A meeting held here yesterday under the auspices of the Hebrew Legion, which is seeking to recruit volunteers to right in Palestine, nearly wound up as a riot when Legionnaires attacked members of the audience who questioned and criticized the speaker, V.D. Michelson,
Michelson told the audience that he had been deputized by Major Samuel eiser, head of the Legion in Britain, to form a branch of the group in South Africa. He assailed the opposition of the Zionist Federation and the South African Board of Jewish Deputies to the Legion, accusing them of “irresponsibility and cowardice.”
Earlier, the Federation issued a statement repudiating the Legion. The executive of the Board of Deputies said it “felt most emphatically that the Hebrew Legion is an undesirable activity” in South Africa. Jewish veterans have also repudiated the Legion as an irresponsible and unrepresentative group.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
