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Untermyer Assails Luther in Address at Maccabean Festival at the Garden

December 18, 1933
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Bitterly attacking Dr. Hans Luther, German ambassador to the United States, for representing a country in whose principles “he cannot possibly believe” and for “spreading lies and false propaganda in order merely to keep his job”, Samuel Untermyer, in an address delivered Saturday night before about 20,000 persons who attended the fourth annual Maccabee Festival held at the Madison Square Garden, said that the size of the assemblage is “evidence of how the City of New York feels about Hitlerism.”

Mr. Untermyer discussed in a lengthy address what he said he deemed the purpose of the Chanukah holiday, and then devoted the better part of half an hour to a scathing verbal attack on the speech the Ambassador gave at Columbia University last week. The views Dr. Luther expressed were assailed for their “insincerity and their obvious attempt to spread lies about Germany.”

A symbolic presentation of historical and current incidents which have become part of Jewish tradition, staged with impressive colorful tableaux and stirring music as background, was presented. The pageant was the fourth annual Maccabean festival, arranged under the auspices of the New York Zionist Region and supported by Jews who obviously found in supporting the show means of giving vent to feelings about Zionism and Hitlerism.

Announced by its directors as a presentation designed to “answer the challenge of the Steuben Society”, which convened within the same walls two weeks ago and which observers decided was equivalent to a threat to religious tolerance, the fes-

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