Dr. Hendrik George Van Dam, secretary general of the Council of Jews in Germany, took issue yesterday with a study of anti-Semitism in West Germany made by the American Jewish Congress. “Our Council, and not publicity-minded individual Americans or American Jewish organizations is the spokesman and trustee of Jewish interests in West Germany,” he said.
He claimed that the compilation by the American Jewish Congress of studies of anti-Semitic incidents and the general political situation in West Germany published as “The German Dilemma,” had not contributed anything new or remarkable.
Dr. Van Dam, who made his criticism in an interview with West German journalists, added that “interference” of the American Jewish Congress in such matters made the solution of problems, such as restitution, of the Jews in Germany more difficult.
(In New York, Dr. Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress, said that the organization had published the study as “a contribution to a discussion of the problems” in West Germany and “in the hope that it might aid in the promotion of a new Germany committed to the ideals of democracy and capable of joining the free communities of the world.”)
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