Rabbi S. Felix Mendelsohn, of Temple Beth Israel, Chicago, has called my attention to the fact that tomorrow will mark the fortieth anniversary of the death of Zebulo. Baird Vance, thrice Governor and thrice elected Senator of North Carolina. Rabbi Mendelsohn recalls Vance’s famous oration, “The Scattered Nation,” delivered first as a pretest against the pogrom wave in Russia.
Referring to the Jewish massacres in Tsarist Russia, Senator Vance declared:
“How sad it is again to hear that old cry of Jewish sorrow which we hoped to hear no more forever! How shameful it is to know that within the shadow of so – called Christian churches, there are yet dark places filled with the habitations of cruelty! No considerations of diplomacy or international courtesy should for one moment stand in the way of their stern and instant suppression. The Jews are our spiritual fathers, the authors of our morals, the founders of our civilization with all the power and dominion arising therefrom, and the great peoples professing Christianity and imbued with any of its noble spirit should see to it that justice and protection are afforded them. By simply speaking with one voice it could be done, for no power on earth could resist that voice. Every consideration of humanity and international policy demands it. Their unspeakable misfortune, their inherited woes, their very helplessness appeal to our Christian chivalry, trumpet-tongued in behalf of those wretched victims of a prejudice for which tolerant Christianity is not altogether irresponsible.”
Senator Vance’s stirring appeal was an expression of the conscience of a true American and a true Christian in the face of the Tsarist outrages against the Jews of Russia. It has again a timely ring, for the anti-Jewish outrages now committed by the Hitler regime are even worse than the old Tsarist crimes. The Nazi challenge to civilization, to Jewry and to Christianity calls for an unmistakable answer along the lines indicated by the late Governor and Senator Vance of North Carolina.
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