N. Y., and Irving Oblas of Manhattan.
A twenty-six-year-old graduate student at Columbia University is the first-prize winner in the collegiate division in the current Jewish News competition. He is Leon Messner, 2995 Ocean Parkway, Brooklyn. Mr. Messner will receive a cash award of twenty-five dollars for his winning letter, also on Gen, Butler.
Miss Leah Horowitz, a seventeen-year-old student at Hunter College, is the second-prize winner in this group. Miss Horowitz, who lives at 373 East Fourth street, will receive an award of ten dollars for her letter on “Holy Land Workers’ Union Shows a Rapid Development.”
Third prize in this group goes to Shmaryahu T. Swirsky, 1429 South Millard avenue, Chicago, a senior in the rabbinical department of Hebrew Theological College. Mr. Swirsky will be awarded a five-dollar prize for his third-best letter.
In the high school division, Marvin Rothenburg, a student at George Washington High School, won first prize for his letter on Gen. Butler and the Fascists. Rothenburg, who lives at 661 West 161st street, will receive a ten-dollar cash prize and a gold medal.
Second prize in this group goes to Achad Sanders, a member of the Junior Menorah Society of James Madison High School. Sanders earned honorable mention and twenty-five points for his school last week. This week he wins five dollars, a silver medal and seventy points for James Madison.
A Rubin, 206 Wilson street, Brooklyn, student of Hebrew Parochial High School, earns two dollars and a bronze medal for his letter, judged third-best.
Isadore Benisen, 956 Fox street, who attends Benjamin Franklin High School, was a very close fourth. Benisen received honorable mention last week also. Others who received special citations from the judges were Samuel Potter, New Utrecht High School; Alice Levitan, Girls’ High; Harold Abramson, De Witt Clinton, and Albert Bockian, Townsend Harris High (Bockian won first prize last week).
The present standing of the schools in the race for the News Trophy to be presented to the high school with the greatest number of points at the end of the semester is as follows:
School pts.
Townsend Harris 125
George Washington 100
James Madison 95
New Utrecht 95
Hebrew Parochial 50
Benjamin Franklin 50
De Witt Clinton 50
James Monroe 50
Tilden 25
Jefferson 25
Girls 25
First prize in this contest earns 100 points for high schools; second prize, seventy points; third prize, fifty points, and honorable mention twenty-five points apiece.
WINNING LETTERS
Winning letters in each division are published today.
Samuel Adler’s prize-winning letter for the non-student division follows:
The exodus of 318 young Jews from Poland in search for a new home in Palestine and their unhappy return to Poland is a big news item.
It is big news because it directs attention to the sad plight of Polish Jews and the weakness of Jewish leadership for its inability to aid their settlement in the Holy Land. It draws attention to the woes which beset Jews in Eastern Europe. It indicts Poland, whence they fled, for unfair discrimination against them, and it accuses the Jews themselves for not fighting their case hard enough and securing refuge for them in the land of their ancestors by invoking the moral law, if hampered on legal grounds.
Public opinion must brand England’s refusal to their entry in Palestine an act of extreme cruelty to the beneficiaries of their trust —the sacredness of their mandate and scorn the inhumane stand of Great Britain for not suspending cold and calculating laws in the face of a great tragedy to meet the hour of need and necessity.
Moreover, these wandering Jews who sought shelter in Palestine show the utter frustration of Jewish youth in Eastern Europe, and the urgent need for bold and courageous leadership to assert Jewish human rights.
In horror the eyes of the world are directed to the burning Jewish problem and tyrannical Hitlerism which it gave birth. It should cause a review of minority rights encroached upon by some countries and an appeal for that purpose to the League of Nations, but above all a reapprochement with England to administer Palestine more in accord with the spirit of the Balfour Declaration.
LEO MESSNER’S LETTER
Leo Messner’s prize winning letter for the collegiate division follows:
It must be a matter of congratulation among Jewry that those interested in establishing a Fascist regime in our country should have committed the inadvertence of directing their instigations at the person of Gen. Smedley D. Butler. It was that lover of liberty who made disclosures which promise to become the basis of the most significant probing yet undertaken by the Congressional committee on un-American activities.
When Gerald C. MacGuire was named as the liaison man for important financial interests, the boundaries of an insidious empire began to take shape amid the shadows of connivance. Within its confines is cemented the friendship of Mammon with Mannon under the blandishments of the seductive text, “Gain, more gain.” Here are formed the plans to protect the predatory interests from an intelligently hostile administration, plans that involve the arousing of racial hatred if necessary in the attainment of financial immunity. The Nazi and Fascist have common interests by necessity.
How fortunate for us Jews that men like Gen. Butler abound in the United States! They are the constant marplots to the unscrupulously selfish and bigotted.
What a great service was rendered us can be better understood in the light of the revelation that Robert Sterling Clark, multimillionaire, whom the committee proposes to examine in connection with the financing of the supposed Fascisti project, is known to have studied Hitlerism in Germany.
General Butler, we salute you!
Marvin Rothenberg’s prize winning letter for the high school division follows:
Undoubtedly the news of greatest importance to Jews last week was Gen. Smedley Butler’s disclosures of attempts made to get him to lead a Fascist uprising in the United States.
Unfortunately and tragically, the Jews of the world view the approach of Fascism with fatal apathy. Until the demon is upon them they try to belittle the danger of race hatred in our so-called civilized society. All Europe minimized Hitler a few years before he set up his bloody regime…
Let the Jews of America awake lest we share the fate of our unfortunate brothers in Germany. Don’t mourn the approach of Fascism. Show your Jewish spirit. Fight against Fascism!
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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.
