U.S. Zionists Honor Late Justice Brandeis at Centennial Dinner

Dr. Emanuel Neumann, recently elected president of the Zionist Organization of America, called tonight for the Presidential candidates to give the American people a clear statement of policy on the Middle East and “unambiguous indications of how they propose to cope with the dangers that may soon be on us” in that region. Dr. Neumann was addressing 1,000 Zionist leaders and key workers in the metropolitan area attending a Brandeis centennial dinner of the ZOA and its metropolitan regions.

Taking note of the current Soviet-Polish crisis, Dr. Neumann warned that there are “disturbing indications that the Jews may become the scapegoats of the internecine Communist struggle.” He noted that Soviet Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev was reported to have called Wladislaw Gomulko, newly elevated Polish Communist chief, “an agent of American imperialism and Zionism.” At the same time, Dr. Neumann said, it is reported that some Poles in Mr. Gomulka’s camp have demanded the elimination of “superfluous Jews from management and the professions.”

Benjamin Cohen, former United States representative to the United Nations and a close associate of the late Justice Louis D. Brandeis, paid tribute to the Supreme Court Justice as a “great thinker, a moral force, an exponent of the best principles of American life and of the finest traditions of the people who gave the world the Bible.” Mr. Cohen declared that if Justice Brandeis were alive today he would be “irked by the failure of world statesmanship to restore peace in the Middle East.”

Other speakers at the dinner were Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Attorney General Jacob K. Javits, opposing candidates for the United States Senate, and Boris Margolin, Hebraist and veteran Zionist. Dr. Neumann announced that $150,000 raised at the dinner would go to the American Zionist Fund for the maintenance of ZOA House in Tel Aviv and Kfar Silver, both ZOA projects in Israel.