Convention of American Jewish Congress Opens Today; Truman Urges Jewish Integration

President Truman, in a message to the national convention of the American Jewish Congress which opens here tomorrow, emphasized that “whatever can with justice and fairness be done” to alleviate the condition of the Jewish survivors in Europe who are still homeless and without work must be done. At the same time he pointed out that the problems of any one people can no longer be dealt with separately, and urged the integration of Jewish efforts with those of other peoples “in the interests of democracy.”

The five-day convention will discuss means of combating racial prejudice as well as problems confronting the Jews of Europe, such as emigration, restoration of property, cultural rehabilitation and the revival of Jewish communal life. It will also take up the Palestine problem and discuss the implications of the Anglo-American inquiry committee’s report. The opening session will be addressed by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Stephen S. Wise and Rabbi Irving Miller.

Admitting that a year after victory the position of the Jews in Europe is still precarious, President Truman said in his message that the problems confronting the Jewish people have not been solved by the fall of the Nazi and Fascist regimes. However, he stressed that what must be sought, are “not separate but total solutions of the problems that confront the world today” since the security and welfare of one group are bound up with that of all others.

The President’s message reads as follows:

“You meet in circumstances happier in some respects than you and your people have known in more than a decade. Because of the victories won by the arms of the United Nations no governments are left standing in which racial prejudice and racial oppression are matters of deliberate national policy. The decrees that sanctioned and ordered harsh, even mortal, discrimination against the Jews have been stricken from the statute books, and their authors stand indicted before high tribunals as offenders against the moral laws of civilization. Many of those who executed their cruel edicts have already suffered just punishment.

“Yet the overthrow of the worst transgressors against the innate dignity of every individual, whatever his race or his creed, has not of itself solved the problems confronting your people. Even as you mourn the six million who have died in the tortures of Nazism, you are keenly aware of the plight of hundreds of thousands of others who still, a year after the victory, have no homes to which to return, no families with which to foregather, no occupations to which to resort.

“Whatever can with justice and with fairness be done to alleviate the condition of these persons must be done, and steps are now being taken that will result, I hope, in their being assured opportunities to establish homes and families in other surroundings where they can live and work in security and peace.

“At the same time, none of us can any longer believe that the problems of any one people or of any one nation can be dealt with separately. The security and the welfare of any one group are irrevocably bound up with the security and the welfare of all others. What must be sought, therefore, are not separate but total solutions of the problems that confront the world today. To the extent that, by united efforts, conditions can be created in the world under which all peoples and all nations will be given opportunities freely to exchange the products of their toil, to rebuild their communities, to look to the future with confidence, to that extent will each unit of human society be safeguarded in its right to pursue happiness in accordance with the dictates of its conscience.

“The American Jewish Congress, I feel sure, meets with the conviction and the faith that those whom it represents and for whom it speaks can integrate their efforts with those of other free peoples in the interests of democracy. In the belief that only through such integration can all the peoples of the world know peace, I extend to your convention my greeting and bespeak your assistance in the great tasks that challenge the best efforts of all of us.”