Anti-Semitic discrimination in New York City is admitted in numerous letters to the New York Telegram, written by both Jews and Gentiles, as a result of a series of six interviews with prominent New Yorkers on the subject of anti-Jewish discrimination which appeared last week in the Telegram. Some of the letters which have come in response to these interviews are given in part in Tuesday’s Telegram.
“The average Jew, by his ability, has attained a position where his manners, when he acts natural are an offense to his Gentile companions,” writes Harold Rowntree of the National Pneumatic Co. “The average Gentile cares nothing about the Jewish faith, one way or the other, but he does care about, and resents some of the Jewish traits. Do not misunderstand me. I am not accusing Jews of being coarse. Coarseness is all a matter of degree. Each walk in life has its own scale of deportment, but the average Jew has risen into a walk of life in which he is not at home and he suffers accordingly.”
“Afatr wandering around the city for the past two months looking for work,” writes Philip D. Kovitz, “I finally got hold of a job that lasted more than a day, but when I took off the day of Yom Kippur I was politely told—the following Sunday, when my week was up—that my services were not needed any more. The place I refer to is only a lunch wagon in Jamaica, where I worked as counterman.”
Though, himself a Jew, Jacob Morton Lubar writes that he would rather work for a Gentile than for a Jew. “There is prejudice among Jews as well,” he writes. “One cannot see the other grow faster than himself; there is selfishness and jealousy.”
“Not only do the employment agencies refuse to obtain positions for Jews,” writes Cheldon R. Lautenburg, attorney, “but the large corporations absolutely deny them positions. Among my friends are those who have denied their religion for bread, but when the imposition was discovered they were fired ‘for cause.’ No discrimination? If the matter was not so pathetic it would be laughable.”
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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.
