The Reader’s Forum

To the Editor, Jewish Daily Bulletin:

Allow me, as a German refugee who for a year has been living in the United States, to address this letter to you, since you are the only available forum known to me which has space and interest for all Jewish problems without discrimination as to political opinion.

I was deeply shocked when I read in yesterday’s evening papers that Dr. Stephen S. Wise has declared a “fight to the finish” on the American Jewish Committee.

Until now I was of the opinion that Dr. Wise had found his life’s work within the last year, in fighting and crushing Nazism—a task which is greater than the powers of the strongest fighter. And now, suddenly, he turns from this worthy cause to declare war on the American Jewish Committee and, through it, on all the American Jews connected with it.

Why Dr. Wise has chosen the American Jewish Committee as the butt of his attack is quite beyond my understanding. In accordance with the information which I gathered while I was still in Germany about the two previous world conferences, representative Jewish organizations all over the world, including the Zionist Organization, have been against the ideas of Dr. Wise. Dr. Heinrich Stern, chairman of the meeting of representatives of the Berlin Jewish community, a man who is highly respected and acknowledged equally by all Jews, Zionist and non-Zionist, Orthodox and Liberal (can Dr. Wise understand such a state at all?), stated publicly on the occasion of the second World Conference that Dr. Wise conducted himself in Jewish politics like “an elephant in a china shop.” Dr. Wise is most energetically repudiated by all but very few and insignificant groups of Europe as the representative of world Jewry. He is generally not considered suitable to conduct such delicate and difficult negotiations because he lacks every essential qualification. It is said among the Jews in Germany that there is hardly another Jew in all the world who has done as much harm to the Jewish cause as the hot-headed, always on the offensive, publicity – seeking Dr. Wise.

At a time when the enemies of Jewry are making a heavy attack upon us, when a malicious, shrewd, and ruthless enemy is directing his forces against us all over the world, we do, indeed, need unity—but not the kind of unity that means the super-imposition of one man’s will upon all others. Behold Dr. Wise! with one posture he appeals tearfully for unity; with another, he shakes his fist at the American Jewish Committee and similar organizations abroad that disagree with him—all presumably in the name of “unity.”

One more word about his most intimate aides. Dr. Nahum Goldmann, whose development and activities we German Jews naturally know most thoroughly, should really understand more of the psychology of the German than Dr. Wise, since he gave up his Polish citizenship many years ago and became a naturalized German. But he was never, as we German Jews know, a real German Jew; he always felt himself strange in