Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, said today that all the Jews of the free world, along with their leaders, failed to take adequate action to mitigate the Nazi slaughter of European Jewry during World War II.
Speaking at a meeting commemorating the 21st anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt, held in the largest public hall in Paris, he stressed the responsibility of the world Jewish leadership and that of the Western allies in the Hitlerian massacre of the 6,000,000 men, women and children. He said that “if there is reason to level charges, and some of these have been leveled, they should be addressed to all Jews of the free world during the Second World War. All of us, leaders included,” he stressed, “failed during this important test. Furthermore, the history of the attitude of the democratic powers in Europe and in the United States does not constitute a glorious chapter for either the peoples or for modern democracy.”
He stated that the reactions “in the face of growing Hitler ism and of the anti-Semitic aspects of Nazism is a sad story of failures and defeats, of lack of political comprehension and lack of courage.” He added that the Jews of the free world “never had the daring to undertake courageous action or to make better known our demands to the democratic governments then in power.”
Dr. Goldmann recalled the day when he received a cable from the Warsaw Ghetto addressed to himself and Rabbi Stephen Wise, the late American Zionist leader, in which the beleaguered Warsaw Jews wanted to Know why American Jewish leaders had not “sat day and night on the steps of the White House” until the President of the United States would have given the order to bomb the concentration camps and the railways leading to them. He added, “we didn’t dare act then, because the majority of Jewish leadership felt that was not the proper time to disturb the generals in the Allied war effort against Nazism by similar protestations.”
The meeting, which was attended by several thousand Polish Jews now living in France, was also addressed by Admiral Louis Kahn, president of the General Consistory of French Jews, by Dr. Jacob Kaplan, French Chief Rabbi; and Mrs. Marie Madelein Fourcade, president of the French Resistance Movement.
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