From all over the world–including sections of the United States where no previous manifestations had been registered–reports flowed in today of synagogue desecrations, defacements of public buildings with the Nazi swastika and the appearance of such slogans as “Death to the Jews.”
At the same time, responsible public opinion began to crystalline in sharp condemnation of such activities. Leaders of all religious faiths expressed their horror, statesmen and politicians called for stern counter-action, authorities in many lands and in cities throughout the United States alerted their police forces to guard against further anti-Semitic actions and to apprehend the culprits.
In Washington, while six automobile owners, including the night watchman at the Israeli Embassy, reported their cars had been smeared with swastikas last night, three members spoke up in the Senate in sharp condemnation of the resurgent plague of anti-Semitism.
Senator Jacob K. Javits, of New York, told the Senate that the outbreak of anti-Jewish vandalism “warrants our severest condemnation. ” He warned that the significance of the outbursts could be minimized “only at our peril. ” Sen. Wayne Morse of Oregon warned West Germany–where the new anti-Semitic wave had been touched off by the desecration of the Cologne synagogue–that the world will not tolerate “the rising tide of anti-Semitism. ” Sen. Thomas Kuchel, of California viewed “the new ugly labor of bigots with shock, dismay and the deepest kind of indignation.”
PENNSYLVANIA GOVERNMENT ORDERS POLICE ACTION
At Harrisburg, Pa., Governor David Lawrence ordered police action after an anti-Jewish inscription had been found painted on the facade of a local synagogue. The Governor said he was “shocked–more than that, saddened” by such desecration in the State’s capital.
At the United Nations, the International League for the Rights of Man formally requested that a subcommittee to meet next week to debate religious rights and freedoms, condemn the recent outrages and probe into their “origin and purpose.”
Police went into action in Istanbul, Turkey, after synagogue and Jewish community leaders received swastika-emblazoned letters, urging “Death to the Jews, ” At Rio de Janeiro, the chief of the Federal police department announced he had traced desecrations committed at synagogues in Sao Paulo and in various provincial cities to an anti-Semitic group in Gao Paulo.
The reports of further incidents came today from places so remote from one another as Jacksonville, Fla., and small towns in Austria, an American military base employing Germans at Glessen, West Germany, and the London suburbs of Catford and Bromley.
Geneva headquarters of the World Council of Churches expressed its horror and called for a halt to the anti-Semitic manifestations. Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York said the wave of Nazi-like incidents “should be condemned by every decent citizen and right-thinking individual.”
INCIDENTS ARE ‘WARNING TO WORLD’
Dr. Lewis Webster Jones, president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, said: “At the moment, the crimes have an undetermined cause. But whether ultimately this will be disclosed as the machinations of a nco-Nazi movement, or the offenses of diseased and tortured individuals, they cry out in warning to a world which recoils with horror at the lingering memory of Hitlerism.”
(At Lima, Peru, Israeli Ambassador Tuvia Arzzi received a letter from the Peruvian Student Federation of San Marcos University–oldest university in the Americas–condemning “vehemently the recrudescence of anti-Semitism in Germany, ” and offering “all help to the noble Israeli people. ” “The San Marcos students, ” stated the letter, “will not allow the resurgence of the painful experiences of the war days, nor the establishment of new ghettoes.”)
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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.
