Asked yesterday whether he had any statement to make with regard to an alleged request on the part of the Department of Justice for additional information to indicate that the anti-Nazi boycott is being carried on in violation of the Anti-Trust Law of 1890, Samuel Untermyer, head of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, yesterday declared, “None whatever.”
According to a letter being circulated by H. Ostermann of the DAWA, German American Protective Alliance, the Department of Justice has replied to a resolution passed by the DAWA mass demonstration of 20,000 German Americans at Madison Square Garden on May 17.
Ostermann gives the content of the official response as follows: (It is translated from a German account.) “The receipt of your telegram of May 18 to the president is herewith acknowledged. My office at an even earlier date has received from private sources complaints on the same subject. Please submit facts on the alleged illegal activities and methods of operation with regard to interstate and foreign commerce.”
According to the Ostermann letter, the note was signed by Assistant Attorney General Harold Stephens at Washington.
At the United German Societies offices on Madison avenue, from which the DAWA is being promoted, Henry O. Spier, director of the DAWA, yesterday said that his organization is compiling “voluminous” material designed to prove the illegality of the anti-Nazi boycott.
A letter, recounting these developments (exclusive of Untermyer’s declaration) has been forwarded to a number of firms in New York and is also published in the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung.
The letter asks information to show:
“1. That you or your firm have suffered a loss through the boycott.
“2. That your loss may be ascribed to the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League or other groups cooperating with it.
“3. That the commercial relations between the United States and Germany have suffered because of the boycott.”
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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.
