The 700,000 Jews of Latin America have created a community life “which in terms of exemplary organization, national consciousness and Yiddish cultural achievement, belongs in the very front rank of world Jewry,” Dr. Arieh Tartakower, chairman of the Israel Executive of the World Jewish Congress, said here today in a comment on his five-month tour of duty as special congress delegate in Latin America.
He said that the Jews in Latin America enjoyed a great economic development and that there was virtually no Jewish poverty. The popular level of anti-Semitism there was law, he said, and governments there frequently proclaim their determination to treat all citizens with equality. He warned, however, that a trend to totalitarianism, coupled with a possible economic crisis made the Jewish future there, politically and economically, far from stable.
The situation, Dr. Tartakower declared, was further complicated by the “substantial infiltration” of Nazis in several countries. “These sinister elements,” he declared, “know all too well how to capitalize on political maneuvers for anti-Semitic and Nazi purposes.”
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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.