Representatives of the United Roumanian Jews of America, an organization consisting of Landsmanschaften of American Jews of Roumanian origin, were on the reception committee which welcomed Queen Marie of Roumania on her arrival in New York yesterday. The official committee of one hundred, headed by Mrs. Vincent Astor, which was appointed by Mayor Walker, included Leo Wolfson, President of the United Roumanian Jews of America, Edward Herbert, vice-president; Herman Speier, executive secretary, and former president, Solomon Sufrin. They have also accepted the invitation of William Nelson Cromwell, president of the Friends of Roumania, to attend a reception to be given in honor of the Queen on Wednesday at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, New York.
A committee of ten, representing the United Roumanian Jews of America, will be received by the Queen upon her return from Washington, it was learned.
Queen Marie will be escorted on her visit to Brooklyn by Ralph Jonas, president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and chairman of the Citizen’s Committee, and by Major Frank 1. Hanscom, chaplain of the One Hundred and Sixth Infantry Regiment, which the Queen will review.
Mr. Jonas, it was stated, will issue a proclamation, calling upon citizens of Brooklyn to make the visit of the Queen to that borough one of the happiest memories of her American tour.
Elizabeth Gurley Flyhn, Chairman of the International Defense Committee, issued a call for a mass meeting in Union Square at noon yesterday “to protest against the brutal persecution of political prisoners by the Rumanian authorities.” Ukrainian and Hungarian students of the Theological Seminary at Bloomfield. N. J., have sent a circular letter to the faculties and students of American colleges protesting against the proposed hospitality to Queen Marie and accusing her Government of oppressing political minorities.
Speakers at the Union Square meeting were Bishop Paul Jones, Dr. Zachariah Chaffee, Carlo Tresca, Paxton Hibben, McAlister Coleman, Robert W. Dunn, Forrest Bailey and Louis Budenz. The committee under the auspices of which the meeting was called is interested in agitating for the release of political prisoners all over the world.
In announcing the meeting Miss Flynn declared that news of actual conditions in Roumania was being suppressed by a rigorous press and mail censorship and that publicity material favorable to Queen Marie and her Government was being broadcast in place of real news.
“Through private channels,” said Miss Flynn, “the International Defense Committee has been informed that there are more than 2,500 political prisoners in Roumania. According to the published statement of Henri Barbusse, the French writer, who visited there recently, the treatment of these prisoners is medieval in its barbarity.”
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.
