Letters to the Editor

Mr. Jacob Landau,

Jewish Daily Bulletin,

New York, N. Y.

My dear Mr. Landau:

In line with my recent telephone conversation with you, let me repea# my conviction that your editorials of April 23rd and May 7th have served greatly to injure the Jewish Daily Bulletin. Under the guise of a plea for unity, they have played directly into the hands of anti-democratic forces in Jewish life. You have cast completely unjustified aspersions on the work of the American Jewish Congress, Mr. Deutsch and Dr. Wise.

Permit me at this point to say that I consider your quotation from a letter of Mr. Roosevelt when Governor to Dr. Holmes and Dr. Wise to be nothing short of reprehensible. Please refresh your memory and recall that this letter of Mr. Roosevelt to Dr. Holmes and Dr. Wise was written in the midst of a heated political controversy and I have reason to know that whatever the Governor may have felt or said at that moment, the President’s attitude toward both Dr. Holmes and Dr. Wise is one of affectionate good-will. For a Jewish periodical to have made use of this material in an endeavor to belittle a great Jewish leader is deserving of the utmost condemnation.

There should be unity, to be sure, but the type of unity achieved between 1915 and 1919, when the work of the American Jewish Committee, such as it was, was integrated with the program of the American Jewish Congress. This resulted in the acquisition of Jewish rights in Palestine and the minority provisions in the war treaties. Within the past few months the American Jewish Committee has been guilty of an oppressive policy with reference to Jewish public opinion regarding Nazi outrages against German Jews. I have not hesitated to say this in correspondence with Dr. Adler, nor do I hesitate to write it to you.

You may have wished to guide the presentation of news against the American Jewish Congress, but for your periodical, under the pretense of impartiality, to have undertaken so unfairly partisan a view cannot but tend to estrange many would-be friends from you.

Sincerely yours,

(Signed) Louis I. Newman.

FROM A POLISH JEW

To the Editor of the

Jewish Daily Bulletin

In the May 21 issue of the Jewish Daily Bulletin Philip Slomovitz expressed himself in very general and vague terms against the boycott movement, and found it advisable to devote a part of his article to Poland.

In his article Mr. Slomovitz states, in part: “only in Poland is there evidence of such organized public action. And therein lies irony! To think that Poland, with its unclean hands, should be the only country in the world to have taken official action against German anti-Semitism and to have encouraged the boycotting of German goods—and by Poles. Never forget that Poland has an axe to grind and that in the event of a Polish-German alliance, the Polish Government would not only discourage such a boycott, but would compel its discontinuation.”

As to his philosophical calculation what might happen if his grandmother had wheels, or what might happen if there were “a Polish-German alliance,” one need not discuss the logic or the wisdom of such a supposition. When he says that Poland has an axe to grind, he probably means the 3,000,000 Jews that are a part of Poland, but when he speaks of unclean hands, he is unquestionably malicious.

I wonder whether it is due to forgetfulness or to journalistic illwill that Mr. Slomovitz ostentatiously forgets the fact that whatever disturbances occurred in Poland, there never was any official sanction of them, quite to the contrary, a very strong official reaction to note.

While short lived outbursts of small groups may occur wherever Mr. Slomovitz’s watchful eye may wander, only in Germany, however, could a boycott movement against Jews not only have official sanction, but also constitute a part of the new ideology of a country.

When one has to deal with so serious a problem, so well planned for the future, and so evidently directed towards the extermination of the Jewish race, one can well understand the appeal for reaction not only of the Jews but of the whole civilized world.

The only weapon that is left for future warfare is boycott. One might perhaps be inclined to forgive Germany the physical excesses against the Jews, and in time forget the number of people killed or mistreated, but how can Mr. Slomovitz countenance a cold pogrom, the beginning of which we are witnessing, and what weapon would he suggest with which to defend the 500,000 Jews in Germany?

Yours very truly,

A Polish Jew.