Charging the Christian world had fa###ed on its responsibility to halt Jewish persecution, Senator Robert J.Bulkley of Ohio tonight urged the nations of the world to prevail on Britain to open Palestine’s doors to absorptive capacity Jewish immigration. He said President Roosevelt’s refugee emigration proposal should be the springboard for renewed Palestine colonization effort.
Senator Bulkley addressed about 1,500 civic, communal and business leaders at a dinner at the Hotel Biltmore given by the United Palestine Appeal’s Greater New York campaign in honor of Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, chairman of the national campaign, and to mark the half-way point in the local drive. His speech was broadcast over an NBC network. It was announced at the dinner that Governor Lehman had contributed $5,000 to the U.P.A., $1 ,000 more than last year.
Dr. Silver, declaring that the problem of racial or religious minorities cannot be solved by “brutal destruction or forceful evacuation,” said that the tragedy of the Jewish people has been the homelessness not of individual Jews but of the Jewish people as such Whose “status as a permanent minority in all countries renders anti-Semitism permanent and in times of stress and conflict virulent and deadly.” He said that world Jewry appeals to the conscience of the world to make possible the uninterrupted upbuilding of the Jewish Homeland in Palestine.
Denouncing persecution of Jews, Senator Bulkley said: “Throughout the present wave of oppression the Christian world has failed in its elementary responsibility to halt gross injustice and bitter race hatred.” He added that “inaction and indifference to the plight of the Jewish people today will only serve to undermine our entire moral structure.”
“In 1917,” he said, “the issuance of the Balfour declaration by Great Britain was justifiably hailed by Jews and the rest of the world as one of the outstanding acts of justice and magnanimity on the part of a great nation. Today it is within the power of Great Britain to perform another act of historic proportions and to give ringing testimony to the civilized world that the principles of humanity have not been banished from the chancelleries of our governments, through permitting the homeless Jews of Austria, and the homeless Jews of Poland and Germany and Rumania to go to Palestine and to rebuild their lives which have been shattered by forces that threaten the very existence of democracy” and social justice.”
Other speakers were Dr.Stephen S.Wise and Harold Jacobi, chairman of the New York campaign.
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