Bemoaning the prominent part Jews are sharing in the present administration as well as the recovery program, the June issue of the Kourier, published here by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc., in an article captioned “Frankfurther’s Jews Staff The New Deal,” blames Felix Frankfurter for the relatively large number of Jews now occupying governmental positions.
“The administration of NRA ranks was swiftly and efficiently staffed with Jews,” the article says. “It is telling no tales out of school to contend that Felix Frankfurter was among the leading maneuverers to get ‘Madam Sec’y. Perkins into her job. He seems also to have guided the footsteps of the young Jew Morgenthau, related by marriage to Herbert Lehman, Governor of New York, on whom President Roosevelt has openly admitted he relies-and has relied all through his political career-in shaping many of his policies.”
TWO BILLION “KITTY”
Declaring that “Morgenthau is also related by marriage and otherwise to the Seligmans and Lewisohns, the “international bankers,'” the Kourier informs its readers that “Congress supplied this young protege of Frankfurter with a ‘kitty’ of two billion dollars to ‘control’ the currency, usurping power delegated by congress not to him but to President Roosevelt.” Attributing to Mr. Frankfurter the appointment of Dean Acheson, Morgenthau’s assistant, whom the magazine calls a protege of Judge Brandeis, the article also ascribes to Mr. Frankfurter the selection of Earle Baille for the Treasury Department.
Asserting that he also was responsible for the appointment of Jerome N. Frank as solicitor in the Department of Agriculture the article further attributes to Mr. Frankfurter the appointment of David Lilienthal to the most powerful position in the Tennessee Valley Authority. “To advise the Jew Ickes,” the article continues, “Frankfurter obviously got appointed the Jewish attorney Nathan R. Margold. For Secretary Perkins he evidently produced Charles E. Wynansk Jr., while Secretary Hull was prevailed upon to accept another Frankfurter protege, Herbert Feis.”
MORE “REVELATIONS”
Making the “revelation” that Frankfurter has scores of young Jewish lawyers and economists “farmed out, awaiting Der Tag, and that he has already placed about 100 of them in key positions in the different departments of the New Deal,” the Kourier declares that “it is also a recognized fact in Washington that no one can be named for these positions without Frankfurter’s stamp of approval.”
The exaggeration and misstatement of facts in this article is characteristic of the entire magazine. The author’s ignorance evidently got the best of him when he referred to the non-Jewish Secretary of Interior as “the Jew Ickes.”
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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.