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Dies Committee Charged with Suppressing Facts on Anti-semitic Activities

January 5, 1943
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Charging the Dies Committee on Un-American Activities with suppressing, in its annual report, facts concerning the anti-Semitic propaganda conducted by pro-Axis organizations in America, Rep. Jerry Voorhis of California, a member of the Committee, today made public a one-man minority report in which he dissents from certain conclusions set forth in the Die’s report which was released yesterday.

In its report, the Dies Committee defends itself for failing to make public the results of closed hearings on anti-Semitic activities held in January, 1942. “The character of the testimony given,” the report says, “was, by and large, of such extreme and fanatical tenor that in the opinion of this committee no good purpose could have been served by taking it in public. This committee has held from its very beginning that anti-racial and anti-religious propaganda is un-American per se. It has always been so and it may be said to have a particularly vicious form of un-Americanism in this period when one of the chief characteristics of the Axis powers has been the dissemination and practice of anti-racial hatred.”

The majority report which covers the activities of 298 organizations and several thousand individuals, says that “native Fascist groups” have conducted both anti-racial and pro-Nazi propaganda in the United States, and points out that some of the organizations and individuals engaged in this propaganda are “known to have been financed in whole or in part from Nazi Germany.”

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