“The Dawa is surely a Hitler organization, and I still hope that the Stevens Hotel will be frank enough to say either that they do or do not wish to support Hitlerism in America.”
In this manner, Dr. James M. Yard, secretary of the Chicago committee for the Defense of Human Rights Against Nazism, sums up his letter to John Thoss, “maitre d’hotel” of the Stevens Hotel, and asks for a definite statement from the hotel as to its stand on Nazism.
The Stevens Hotel will be the scene of a Dawa convention October 21 to 23. Because of this, the Ladies Auxiliary of the First Rumanian Congregation cancelled its reservations for two halls in the hotel on the evening of November 11.
In a reply to Mrs. Kameni, president of the Ladies Auxiliary, Thoss said that the hotel saw no reason for not letting its rooms to the Dawa as “we conduct our business for service to white American citizens regardless of race or creed.”
The letter continues with the statement that Dawa is a German-American organization composed of citizens and they cannot discriminate against them. They solicit information to the contrary.
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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.