The fight against the McCarran-Walter immigration law “must continue until the national origins quota system is abolished,” Dr. David Petegorsky, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, declared yesterday at the concluding session of a two-day quarterly meeting of the AJC national administrative committee. Two hundred and fifty AJC leaders from all Parts of the country attended the meetings. Dr. Petegorsky also told the meeting that “there is encouraging evidence that more and more Americans are becoming alarmed by the continuing abuse of the powers of Congressional investigation.”
Shad Polier, chairman of the organization’s executive committee, asserted that while protects for extensive gain in civil rights during the next few years are not encouraging, important progress in some areas can be achieved, He suggested that if progress cannot be made toward Federal compulsory legislation against discrimination, the civil rights groups should investigate the possibility of working with voluntary programs. “General Eisenhower has indicated his belief in the ability of voluntary effort to meet the problem of discrimination,” Mr. Polier pointed out.
The AJC representative in Washington, Sanford Bolz, reported that while measures to strengthen and expand basic demonstrative liberties are not likely to emanate from the White House, Americans may be assured that President Eisenhower “will not tolerate discrimination or infringement of fundamental freedoms to the extent that he can be made to see problems in that context.” Mr. Bolz added that threats to American civil liberties do not come form the advent of the now Administration in Washington, but from other directions.
Dr. Maurice L. Perlzweig, director of the international affairs department off the World Jewish Congress, told the meeting that anxiety in the Jewish communities throughout Europe over the forcible conversion of the two Finaly children in France is second only to concern over the future of Jews in the Soviet countries. He predicted that unless the two Jewish boys are returned to their family and the jurisdiction of the French courts, the case may do more damage to cause of French unity than the Dreyfus affair.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
