What the World Zionist Congress and the Jewish Agency for Palestine are designed to be in relation to Zionism and the Jewish National Home, the World Jewish Congress plans to be and to do in relation to the common Jewish problems of the Diaspora (dispersion), Rabbi Stephen S. Wise declared tonight in opening the conference preliminary to the call for the congress.
A hundred delegates from 24 countries, representing organizations throughout the world participating in the world congress, were assembled in the Salle Centrale when the New York rabbi called the conference to order.
Dr. Wise expressed regret that Dr. Leo Motzkin, of Paris, and Dr. Nahum Goldman, of Berlin, who are still at Prague in connection with the Zionist Congress, and Bernard S. Deutsch, of New York, president of the American Jewish Congress, were unable to be present. Mr. Deutsch, he explained to the delegates, was running for an important municipal post in the outcome of which he would probably be victorious.
“When we met at Geneva last year,” Dr. Wise declared, “we had been reassured by German Jews and by American Jews of German descent in the following calming tones:
“Firstly, that Hitler will never come to power. Secondly, if he came to power he will be sobered by the responsibilities of office. Thirdly, he will not carry out the threats against the German Jews.
PROPHECIES WRONG
“It is needless now to dwell upon the tragic truth that such prophecies are wrong,” he declared. “Firstly,
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.
