German Pro-palestine Committee Answers Its Non-zionist Opponents

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service)

The Presidium of the German Pro-Palestine Committee held its first meeting here. Count Bernstorff, former German Ambassador to the United States, presided. Rabbi Leo Baeck, Professor Bredt, Dr. R. Breitscheid. Herr Kurt Blumenfeld, Professor Gressmann, Professor Hoetzch, Professor Dr. Kaas, Dr. von Kardoff, Freiherr von Richthofen, Professor M. Sobernheim, Dr. W. Sobernheim, Madame Katherina von Oheimb and Herr Karl Glaser attended the meeting.

The Presidium dealt with the attacks on the Committee made by a Jewish group in Germany and decided to issue the following statement in reply:

“The German Pro-Palestine Committee is convinced that the upbuilding of the Homeland for the Jewish people provided for in the Palestine Mandate under the League of Nations is on political and economic grounds and as a work of human welfare entitled to German sympathy and the active participation of the German Jews. The German Pro-Palestine Committee is supporting a Jewish work and the activity which is bound up with it. It declines, however, to take up any stand in an internal Jewish conflict. It cannot understand the purpose of a Jewish group in calling upon the members of the German Pro-Palestine Committee to take a stand in internal Jewish affairs. There is no ground for the assumption that the members of the German Pro-Palestine Committee are not sufficiently informed of the tasks of this committee. Cooperation in the Jewish Palestine work is in no way designed to affect the position of the Jews in German State or public life. The work which has been undertaken in Palestine contributes to the improvement of the position of Jewry throughout the world.”