(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
–The healing influence of music on the human soul extended also to the rabid Austrian anti-Semites during the Schubert festival here, when 150,000 singers from all parts of the world gathered to pay tribute to the great composer.
Although the committee in charge of the festivities included no Jewish representative, and although the festival as orginally planned was to have a German Aryan character, a large percentage of the singers and guests who came to Vienna. on this occasion was Jewish. In the singers’ groups one could find many Jews. Almost half of the American group of singers who participated in the festivities were Jewish.
The Austrian Hakenkruezler, who had orginally planned to exploit the occasion for anti-Semitic propaganda, abandoned the plan, proving again that when the sounds of genuine music are heard no discord of racial or religious disharmony finds an echo.
Many Jewish members of the singers’ delegations gathered in small groups to visit the Jewish places of interest in Vienna.
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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.
