“frankfurter Zeitung” Scores Lack of Representativeness at Geneva Jewish Conference

The “Frankfurter Zeitung” which has just reached this country publishes an article with regard to the Geneva Jewish conference in which it challenges the rights of the initiators of the conference to call it representative of world Jewry.

“The so-called Jewish ‘world conference’ regarding whose course our Geneva correspondent reports, was no official conference of the Jews of the world,” the paper writes. “The larger Jewish organizations and almost all Jewish communities, with very few exceptions, remained apart from it or announced their opposition. The conference consisted chiefly of delegates sent by groups around the American Zionist leader, Dr. Stephen Wise, who also presided. Even the official Zionist organizations remained aloof, although most of the delegates were sent by groups in which Zionists have practically the deciding vote. Thus, for example, according to our knowledge, only the Jewish Volkspartei of Germany was represented, that is the Zionist faction of the Jewish communities and provincial unions (of communities). The Zionistic character of the entire conference is distinctly reflected also in the resolutions, with the formulation of which wide Jewish circles can hardly be in agreement. So long as the efforts for an international unification of the Jews remains so one-sidely in the hands of the Zionists the prospects of their success are very small.

“In this connection,” it continues, “we should mention a polemic of the ‘Voelkische Beobachter,’ which publishes a report about the Geneva Conference under the four-column wide headline, ‘The Papan Government Has Written This Protection of the Jews on Its Banner!’ In bold type the really singular threats against National Socialists and anti-Semitism are reproduced. This is incitement against Germany. The report quotes an utterance of the Berlin leader of the Jewish Volkspartei, Kareski, who mentioned with approval that the Papen government, as guardian of the constitution, also protects the legal rights of the Jews. Even though the utilization in this manner of this statement of the perfectly obvious constitutional protection of the German Jews is characteristic of the methods of the ‘Voelkische Beobachter’ in its war against Papen, it is, nevertheless, not astonishing that the stupid threats at the Geneva conference could find no other echo in these circles than that which has been cited. Such declamations are always a questionable matter—with such means no effective politics can be carried on.”

The “Juedische Rundschau,” organ of the Zionist Federation of Germany, in its issue which has reached New York, carries an editorial replying to the attack of the Nazi organ, “Voelkischer Beobachter,” on Georg Kareski, former President of the Berlin

Jewish Community on the basis of his address describing the position of German Jewry at the Geneva Jewish world conference.

Herr Kareski, the “Rundschau” says, described the conditions in Germany soberly, and warned against exaggerations and the one-sided consideration of certain internal German developments.

In speaking of the position of the Jews under the present Government, he said, as was natural with the Government powers reposing today, largely in the hands of the President of the Republic himself, that it is against any formal deprivation of the rights of the Jews, and certainly against anti-Jewish violence.

The present Government of Germany knows how Germany’s position in the civilized world would be prejudiced by a return to medieval barbarism in the treatment of the Jews. The Papen Government will therefore protect the rights of the Jews.

It is, however, going too far, and merely a rhetorical flourish to say that it has inscribed the protection of the Jews on its banner. The Government has inscribed on its banner the “Christian National Regime,” and the Jewish question does not take first place with it.

So far as we Jews are concerned, the “Rundschau” concludes, the threats and the misrepresentations of the “Voelkischer Beobachter” will not deter us from collecting our forces and fighting for our existence and our rights wherever they are menaced. The roads which we shall take in doing so will be influenced by political and Jewish considerations, and not by anti-Semitic attacks.