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ing out that it openly demanded the elimination of Jews from responsible positions in public life. “But even more serious than physical torture and ###cial discriminations is the moral turpitude with which the Nazi press continues its vicious, libelous campaign of incitement against the Jews. Always a ###ill of lies and a power plant of blackmail, the Nazi papers, now the only ones privileged to appear uncensored and unmolested, choke every native impulse of decency or moral compunction in the bud.

“In the name of the Executive Committee of the American Jewish Congress,” concluded Dr. Tenenbaum, “I solemnly declare that nothing will stop us in our sacred duty to enlist the cooperation of the whole civilized world against the criminal folly of whatever government chooses to blacken and besmirch the pages of history with acts of medieval persecution and racial discrimination.”

Dr. Samuel Margoshes, Editor of the Jewish “Day”, said that no amount of denials by the Nazis would deter the American Jewish Congress from the task it had set itself of arousing humanity to the danger of the threat involved in Hitlerism. He said that the American Jewish Congress would continue its campaign until the Hitler Government had accepted the four demands formulated on Sunday and transmitted to him through the German Ambassador in Washington. These demands called for the cessation of Jewish persecution, the protection of Jewish life and property, the assurance that the Jews in Germany would be secured in their political rights, and that there would be no interference with equal economic opportunity.

Hyman Greenberg, one of the leaders of the Poale Zion, declared that the Jewish workers’ organizations, which he had the honor to represent, stood shoulder to shoulder with all other classes of Jews in their protest against the Nazi persecutions. He stressed that the protest was not against the German people but against Hitlerism.

Mr. Morris Rothenberg, President of the Zionist Organization of America, said:

“For six years the flood gates of hate and calumny have been let loose upon German Jews and upon the Jewish people. For six years Hitler and his followers have sought to stir in the German multitudes hostile passions against the German Jews. One of the fundamental tenets of the Nazi platform was that only Germans of German extraction had a right to participate in German official life. This, of course, was directed against the Jews although they had lived for more than a thousand years in Germany, had helped to build up its commerce and industry, its art, its literature, and its science, and shed their blood in defense of their country.

“We kept silent,” said Mr. Rothenberg, “because we hoped that Hitler and his followers would come to realize that their conduct was unworthy of the great tradition of culture of the German nation; that the deep injustice which they were inflicting upon a devoted part of the German people would only serve to bring upon the Nazis the moral condemnation of the civilized world.

“Then came the Hitler accession to power. We have no desire whatsoever to interfere with the internal political affairs of Germany, but that which befell German Jewry not only affects us as fellow-Jews but it is a matter of concern to every right thinking human being.

“This great protest meeting and the indignation which has been aroused among every section of the American people,” declared Mr. Rothenberg in conclusion, “will not have adequately served their purpose unless there is not only a cessation of violence but an abandonment of the program of the economic destruction and the civil disfranchisement of German Jewry. It is our solemn duty to Jewish honor as to the cause of human liberty to do what lies in our power to prevent such an intolerable violation of human rights.”

The advent of Dr. John Haynes Holmes, Pastor of the Community Church, who was the next speaker, brought the whole audience to their feet. He received a remarkable ovation. His picturesque and forceful epithets repeatedly drew rounds of applause and approval. Hitler he described as “the paper-hanger of Potsdam”, and the Nazi Party as “Hitler’s gangsters let loose on a civilized Germany”. He cautioned that a swift disappearance of the Nazi regime and its methods was not to be anticipated. Everyone who had endeavored to predict the future in connection with Hitler’s rise, had repeatedly failed. So-called political prophets had previously described Hitlerism as a blown-up balloon that would quickly burst. They had been mistaken, and it would be wise to avoid a similar mistake in the future.

Dr. Holmes, too, warned that Hitler should not be confused with the German people, towards whom they still had friendliest and most sympathetic feelings in the catastrophe that had befallen them.

Abraham Cahan, Editor of the Jewish Daily “Forward”, described the Nazi storm troops as “brown-shirted hooligans”. “Hitler,” he said, finds himself between the devil of his own anti-Semitic policies and the deep sea of the civilized sentiment of Europe and America,” It was his view that Hitlerism would not last long, as it was a menace to the liberties of the civilized world.

Mrs. Rebekah Kohut, President of the World Union of Women, and the only woman speaker at the meeting, appealed especially to women, as the mothers of men, to do all they could to banish hatred of all kinds from their hearts. Hatred of any description was a vice that poisoned the human organism, and should therefore be eradicated. Hatred, she concluded, was the seed that eventually produced wars and it evolved upon the women to see to it that the world would not again plunge into a catastrophe of conflict.

