Says Race Racketeers Mulct Many Jewish Industrialists Here

Prominent Jewish business men have made substantial contributions to a racketeering organization which, under the cloak of anti-Communism, is waging a high-powered anti-Semitic campaign, John L. Spivak charges in the fourth of a series of articles entitled “Plotting the American Pogrom,” in The New Masses issue out today.

Spivak names Harry A. Jung of Chicago as the head of this “widespread espionage organization, the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation,” which, he says, “was originally founded to spy on Communists and Socialists,” but which, in its search for “a new terrorinspiring ‘issue’ with which to collect money from suckers” has now become one of the national leaders “in the distribution of anti-Semitic propaganda.”

“There is no actual evidence,” Spivak writes, “that the Jews who contribute to Jung knew their money had been and is being used to spread anti-Semitism.”

Among the more prominent firms which he claims have contributed to Jung’s organizations are:

The Florsheim Shoe Company, controlled by the Jewish Florsheim family, with the non-Jewish John M. Hancock, a partner in the predominantly Jewish banking firm of Lehman Brothers, on its board of directors.

Sears Roebuck and Company, headed by Lessing J. Rosenwald, with Hancock, Max Adler and Sidney J. Weinberg on its board of directors.

The General American Transportation Company, with a Jewish official slate and board of directors, including Max Epstein, chairman of the board; Lester N. Selig, president; Sam Laud, David Copland, LeRoy Kramer, Bennett Epstein, Henry Ollesheimer and Lewis L. Strauss, the latter a partner in the predominantly Jewish banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.

Investigation by the Jewish Daily Bulletin resulted in evidence that none of these companies and individuals was aware of the true nature of the Jung organization, and that in each case donations have been discontinued.