Dr. Isaac Lewin, representing the Agudath Israel World Organization, urged the Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities today to take immediate steps to combat neo-Nazism in Germany.
Dr. Lewin told the subcommission that “in the country where the cancer of racial discrimination grew to unparalleled dimensions until it caused World War II, suddenly the movement has been revived.” He stressed that neo-Nazism in Germany was connected with racist organizations in other countries and urged the subcommission to include in its study of racial discrimination, a special chapter dealing with neo-Nazism and its relation to Nazism. “Ways have to be found,” Dr. Lewin declared, “particularly in education, to counteract the influence of writings advocating racism.”
(Israel Ambassador Asher Ben-Nathan, speaking in Goettingen, Germany, warned that the fact that such an organization as the German National Democratic Party existed must be taken seriously. A public opinion poll, revealed over the weekend, confirmed reports of the growing popularity of the neo-Nazi party. The poll estimated that the party could win 15 percent of the vote if elections were to be held now in a number of West German states.
(At Ottawa, the leaders of the Conservative and Social Credit Parties asked the government in the House of Commons to advise the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation against a scheduled television appearance of Adolf von Thadden, deputy leader of the National Democratic Party. The president of the Canadian Labor Congress also protested. The Canadian Jewish Congress had previously warned that von Thadden’s appearance would result in massive protests.)
In a related development, Dr. William Korey, speaking for the Coordinating Board of Jewish Organizations, urged the subcommission to establish a system of annual “work-in-progress” reports “to alert world opinion to specific instances of incitement to hate.” Dr. Korey drew the attention of the subcommission to “incitatory hate propaganda” conducted against the Jews in Guatemala by Vice-President Clemente Marroquin Rojas, a newspaper publisher. This incitement, Dr. Korey said, had taken on a “menacing character.” Disclosure of such developments in a “work-in-progress” report by the subcommission, he said “could go a long way to counteract and halt indicated dangers.”
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