Congress Executive Gives Its Approval to Creation of Minorities Council

The action of the delegation representing the American Jewish Congress at the Zurich Conference on Jewish Rights which organized the Jewish Council on Minority Rights was approved in a resolution adopted on Sunday at a meeting of the Congress Executive. A cable received from Bernard G. Richards, Executive Secretary, stated that arrangements for organization of the Council’s Bureau in Geneva are being completed.

Among those who addressed Sunday’s meeting were: Judge Gustave Hartman, Dr. Stephen S. Wise, Dr. Joseph Tenenbaum, Leo Wolfson, Emanuel Hertz, Benjamin Titman, Jacob de Haas, Robert Silverman of Boston, Joshua Bell, Providence, R. L, and Herman Speier.

Giving his impression of the Zurich Conference on Minority Rights Dr. Wise said: “A forward step has been taken in the matter of brotherly dealing with our fellow Jews who dwell in East European or Minority Rights lands. We dealt with them at the Conference, not as if they were a petitioning minority, but as if they were what they are–elements of Jewish life on a parity, save in political and economic circumstances, with us Jews of the West.

“The Jewish Council on Minority Rights, which grew out of the Zurich Conference is not, whatever may be said, a world Jewish Conference or anything approximating thereto. It is the organized effort of Jews of freedom and Jews of Eastern Europe to safeguard that which was won for Jews through war and at the Peace table–namely Minority Rights. Headquarters are being established at Geneva, which is to be the seat of this Council, to serve as a clearing house of information and center of organized and unified action in relation to the status of Jews in East European lands, which status is so often menaced and so gravely violated.

“I confidently look forward to American Jewry giving its fullest moral and material support to the Council and to the American Jewish Congress — the effort of which, as Jewish as it is American, as American as it is Jewish to initiate an era of Jewish self-reliance and self-defence, has made possible the beginning of a better day in Jewish life.”

The B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation at the Ohio State University opened with the High Holiday services, Rabbi Lee J. Levinger, the Director officiating. Jewish students were excused from classes by action of President W. Rightmire of the University.