Most of $15,000 raised for the American Christian Committee for Refugees at a dinner last night for Dorothy Thompson at the Hotel Astor came from Jews, it was announced. Dr. Guy Emery Shipler, editor of The Churchman, who read the names of donors and amounts as the checks and pledges came to the platform, paused at one point to ask: “Where are the Christians?” After the appeal for funds had been completed, Dr. Frank Kingdon, president of the University of Newark, made a brief and impassioned speech in which he chided the Christians because they had permitted themselves to be outdone in aid to Christian refugees by American Jews whose conscience, he said, had been aroused to a greater extent by the persecution in Germany.
The dinner, which was attended by about 1,900 persons and was announced as “the largest dinner ever given an unofficial person,” was in honor of Miss Thompson for “services in behalf of the oppressed minorities of Germany and throughout the world” and was part of a $250,000 drive to aid Christian refugees. Miss Thompson was lauded by former Justice William Harman Black, who presided, former Justice Joseph M. Proskauer, Justice Ferdinand Pecora, Dr. Kingdon, Dr. Shipler and Pean S. Buck, Nobel Prize author. She was presented with a large volume containing messages of tribute from many prominent persons. Miss Thompson said in an address that her efforts for oppressed minorities were motivated by a “sheer instinct for self preservation.”
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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.
