Steuben Society Asks Immigration Committee to Disavow Dickstein

A resolution calling upon members of the Congressional Committee on Immigration to disavow statements attributed to Representative Samuel Dickstein, chairman of the committee was adopted Saturday by the National Council of the Steuben Society of America.

Charging that Representative Dickstein had “sought out the German people for persecution,” the resolution authorized the law committee of the Steuben Society to undertake the defense of any alien “who may be unjustly threatened with deportation.”

The defense of naturalized citizens who may be threatened with cancellation of their privileges also was authorized by the resolution.

Earlier in the day Representative

Dickstein ridiculed charges made by Mrs. Maria Griebl.

“I can’t be bothered with such nonsense.”

Thus Representative Samuel Dickstein, chairman of the House Committee on Immigration and investigator of Nazi affairs in the United States, commented on reports that Mrs. Maria Griebl had demanded in a note to President Roosevelt that a Gentile head the investigatory body.

Mr. Dickstein refused to comment further on the report when pressed for his attitude toward Frau Griebl’s representation.

Before the federal grand jury last Thursday Mrs. Griebl declared she would refuse to give testimony on Nazi affairs to a Jewish district attorney or Jewish judges, and she refused to take her oath on the Holy Bible, “which is based upon the old Jewish testament.”

She is the wife of Dr. Ignatz T. Griebl, resigned leader of the Friends of New Germany, and hostess to Heinz Spanknoebel during the Nazi agent’s stay in New York.

Mrs. Griebl wrote as follows to the president: “We believe that Congressman Dickstein as a Jew under the current adverse circumstances can not give tolerance and justice in his conclusions; and I therefore ask you to withdraw him as chairman of the committee and in his place substitute a neutral representative of the people, preferably an Aryan American.”