Hoover, King Urge Refugee Aid As Temple Groups End Parley

Conventions of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the national federations of temple brotherhoods and sisterhoods closed today with the election of officers. Herbert Oettinger, Cincinnati broker, was elected treasurer of the U.A.H.C. succeeding N. Henry Beckman of Cincinnati. Alfred M. Cohen was elected president at Monday’s session.

Rabbi Barnett R. Brickner of Cleveland, in a joint program this morning of the U.A.H.C. and the Central Conference of American Rabbis on “The Relation of the Rabbi and the Layman in Congregation and Community,” declared: “If we are going to save democracy, we must make it work. People can’t eat their liberties.”

Aid to refugees and a rebuke to Germany were urged by ex-President Herbert Hoover and Senator William King at yesterday’s session of the Union.

Mr. Hoover said in a message: “I would like to be numbered among those who express to your conference the sympathy and interest which all decent Americans hold in the problems with which you are confronted at the present time. The Jews are but part of those peoples the persecution of whom rises out of moral and political degradation the world over. It remains to those who steadily hold to religious and political ideals to join in every relief that can be extended. In the meantime, it is the duty of all of us to show the indignation of all the right thinking people, for in that expression we contribute to hold fast to those standards from which the world must have its ultimate redemption.”

Senator King, addressing the convention banquet last night, called upon the United States to proclaim non-intercourse, political or otherwise, with Germany if it persists in racial and religious persecution and pledged support for such a measure if introduced in Congress. He also called for immediate steps to bring relief to victims of Nazi cruelty.