Israel N. Thurman, a Vice-President of the American Jewish Congress, who presented a resolution to the meeting said:

“No one prays more devoutly than I do that the Government of Germany will heed the mighty voice of this great nation as it is lifted this evening not alone here but all over the land in solemn protest against cruelty and injustice, yea, as it is lifted this evening in prayer for such change not alone of mind, but of heart, on the part of enemies in Germany as will enable us to take the whole German people to our hearts without exception or reservation.

“It is too much to hope, however, that the dire effects of a hellish propaganda of bigotry and hate, fiercely and unrelentingly carried on for nearly fifteen years, and still permitted and promoted, will be wiped out by a single fiat.”

Turning to the task that lay before the American Jewish Congress, he said: “We must not lean on just this meeting of protest. Far wiser, my friends, to resolve that this is the opening signal of a great, consecrated and unremitting endeavor that shall not cease until the Jews of Germany can once again pursue the even tenor of their ways, and once again work and love and serve in their great Fatherland.”

Mr. Thurman then read a resolution, approving the appointment by the President of the American Jewish Congress, of an Emergency Fund Committee of the Congress, whose duties shall be to raise such funds as the Congress shall find necessary for the pursuit of its aims, and particularly for the “safeguarding of the civil, religious, political rights of the Jews in Germany.” The speaker pointed out that the emergency had laid a great burden on the Congress, and they look to the Jewish public to help them carry out their work effectively.

The resolution was adopted by a rising vote.

Bishop Francis McConnell, who was next introduced, opened his address with a quotation from the Declaration of Independence citing the phrase, “A decent respect for the opinions of mankind”. What was happening in Germany now, he said, was “an indecent disrespect for the opinions of mankind.” To those who ask, “Why not let Germany manage things to suit herself?” he would reply, “That is the quickest way to plunge the world into war.” He insisted that now was the time to make their protest, so that conditions might not grow worse. Such a protest, he said, would work for the peace of the world.

Mr. C. H. Tuttle, former United States Attorney, and President of the Greater New York Interfaith Committee, said that the Committee, composed of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, was a symbol of the spirit in which the meeting was held.

“Tonight,” he said, “we have met together as citizens of the world. We have assembled in the universal realm of human sympathy, human justice and human right. We hold that the laws of humanity and of God are the foundation of all other laws; and that if and when those fundamental laws are violated, then the whole commonwealth of man instantly acquires a right and a duty to speak out aloud.

“We, therefore, appeal to the German people not to permit within their borders continuance or resumption of acts of aggression and injustice against the Jews, lest prejudice and hate overrun the world and civilization lose all that it has gained for tolerance and understanding since the Dark Ages.”

He concluded with a declaration that Christians could not stand by and watch the forcible conversion of Jews into citizens of low caste, into Jewish untouchables, into prisoners of a ghetto.

Ab. Goldberg, Associate Editor of the “Jewish Morning Journal”, who spoke in Yiddish, predicted that the Jews would eventually triumph because they were in the right. He insisted that the reports from Germany fully justified the holding of the protest meeting, and that the Nazi propaganda was in itself as bad as any pogrom that could take place. He, like the other speakers, declared that they were influenced only by the kindliest feelings towards the German people. They were concerned only with the menace of Hitlerism.

Ab. Goldberg’s speech was interrupted for several minutes by the arrival of Bishop Manning and Mayor O’Brien, well as for members of other nationalities. He said:

“I invoke the spirit of Washington and Adams, of Jefferson and Lincoln. In their names and in the countless thousands of oppressed men and women and children of whatever faiths who sought these shores, whether hundreds of years ago or yesterday, I renew the appeal of the founders of this, our beloved country, for man’s inalienable right to life and liberty.

“I join fervently, therefore, in this expression of solemn hope that Germany will not tolerate the denial of those sacred and fundamental rights of mankind. To such ends I appeal to the world’s conscience, to humanity and to Almighty God.”

Rabbi Dr. Stephen S. Wise, whose speech concluded the meeting, received a great welcome from the audience when he rose to speak. In the course of his speech he said “the American Jewish Congress had called but not caused the protest meeting tonight. The American Jewish Congress had not aroused that protest against anti-Jewish wrongs in Germany but had brought within the bounds of law and order an oceanic tide of indignation against the outrages inflicted upon Jews in these days under the Nazi government.

