Jewish Labor Committee Convention Adopts Important Resolutions

Numerous resolutions dealing with important aspects of Jewish life in this country and abroad were adopted here today at the concluding session of the three-day national conference of the Jewish Labor Committee at which Adolph Held was re-elected president. The conference, attended by several hundred delegates from all parts of the country, decided to raise $1,200,000 for its work during the current year.

The resumption of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Israel was advocated in one of the resolutions adopted. Another resolution expressed greetings to the State of Israel in connection with the celebration tomorrow of the fifth anniversary of its establishment. It pledged continued cooperation on the part of the Jewish Labor Committee to help Israel strengthen its position as a bulwark of democracy in the Middle East.

Other resolutions adopted by the JLC, which represents 500,000 organized Jewish workers in the United States and is recognized in 150 Jewish communities in this country, asked for revision of the McCarran immigration Law, for the stratification by the U. S. of the United Nations convention outlawing genocide, and for the return of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith to the National Community Relations Advisory Council.

The delegates also adopted a resolution expressing strong disapproval of the celebrations plans of the American Jewish Tercentenary Committee which is arranging for the celebration of the 300th anniversary of Jewish settlement in this country. Nathan Chanin was re-elected chairman of the administrative committee of the Jewish Labor Committee; Jacob Pat was re-elected executive secretary; David Dubinsky, treasurer; and Benjamin Tabachinsky, national campaign director.

Mr. Held, in his presidential report, emphasized that organized Jewish labor in this country will not be thrown off the track by “strategic Soviet maneuvers” on the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union. “We shall continue to demand an answer to our question as to what has happened to a large part of the Jewish people in the USSR,” Mr. Held said. “We want a concrete explanation on the fate of the Jews in the countries behind the Iron Curtain.” Mr. Held also stressed the moral and material aid given Israel by the Jewish Labor Committee and the role which the JLC plays in developing life in the American Jewish communities.

Mr. Chanin, addressing the Conference, said that Soviet Premier Georgi Malenkov must give a “clear answer” on how many Jews are now living in the Soviet Union, where they reside and what happened to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were deported by Soviet authorities from Galicia, Ukraine and White Russia into the interior of the USSR during the period of 1948-1952. He must also provide information on the whereabouts of 68 prominent Soviet Jewish writers who mysteriously disappeared in the Soviet Union in 1949, Mr. Chanin added.

Alexander Kahn, general manager of the Jewish Daily Forward, analyzing the situation of the Jews in Russia, said that it has become evident beyond doubt that the Soviet Government has been liquidating the Jews by one means or another. Hillel Rogoff, editor-in-chief of the Forward, traced the contributions of Jewish workers in building American democracy. Mr. Pat reported on the aid given by the JLC to children abroad who are victims of Nazi and Soviet persecution. He also enumerated the various organizations and institutions in Europe which are receiving support from the Jewish Labor Committee.