The current speaking tour of the United States by the Rev. Martin Niemoller, under the auspices of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, was described as “a very great disservice to our country,” in a letter sent to the Council yesterday by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, in his capacity as president of the American Jewish Congress.
Reviewing Niemoller’s tacit and active support of Nazism until his own church was attacked, Dr. Wise charged that the German pastor was attempting to sell the American people on the necessity for dealing “softly” with the Germans, who, he added, were “invincibly anti-Semitic,” Stating that he was writing also as a “minister of religion,” Dr. Wise said that Niemoller “has not so borne himself throughout the unspeakable Hitler years as to merit the respect or confidence of the Christian peoples of America.”
(Rabbi Barnett Brickner of Cleveland, who is visiting the displaced persons camps in Germany and Austria on behalf of the U.J.A., declared in Berlin on Friday that Niemoller’s recent statement at a lecture in New York that the German people were no longer anti-Semitic was inaccurate. Dr. Brickner cited many instances of anti-Jewish propaganda and activity.)
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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.
