Pleas for world peace, support for Israel and the strengthening of humanitarian values were voiced tonight by Jewish spokesmen at a public meeting sponsored by the American Jewish Congress to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. More than 1,000 persons attended the meeting at Town Hall.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a message which was read at the rally, said: “To those who believe in human brotherhood, the tenth anniversary of the liberation of Europe’s surviving Jews from the concentration camps is a significant occasion. I hope its observance will strengthen in free men the spirit of opposition to totalitarian brutality and persecution, and of devotion to liberty, justice and good will.”
The meeting sent messages of gratitude to President Eisenhower, commander of the Allied armies in Europe at the time of the liberation, and to former President Truman for their “deep human understanding of the problems” of the liberated persons and their contribution to their rehabilitation and to the people of Israel who had “done more than anyone else to give the majority of the survivors an opportunity to rebuild their lives in freedom and dignity.”
DR. GOLDMANN HOLDS WORLD RESPONSIBLE FOR NAZI DESTRUCTION OF JEWS
Dr. Nahum Goldmann, addressing the meeting, said that the whole civilized world bears “indirect but clear responsibility” for the horrors of the concentration camps. “If the democratic countries and their leaders had not been guilty of sins of commission and omission, of indifference and callousness, short-sighted, immoral and fatuous policies in their relations to the Nazi regime, Nazism would never have acquired power, the opportunity to destroy millions of Jews and to plunge the world into the second World War.”
“If the suffering of the millions of Jews and many millions of non-Jews in the Hitler decade have any meaning at all, “Dr. Goldmann said. “it is as a lesson to all peoples and their leaders that they must not allow the future development of such regimes and methods, and that they must realize that the defense of persecuted minorities and weaker nations against brutal assaults and persecutions by immoral regimes constitutes a moral obligation.
“As the one group which suffered more than any other, we as Jews have the right and obligation to remind both the German people and all the other peoples of the world of this lesson and to warn against a repetition of these events, not impossible in today’s world,” Dr. Goldmann stated.
Dr. Israel Goldstein, who presided, said it is “distressing” that many countries which fought so valiantly to preserve human liberty and freedom, our own United States included, should today raise such formidable barriers in the path of persons who desperately seek refuge in our midst. “So long as these obstacles remain, the task of liberation will remain incomplete and demand fulfillment from man’s conscience,” he declared.
Other speakers at the rally included Rabbi Philip Bernstein, former U.S. Advisor on Jewish Affairs in Germany, and Dr. Samuel Gringaus, now of New York, who was chairman of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the U.S. Zone of Germany after V-E Day. Rabbi Bernstein paid tribute to the U.S. Army and Government for their role in the liberation and rehabilitation of the inmates. “The U.S. Army,” he said, “performed the outstanding piece of practical humanitarianism in the immediate post-war era.”
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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.
