The three-day conference of the Joint Defense Appeal national council, attended by more than 300 delegates, concluded here today after recommending a 1949 budget of $6,826,115 to meet the “minimum defense needs of American Jewry and to make possible the co-ordinated program of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League.”
Justice Meier Steinbrink, national chairman of the A.D.L., declared in an address last night that results of the national election indicate that “the country can hope for an early liberalization of the DP bill and the elimination of the anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic bias written into the present law” and that the U.S. “may at last look for a start on the program recommended by the President’s civil rights committee.”
Jacob Blaustein, chairman of the executive committee of the American Jewish Committee, declared “it is gratifying to report that anti-Semitic incidents perpetrated by organized groups for the purpose of spreading bigotry have been greatly decreased in the last few years. Now is the time, therefore, when all groups of good will can make an attack on the problem by eliminating the latent prejudice of anti-Semitism in our population.”
The struggle for civil rights in America is gaining momentum, Dr. John Slawson, executive vice-president of the A.J.C., told the parley. “No longer is it necessary for any one group in America to fight group hostility alone,” he asserted. “Leaders of all walks of life have become convinced that the problem of members of any group in America, religious or racial, become the problem of all America.”
Benjamin R. Epstein, national director of the A.D.L., told the council delegates that “organized community, its institutions and structures, act as a bulwark to keep us from slipping back into prejudice.”
Charles W. Morris, of Louisville, was re-elected chairman of the national council, while Oliver M. Kaufman, of Pittsburgh, was elected chairman of the council executive committee, succeeding Donald Oberdorfer, of Atlanta, who was named honorary chairman of the executive committee.
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