Program for Jewish Congress Peace Institute Announced

Declaring that the Jewish people faces a crisis unparalleled in its history, “with one out of every four Jews in the world the victim of Nazi and Fascist oppression,” Dr. Stephen S. Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and chairman of the executive committee of the World Jewish Congress, today announced establishment of the Institute of Jewish Affairs to prepare a brief “on the basis of which four million Jews may be restored to normal life at the and of the war and means devised to prevent a recurrence of what has taken place, and to insure security in the future.”

The institute, Dr. Wise explained, is to be analogous in the Jewish field to other organizations now concerned with studies respecting the future organization of the world at the end of the war. Its headquarters have been established in New York under the direction of Dr. Jacob Robinson, former counsel to the Lithuanian Government at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and an authority on minority problems.

Announcement of the project was made at a press conference held this afternoon at the Hotel Astor to introduce Dr. Robinson to the press and to make public the program of the institute, published in booklet form. The findings of the institute when completed, Dr. Wise said, will be placed at the disposal of the representatives of the Jewish people at the peace conference to follow the war.

Dr. Robinson declared the institute’s purpose is “to conduct a thorough investigation of Jewish life during the past 25 years with a view to establishing the facts of the present situation, determining its direct and indirect causes and suggesting the lines on which Jewish rights may be claimed in a post-war settlement. The institute is not a political body. It is a group of scholars and represents an attempt to mobilize the intellectual resources of the Jewish people to attack the gigantic problem which confronts it.”

The work of the institute will be conducted through four departments. (1) Political Science and Law. (2) Statistics and Economics. (3) Migration and Colonization and (4) Post-War Reconstruction. Each department will undertake to assemble the documentary evidence relating to its field and to conduct special surveys into the facts involved.