Secretary of Interior Harold L. Ickes, speaking at a dinner last night given in his honor by the National Council for Palestine of the United Palestine Appeal, hailed the “Fighting Jews” as counterparts of the fighting units of all other groups allied in the United Nations. He explained that in talking about the “Fighting Jews” he was not “talking about a Jewish Army or a Jewish Legion, but of the Jews who are fighting gallantly under the flags to which they owe allegiance.”
Secretary Ickes said that Hitler’s campaign against the Jews was a carefully planned attack on Christianity and that “at last we have come to realize that Hitler’s real aim is the submergence of Christianity, not of Judaism alone.”
“Hitler has made every effort to conceal his monstrosities behind anti-Semitic agitation and Jewish persecution,” the Secretary of Interior stated. “He singled out the Jews as his first victims because they were the weakest, not the strongest, group that was immediately available to slake his criminal thirst. To distract the world’s attention from his atrocities and his criminal designs, he laid down a barrage of calumny upon a small, defenseless and scattered race, Actually, as all have come to see, and Hitler himself to acknowledge, his attack was not primarily one upon the Jews alone, it was an assault against civilization. His campaign against the Jews was, equally, a carefully planned onslaught on Christianity.”
Hitler’s ultimate objective is the destruction of non-Jews as well as Jews, and the most numerous of his victims are the Catholics, Mr. Ickes concluded.
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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.
