, and that was in 1912.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
