Improvement in Poland, Rumania Noted in Report to British Deputies

An improvement in the Jewish position in Poland and Rumania, coupled with a new attitude toward Nazi inspired anti-Semitic agitation on the part of other European states, was reported today to the Board of Deputies of British Jews. The developments were noted in a report of the Joint Foreign Committee of the Board and the Anglo-Jewish Association, which described the plight of the Jewish populations in Germany, the protectorate of Bohemia Moravia. Slovakia and Carpatho Russia.

Submitting the report, Leonard Stein, newly inducted president of the Anglo-Jewish Association, declared: “There is reason to think that some states with small Jewish populations, where the influence of the Nazi regime led the governments to condone anti Semitic agitation and discrimination against the Jews, are beginning to see that freedom from the allegation of Jewish persecution is a moral asset in the eyes of democracies which no country can afford to despise.” The report also pointed out that the refugee problem could not be solved without intergovernmental action.

Board President Neville Laski, reporting on defence activities, declared that a decrease in anti-Semitic and anti-refugee letters in the British press had been accompanied by an increase in the “foulest leaflets, pamphlets and propaganda” and recrudescence of Fascist tactics of violence of speech and manner at public meetings.

The Board stood in silence when Mr. Laski commemorated Chief Rabbi Jacob Meir, spiritual leader of Palestine Sephardic Jews, who died last month. Mr. Laski also paid tribute to Leonard Montefiore, retired president of the Anglo-Jewish Association, congratulated Otto Schiff on his work in behalf of the refugees and welcomed and wished success to Mr. Stein, new Association president.