A Jewish problem does not exist in the United States, Harold K. Guinzburg, president of Viking Press of New York, told the fifth annual conference of the West Central States region of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds here at its Saturday night session. The conference adopted a resolution urging overseas agencies to cooperate in setting a joint financial goal, endorsing the welfare fund plan for raising the money and supporting the aims of the general council for Jewish rights without weakening support of its four constituent organizations.
In his address, Mr. Guinzburg, who recently returned from an extended trip abroad, voiced praise of the Jewish telegraphic agency as an “invaluable service shedding light on the condition of the Jews in Europe.”
“Properly speaking,” the publisher declared, “there is no such thing in the United States as a Jewish problem nor can there ever be. There is only for us the question whether democracy as we know it is to survive the present onslaught directed against it throughout the world. If our essential form of civilization is going to overcome the attacks made on it, if the Nazi propaganda engulfing Europe is stopped at our shores, there will be no special issue for the Jews of this country to face. But on the contrary, if anti-Semitism should ever become successful here it would mean the end of american democracy. We have seen too clearly in the past few years that anti-Jewish action is but the entering wedge for the forces of reaction and destruction. As these forces gain ascendancy liberal groups find themselves restricted and the free functioning of the christian churches is at an end. In a short time all the basic civil and religious liberties on which our nation were founded are gone.”
The 300 delegates from ten states also heard Edgar J. Kaufmann, prominent Pittsburgh merchant, describe the work of the general council for Jewish rights, of which he is chairman, and an address by president solomon Goldman of the Z.O.A. on Palestine.
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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.