“Not out of the bitterness of anger but out of the deeps of sorrow and the spirit of compassion do we speak tonight,” he declared. “For Germany we have asked and we continue to ask justice and even magnanimity from her erstwhile foes. We demand in the sight of humanity the right for Germany from the nations and the right from Germany for the Jewish people. No wrong under the heavens could be greater than to make German Jews scapegoats because Germany has grievances against the nations. We who would secure justice from the nations for Germany and justice to Jews from Germany affirm tonight that Germany cannot hope to secure justice through injustice to its Jewish people.

“This protest of tonight,” continued Rabbi Wise, “is not against the German people whom we honor and revere and cherish. How could we, of the household of Israel, fail to cherish and honor the German people, one of the great peoples of the earth, a people that has made monumental, indeed eternal contributions to human well being in the domains of religion, literature and the arts. How could we fail to cherish and to revere the people of Goethe and Schiller, Immanuel Kant and Hegel, Beethoven and Wagner, Heine and Einstein.

“This protest of tonight is not against the political program of Germany for Germany is master within her own household, but solely against the present anti-Jewish policy of the Nazi government. There is no need for our German-born neighbors in America nor for our fellow Jews in Germany to appeal to us to avoid an anti-Jewish demonstration. We are not against Germany, and it is an unforgivable calumny to declare that we are ‘Deutschfeindlich’. We are the friends of and believers in Germany. Germany at its highest, Germany at its truest, the German nation at its noblest. Because we are the friends of Germany, because we have inextinguishable faith in the basic love for righteousness of the German people, we appeal to Germany representing as this meeting does, Protestants, Catholics, Jews, in the name of America which has been stirred as rarely before against wrongs perpetrated upon Jews.”

Talking of the Nazi program, Dr. Wise said, “we know that it is not easy to cancel the Nazi program of thirteen years, and still we know that it can be done. A dictatorship is omnipotent and above all the German people at its best will support the government in every honest effort to avert the shame of the medievalization of German Jewry. If the Nazi government will use for the suppression of the anti-Semitic campaign in Germany 1/100th or 1/1000th part of the vigor and rigor with which it has suppressed differing or, as it believes, dangerous political parties, anti-Semitism will perish in Germany.”

Turning to the subject of the German Jewry’s efforts to avert the protest movement, Rabbi Wise declared: “To those leaders of German Jewry who declare that the present anti-Jewish situation in Germany is a local German question, we call attention to the word of Abraham Lincoln. Defenders of slavery urged and excused slavery on the ground that it was local. Lincoln’s answer was ‘Slavery is local but freedom is national.’ The conscience of humanity has made a world problem of the present situation of the Jews in Germany. We lay down no conditions tonight, we make no stipulations, we do not even urge demands. But we do affirm certain elementary axioms of civilization. The Jews of the world, no more than the Jews of Germany, do not demand exceptional treatment or privileged position or favored status for themselves. We do not even ask for rights. We ask only for the right. We demand the right.”

Concluding his address Rabbi Wise repeated the note that had been struck by practically all the speakers.

“I close as I began,” he said. “We are not met in the spirit of bitterness, hatred or revenge. We do not desire that the German people be punished because of the unwisdom of the measures and the injustice of some practices of its government. Whatever nations may ask in the spirit of reparation and reprisal, we who are Jews know that our spirit must be in consonance with the high tradition of Jewish forebearance and Jewish forgiveness. But there must be no further reprisals against our fellow Jews, no penalizing them as German hostages because the conscience of the world utters its mighty protest. God help the German people to be equal to themselves.”

In the course of his speech, Rabbi Wise defined the demands of the American Jewish Congress, which had been transmitted to the German Government through the German Ambassador in Washington, as follows:

1. There must be an immediate cessation of all anti-Semitic activities and propaganda in Germany.

2. The abandonment of the policy of racial discrimination against and of economic exclusion of Jews from the life of Germany, the Germany which German Jews love, which their sons and brothers and fathers have fought and died for, the Germany which they love, as you and I love our country.

3. The protection of Jewish life and property.

4. There shall not be an expulsion of Ost Juden, Jews who have come into Germany since 1914. More than that, for them we demand (I read the considered word of my associate) equal treatment for Ost Juden, for Jewish non-nationals and for non-nationals of Germany whether they be French or English or Italian or American.