Quakers Assail “vilification” Drive Against Jews in Philadelphia

The Friends Committee on Race Relations reported last night that “a deliberate, underhand campaign of vilification against Jews” is under way in Philadelphia which “has progressed to the extent that attacks have been made on property held by Jewish residents in Philadelphia.”

The report was reed to the annual meetings of two local Quaker groups by Mrs. Ruth Veranda Polly, co-chairman of the committee, who said the anti-Semitic campaign is being “promoted by the distribution of scurrilous leaflets and handbills handed out in subways and on street corners.”

” Our horror at injustices to Jews in Europe must not stop with fighting anti-Semitism at home, increasingly important as is , “the report said. “It must force us to look at America and Quakerdom and see also the beam in our own eye. We must not stop until our contemporary membership is freed of the evil racial discrimination as expressed in our schools, our hospitals, our business enterprises.”

Albert P. Martin, of the American Friends Service Committee, suggested that the Race Relations Committee organize “a counter campaign of truth.” Stephen Raushenbush, who was chief investigator of the Senate Munitions Committee, declared anti-Semitism in America was following the technique used in Germany. Dr. Leon Solis-Cohen, chairman of the local Anti-Defamation Committee, asserted that underlying the activities of anti-Semitic groups was “an attempt to destroy liberties and the rights guaranteed to all under the Constitution.”