Silver Shirt ‘humanist’ Hits Kashruth; Dawa Boycott O.k.

Indicating the tie-up between “anti-anti-” patriotic societies and budding Fascist movements throughout the United States, Mrs. Mabel Orgelman, veteran Feminist leader and participant in a myriad of humane causes, yesterday explained her position with regard to the American Nazi controversy. Mrs. Orgelman is chairman of the local Silver Legion Civic Committee, with an office at Third avenue and Fifty-first street.

“While I can not speak for the organization I represent,” Mrs. Orgeiman said, “I do have definite personal prejudices against many practices current today.

“I do not approve, for instance,” she continued, “of the stand taken by Samuel Untermyer, who recently appealed to German-Americans not to oppose the anti-Nazi boycott or join the counter movement of the DAWA. His letter is an insult to the intelligence of German-Americans and Americans. I am not a member of the DAWA, but I do believe that the DAWA movement is perfectly legitimate so long as a boycott as carried out against all Germany. I believe the anti-Nazis should stop their operations, before they arouse the traditional American militant spirit against the Jews.”

AN ANTI-VIVISECTIONIST

Mrs. Orgelman is chairman of the New York State Anti-Vivisection Committee and a vice-president of the Vegetarian Society of New York. The latter organization is understood to be a relentless crusader against the cruelties allegedly imposed upon poultry in kosher slaughtering. That Rabbi H. S. Lewis is also a vice-president of the society is an anomaly which Mrs. Orgelman did not attempt to explain.

During the Christmas season of 1933, the Anti-Vivisection group secured 60,000 signatures congratulating the Hitler Government on its decrees forbidding vivisection. The move was undertaken in Germany by Prussian Premier Herman Wilhelm Goering to prevent the kosher killing of poultry in accordance with Jewish religious rites. Many of the signatures were obtained at the highly Hitlerized German Day celebration, held in December at Madison Square Garden.

During a long campaign against cruelty to animals, vaccination, vivisection, and other related issues, Mrs. Orgelman has developed a strong acquaintanceship with many members of Congress in Washington. Among her staunchest friends, it is understood, is Congressman Louis T. McFadden, whose legislation and anti-Semitic speeches have met with the approval of virtually every Fascist group in the country. The New York chapter of the Silver Legion to which Mrs. Orgelman adheres is called the McFadden Post. She is one of the main sources of supply of anti-vivisection literature to Congress and the general public.

Mrs. Orgelman has attended “three or four” meetings of the League of Friends of New Germany, but she declares she is not a member of this or any other German society. She is of German parentage and was born in Connecticut.

The chairman of the Civic Committee of the Silver Legion is an anti-Communist, and she opposes all form of violent radicalism, “whether it be Jewish or Gentile.” She “personally” is not anti-Semitic, she claims, and to prove the contention she cited a number of instances of her kindness to Jews.

The anti-vivisection committee she says, is of a political nature, having supported for election a number of candidates because of their humane attitude toward animals. Whether or no any of these candidates were Jewish, she was not prepared to say, not having at hand campaign literature. There are about three hundred paying and more than two thousand nonpaying members of her anti-vivisection committee in the state.

At her headquarters, a small shop wherein she sells donated goods to the poor for trifling sums, Mrs. Orgelman said yesterday that she reads “two Jewish papers,” and hence is well informed on Jewish affairs. One was the Jewish Daily Bulletin-the other the Daily Worker.