The American Veterans Committee has protested to the Secretary of the Air Force against the ouster of a Jewish violinist from the Air Force orchestra here because he asked to be excused from playing at a party Saturday so that he could attend Yom Kippur service. He attended services.
In a letter to Secretary Donald A. Quarles, AVC executive director Kenneth Birkhead called the ouster of Airman I/C Irving Weinstein “appalling” and asserted that “such strict ironclad and rigid discipline can only be expected by the atheistic. Communist nations of the slave world.”
The story, as revealed in the Washington Daily News this week-end, was that when Airman Weinstein insisted on attending services rather than playing with the Air Force Symphony Orchestra at Boiling Field, Col. George S. Howard, chief of bands for the Air Force, had him removed from the musical unit and given “extra duties.” Three other Jewish musicians played when they were told by Col. Howard that he did not have to keep them on the orchestra here if he did not want to.
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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.
