News Brief

The nation-wide indignation movement against Nazi persecution of Jews continued to gain strength today, featured by an official protest of the Catholic Church in the United States. At the same time, it was reported from Berlin that Douglas Miller, commercial attache of the United States Embassy, had been ordered to Washington.

The Catholic protest was introduced last night on a broadcast sponsored by the Catholic University of America over the NBC and OBS networks. Prof. Maurice Sheehy of Catholic Univer- sity said the protest was the result of “sober, calm reflection by various groups and leaders who have sought permission to raise their voice not in mad hysteria but in grim indignation against the atrocities visited upon the Jews in Germany.”

The American Legion, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and the American Youth Congress were among the latest organizations to issue statements of condemnation. Petitions to President Roosevelt urging vigorous action against Germany were sent, among others, by 36 noted writers and by 3,000 Columbia University students and faculty members. Similar action was taken by students and faculty members at Harvard, New York University and other educational institutions.

The Congress of American National Groups made public a telegram to President Roosevelt signed by 27 organizations with a total membership of more than 1,000,000 urging a “positive stand in defense of the Jewish people of Germany” and other oppressed groups. The National League of American Citizens of Foreign Descent appealed to more than 400 German-American organizations to unite against the Nazi persecution campaign.

The United Palestine Appeal’s “Night of Stars” at Madison Square Garden last night, whose attendance by 20,000 persons netted nearly $100,000 for the U.P.A., heard speakers denounce German oppression. Mayor LaGuardia apologized for not having adequately described Hitler’s brutality. Ex-Mayor James J. Walker declared Hitler was building “a hell on earth.” More than 5,000 persons gathered in Columbus Circle at a meeting arranged by the American League for Peace and Democracy and the Jewish People’s Committee against anti-Semitism and Fascism.

The Foreign Policy Association warned, in its weekly bulletin, against acceeding to Nazi threats of further oppression if opposition abroad was not stifled. “Submission to this threat would spell the doom of democracy itself,” the bulletin said. “The Jews in Germany have already been condemned to a living death. Under the circumstances now confronting them, physical death can hold little added horror.” It added that once Jewish property was expropriated, the Nazis might turn to the property of Catholic and Protestant churches.

In other parts of the American continent sentiment also continued to rise. Foreign Minister Oswaldo Aranha declared in Rio de Janeiro that Brazil would welcome Jews with open arms and cooperate with the Intergovernmental Refugee Committee. A committee of Jews and Christians in Montevideo, Uruguay, today proclaimed the week of Nov. 19 to 26 as anti-Nazi Week, during which strong efforts will be made to tighten the boycott of German goods. The Colombia House of Representatives adopted a resolution censuring Germany. Fifty members of the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan denounced the “brutal aggression” against Jews. In Canada, the German-Canadian People’s Society called a meeting in Kitchener, Ont. (known before the war as “Berlin”) to protest the Nazi “wave of bestiality.”

A nationwide emergency campaign to raise funds for the transfer to Palestine of Jewish children, many of whom have been separated from their parents during the reprisals against Jews in Germany, has been launched by Hadassah. More than $25,000, enough to care for some 70 refugee children already holding certificates for Palestine, was sent to Jerusalem by Hadassah today as an initial contribution. A trans-Atlantic telephone call from the Netherlands, where 200 Jewish children now awaiting Palestine certificates, have been given temporary refuge, revealed that there were 5,000 starving children waiting at the border of the country for permission to enter.