News Brief

Mr. Raphaely, the retiring President, who had occupied the chair for the past four years and was for 23 years a member of the Executive Committee, then took the chair, and read the message he had received from the Prime Minister, General Herzog.

It gives me great pleasure, General Herzog wrote, to address a few words of welcome to the representatives of the Jewish Community of South Africa gathered together in Bloemfontein to discuss matters of common interest to them. May your deliberations be conducted in a spirit of devotion, not only in the interests of your own race but also of those of the population of South Africa as a whole, of which those of Jewish race form an integnal part.

It is not necessary to say that South Africa is one of the countries which has from the very beginning of its existence as a settled community received the Jew ungrudgingly as a fellow citizen, with rights and privileges equal to those of any other element of its population, and has given him full opportunity to display the sterling qualities of his race to the advantage not only of himself, but also of our common country. I will follow your deliberations with the greatest interest, fully realising as I do that this Government, as in fact every Government, bears a grave responsibility towards all sections of the Community. May your deliberations result in furthering the well-being of your race particularly, and of our common fatherland in general.

THE NEW PRESIDENT’S DECLARATION OF POLICY

Mr. Hirsch Hillman, who was elected the new President of the Board, Mr. Raphaely being elected Vice-President, then took the chair, and said that he wished to declare his policy, which he would like to have accepted inside and outside the Congress. The object of the Board, he pursued, was to watch and keep guard over the interests of their people in this country. These wore the only politics they knew. Their aim would be to endeavour loyally to co-operate with the Government of the day in any matters affecting the interests of South African citizens of the Jewish faith. They wanted to assure the Government that it could rely on the Board’s wholehearted and loyal cooperation in any measure affecting their country in general

and the citizens of their faith in particular. When any action affecting the Jewish section of the community was being considered by any individual in the Government Administration, he would like that action to be considered in conjunction with the message sent to this Congress by the Prime Minister. He unreservedly accepted the message of goodwill sent them by General Herzog in the full sense of the word. This message, in conjunction with the expressions of goodwill of the other political parties, was a token of co-operation.

Some 25 to 30 years ago, Mr. Hillman went on, he was farming in Cape Colony, and no one knew better than he the spirit of goodwill that used to exist, particularly between the old Dutch farmers and our own people. He could not possibly believe that this spirit had vanished. He wanted to believe that the same spirit of goodwill still existed and that merely a superficial atmosphere of suspicion had been allowed to be created. They knew full well that once such atmosphere prevailed every action was misinterpreted and misunderstood, and it would be the business of the Board to use every effort and endeavour to establish that old atmosphere of goodwill among the different sections of people in South Africa.

No country could succeed or prosper, he said, if any one section of its population laboured under a sense of injustice, and it was as much in the interests of South Africa as in the interests of their own particular section of the population that all component parts of the population of South Africa should work together in harmony.