German Zionist Organ Says Present-day Conditions So Chaotic That One Cannot Tell Whether, Conference

The “Juedische Rundschau”, the German Zionist organ, discussing the plan to call a Jewish World Conference put forward by the American Jewish Congress, points out that there are difficulties in the way.

But the Jewish world situation is one that needs serious consideration, it goes on. On top of the political difficulties facing the Jews, there is a specific Jewish economic distress, distinctive for the Jewish Community.

There is an economic and social boycott directed against Jews even in countries in which there are a very small number of Jews, and which have hither to appeared to be free from avowed anti-Jewish tendencies, it says, while in the countries where anti-Jewish tendencies are traditional the distress of the Jewish masses has become unbearable. Jews are practically everywhere regarded as aliens, and the Jewish question is showing itself as what it really is, a national question. The inclination and readiness of the world, full of serious difficulties of its own, to deal earnestly with the Jewish question in the sense of a constructive solution is to-day much diminished.

In such a situation,-the “Rundschau” writes, the Herzlian saying is now more apt than ever- “A people can only help itself, or nothing will help it”.

The difficulties surrounding the idea of a Jewish World Congress are well known, it continues. They are the expression of the division and disunity that exist inside the Jewish Communities of the world.

It is hard to find a common denominator on which the important Jewish organisations and movements can come together for common consultation.

Another thing is that political conditions throughout the world to-day are so chaotic that one cannot know whether such a Conference can take place, even on purely technical grounds, unless it is fixed for the very near future.

It is also difficult to decide who is entitled to take part in such a Jewish World Congress.

Nevertheless, the paper goes on, this is not the time to be sceptical about such a project.

The facts that anti-Jewish hatred as a political organised movement is active practically all over the world, that the United States of America, once the goal and the refuge of tens of thousands of Jews, is to-day allocating State funds in order to send immigrants back to their old countries, are so horrifying that on the Jewish side all efforts must be made to throw the weight of the Jewish Community itself into the scales to decide the Jewish fate. How and to what extent it will have any effect does not depend on us Jews alone. But the essential point is that we must draw the consequences from the existing conditions, and not stand looking on passively while the waves break against the foundations of our Jewish life.