A resolution demanding that the United Nations investigate the condition of the Jews in the Soviet Union was adopted here today at the closing session of the three-day convention of the Jewish Labor Committee. More than 500 delegates attended the parley. The resolution urged the free world “not to remain silent in the face of the usurpation of the elementary rights of Jews” in Communist lands.
Another resolution appealed to the free world to protect Israel morally and militarily “from continued attempts by the Soviets to gain spheres of influence in the Middle East. ” The convention also took cognizance of the continued employment in high government positions in West Germany of persons with Nazi backgrounds. It urged the Bonn Government “to keep alive in the German mind the crimes committed against Jews and humanity” by the Nazi regime.
Principal speakers at the convention included George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO; David Dubinsky, president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union; Adolph Held, national chairman of the JLC; Alexander Kahn, general manager of the Jewish Daily Forward; Nathan Chanin, secretary general of the Workmen’s Circle and others.
Mr. Kahn told the convention that the attempt to create an anti-Semitic movement in America is a failure “because we have an informed public opinion, a free press and a united Jewish community, which is on guard fighting against prejudice and discrimination and for justice. “
In this united effort, he declared, “the Jewish Labor Committee plays an important part. Jewish labor and Jewish industry in the United States disprove the anti-Semitic lie that Jews are not productive. The people in Israel disprove the other anti-Semitic great lie that Jews cannot be workers and farmers and cannot govern themselves.”
Mr. Kahn asked that American Jews “forget all former misgivings about a Jewish state in Israel and give all possible help to make Israel safe. ” He told the delegates that there were still hundreds of thousands of Jews who had no place to go and who when welcome in Israel. “We must do everything to save them,” he declared.
Benjamin Tabachinsky, national director, told the delegates that unconditional survival of the Jewish people must be the answer to those who preach the unconditional surrender of Jewish communities to assimilationism. He said that within the past 25 years the JLC had raised nearly $13,000,000 in order to maintain Jewish cultural life both here and abroad.
Jacob Pat, executive secretary of the JLC, reported that 15,000 families have been reunited through JLC’s efforts. He said the families disunited by war or Iron Curtain enslavement had sought families in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Israel and Europe. The relocation network set up by the JLC had enabled these families to be reunited.
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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.
