Hope that the Israel Cabinet would pursue a policy of “realistic statesmanship” by formally recommending the initiation of direct discussions with the West German Government on Israel’s reparation claims against the German people and that the Israel Parliament will accept such a recommendation was expressed here today by Dr. Nahum Goldmann, co-chairman of the Jewish Agency and acting president of the World Jewish Congress.
Speaking at a reception tendered by the American Jewish Congress to Dr. Israel Goldstein, newly elected president of the organization, Dr. Goldmann urged the great powers, and particularly the United States Government, to give the fullest support to Israel’s claim for $1,500,000,000 in reparations from Germany. “There can be no doubt in anyone’s mind of Germany’s obligation to pay, “he stated. “The German Government itself has recognized this obligation.”
Dr. Goldmann, however, declared that there can be no atonement for many generations for the harm inflicted by Germany on the Jewish people and warned that “any attempt by Germany to tie up material claims with the problem of moral relations between the Jewish people and Germany is bound to bring about the failure of any efforts for agreement on the material claims.”
Dr. Goldstein, addressing the reception, called for a program of Jewish community life based on the positive values of the Jewish heritage and American democracy rather than on the negative fight against anti-Semitism. Such a program, he said, must rest on a two-fold motivation–a sense of kinship with the Jewish people throughout the world and a sense of obligation to participate in the general struggle for a better social order.
Rabbi Irving Miller, former A.J.C. president who presided at the meeting, declared that the Congress had a “total program for the creative Jewish survival of American Jews, a program of positive identification with the Jewish people everywhere and of integration into the general culture of America.”
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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.
