The latest developments in the unrelenting drive against Nazi Germany for imposing cruelties upon its Jewish population reached an important stage yesterday as the American League for the Defense of Jewish Rights, the American Jewish Congress together with numerous other organized units for Jewish defense pooled their resources and planned the following steps in its siege of the Hitler government:
1. Pressure to end the apathy of the United States government toward the Hitler persecutions is being exerted by the American League under the chieftainship of Samuel Untermyer.
2. Movement is under way to stem the tide of immigration into America of “swarms of German propagandists who are here to sow their vile creed against Jews”.
3. A fund of $500,000 is to be raised to prosecute the economic boycott of German goods in the United States.
4. A charge account boycott against department stores, which amounts to a movement to close charge and drawing accounts in stores which continue to buy German goods, was announced by Mrs. Mark Harris, president of the Women’s Division of the League for the Defense of Jewish Rights.
5. Jewish women’s organizations throughout the city will gather at the Plaza in the near future to launch a detailed and organized drive against non-cooperating department stores.
6. The establishment of twelve regional headquarters for the boycott and the formation of information bureaus to advise merchants, importers and industrialists on alternative sources of goods they now procure from Germany, is under way.
7. President Roosevelt is to be petitioned to lower the immigration barriers so as to admit German refugees.
Far-reaching effects of the two meetings held on Sunday by the American League for the Defense of Jewish Rights at Greystone, the home of Mr. Untermyer at Yonkers, and by the American Jewish Congress at the Pennsylvania Hotel, are expected to be manifested in widespread cooperation given to the boycott.
Mr. Untermyer’s demand that Hitlerite propagandists in the United States should at once be ostracized and if possible ejected from the country, was under consideration by a committee headed by J. David Stern, Philadelphia publisher. Officials, including federal authorities, are to be notified.
Dr. Joseph Tannenbaum, national chairman of the executive committee of the American Jewish Congress, speaking at the meeting at the Pennsylvania, demanded state and national cooperation in deporting the agitating Nazis from these shores.
Dr. Wise, in his address at the meeting of the Congress, sounded the keynote of demands by the anti-Hitler forces working here when he outlined the program to be pursued and discussed the means to its achievement. He asked (1) facilitation of the emigration of Jews in appreciable numbers from Germany; (2) facilitation of removal by the Jews of their capital, in whole or an part; (3) exploration of lands of possible emigration; (4) the reorientation of the Jews, industrially, economically, industrially and socially.
“The Jews of the world,” said Dr. Wise, “have the right to turn to the civilized nations of the world with a plea for succor. They have the right to demand that the defense of their position as human beings and as nationals in every country of the world, endangered by what is transpiring in Germany, be undertaken by the League of Nations. They have the right to demand of the League of Nations that it compel Germany to restore the Jews to their position of equality with all other inhabitants of the land. They have the right to demand of the League of Nations that it find lands in which the persecuted Jews in flight from Germany may find a haven. They have the right that the League of Nations create or help to create means of livelihood for those who have been robbed of economic subsistence through no fault of their own.”
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.
