Armed with an August 16 appointment for a conference with Premier Mussolini, with whom he will discuss Il Duce’s attitude toward the Jewish people, Samuel S. Leibowitz, attorney who achieved national repute as defense counsel for the Negro defendants in the widely publicized Scottsboro case, was to sail from Cherbourg Saturday aboard the steamship Champlain.
Leibowitz will spend ten weeks in Europe, during which he will visit nearly a dozen countries, for the purpose of studying their penal codes and court procedures, he told the Jewish Daily Bulletin Friday.
Asked whether the results of his study would be turned over in report form to any organization or inquiry commission here, the New York attorney was inclined to be reticent.
“There’ll be no official report of any kind,” he said finally, “but I don’t mind telling you that I’ll be on an unofficial mission for certain American interests, which I’m not at liberty to join yet.”
He also has a tentative appointment with Stalin in Leningrad, Leibowitz said.
“I am interested in Mussolini’s feeling toward the Jews,” he declared, “particularly in view of his recent session with Hitler.”
He will travel hundreds of unnecessary miles “for the express purpose of circling Germany and Austria,” the attorney said.
“It’s not that I’m afraid of those countries,” the attorney laughed, “but I have no intention of leaving one penny of my money in them.”
In addition to France, Italy and the Soviet Union, Leibowitz will visit Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia and possibly Rumania. He expects to return to New York August 29 aboard of the Conte di Savoia.
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