Prayers of hope that the Jewish New Year will bring peace to the world and the defeat of Hitlerism marked the Rosh Hashanah services this year in the synagogues throughout the country while the situation of the Jews in Europe and Palestine was discussed during Rosh Hashanah broadcasts over nationwide hookups of the major networks.
Gen. Alfredo Baldomir, President of Uruguay, in a Rosh Hashanah message of greeting to the Jews declared that the principles of liberty, justice and democracy will always prevail in Uruguay. Premier Peter Gerbrandy, of Holland, in a New Year message to the Jews in behalf of his Government-in-exile pointed to the fact that the Jews in Holland have contributed their share in the struggle against Nazism and “continue to play their part against the enemy bravely and courageously.”
MESSAGES FROM ENGLAND, PALESTINE, SOUTH AFRICA
Chief Rabbi Hertz of England, in a Rosh Hashanah broadcast from London to the Jews of America spoke of the “tens of thousands of innocent Jewish men, women, and children who lost their lives in Nazi-oppressed Poland” and of the “horrors of the St. Bartolomew’s night which have been surpassed in Rumania this year by the terror against the Jewish population there.” He appealed to Jews and Christians alike to pray that the New Year end the sufferings of millions of Jews on the European continent.
M. M. Usshiskin, President of the Jewish National Fund, in a Rosh Hashanah message from Palestine said that Hitler has “confused the world but we shall survive him as we survived his predecessors Sanheirib, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzer, Haman, Titus, Torquemada and others.”
Gen. Jan Smuts, Premier of South Africa, in a message issued for the Jewish New Year said that “despite the threatening aspect of the present period for Jews and Christians I voice the hope that this New Year will see dawn and light which will dispel darkness and will end the present tribulations.”
UNION OF AMERICAN HEBREW CONGREGATIONS CALLS FOR A LASTING PEACE
Mr. Adolph Rosenberg, of Cincinnati, Chairman of the Executive Board of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and Rabbi Edward L. Israel, it’s Executive Director, have issued a New Year’s message calling “for fervent prayers for a year of religious rededication to the eternal beliefs in the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man and looking forward hopefully to the coming of a just and lasting peace for all mankind.”
Characterizing the peoples temporarily crushed by Hitler as part of the “great human front against intolerance and oppression,” Dr. Stephen S. Wise, Honorary Chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, called upon Americans of all creeds to sustain the morale of the victims of Hitlerism, so that they might continue to share in the struggle for the preservation of democracy. In an address during a special High Holiday program heard over the Columbia Broadcasting System on Sunday, Dr. Wise voiced a prayer in which he called upon the Christian world to recognize that “anti-Semitism is being used as a means of creating dissension in the lands in which every ounce of unity must be preserved for the fundamental struggle against slavery and brute force.”
Frank L. Weil, president of the National Jewish Welfare Board, in a nation-wide broadcast over station WOR and the Mutual System said “that the great problem before our country today is that we make effective our program of national defense. There is but one enemy of that program: the loss of unity. Foreign propaganda seeks today to bring about a weakening and loss of unity.”
Prayers of thanksgiving for having been rescued from the cruelties and persecutions of Hitler’s “New Order” were offered by refugees who recently reached American shores and are temporarily sheltered at the headquarters of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society, New York City. Arrangements were also made by the Society for Rosh Hashanah services which were held at Ellis Island to accommodate the religious needs of those immigrants who were temporarily detained.
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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.
