Top New Jersey Republican party officials promised an investigation today into charges that members of the state’s Young Republican party sang anti-Semitic and racist songs at a state convention and at a national convention. The promise was made by Walter B. Todd, Republican state chairman, and Clark Allen, Young Republican state chairman, who publicly deplored the songs sung by the members.
The charges were made yesterday by State Sen. Nelson F. Stamler, a liberal independent Republican from Union County. He said that the songs indicated that the state’s Young Republicans “have been infiltrated by a tiny group of extreme right-wing bigots who would destroy the party for the sake of their own selfish interests.”
He said the songs had been printed in a seven-page song sheet which, he asserted had wide circulation among members of a right-wing faction in the state’s Young Republicans, whose members call themselves “Rat Finks.” He cited the lyrics of one anti-Semitic song which he said had been used at a “group sing” at the state Young Republican conclave in Wild wood last May and at the Young Republican national convention in Miamia month later.
To the tune of “Jingle Bells,” Sen. Stamler declared, the lyrics sung at the two gatherings were: “Riding through the Reich in a Mercedes-Benz; Shooting all the kikes, making lots of friends; Rat tat-tat-tat-tat, now the bastards down; Oh what fun it is to have the Nazis back in town.”
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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.
