Marching up Park avenue with chromium helmets gleaming in the sun, 2,000 Jewish War Veterans paraded to the Park Avenue Synagogue from Temple Emanu-El, Sixty-fifth street and Fifth avenue, yesterday to hold Memorial Day ceremonies.
Hundreds of by-standers lined the streets as forty-eight United States and twenty Canadian posts of the Jewish War Veterans, in blue and gold uniforms and accompanied by detachments from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, the Jewish Legion and the Legion of Judea, marched in step to the martial airs of ten bands and the baton of Morris Florea, grand marshal.
At the synagogue the veterans heard Samuel Untermyer, Rabbi Milton Steinberg, Senator Royal S. Copeland, George U. Harvey, and William Berman.
Untermyer commented on the services Jews have rendered in the history of America and condemned the “medieval bigotry of Hitlerism.”
“Never before,” he declared, “have Jewish war veterans been forced to sit helplessly by as witnesses to the crucifixion of their unoffending brethren on an altar of hatred supposed to have been driven into oblivion and destroyed centuries ago.
“In the present emergency,” he said, “we have at last found in the economic boycott an effective weapon whereby we can make common cause in the interests of humanity against these assaults. The downfall of Hitlerism through the boycott is nearer at hand than is commonly supposed.”
Rabbi Milton Steinberg, in a speech later hailed by Senator Royal S. Copeland as the “most inspiring he had ever heard,” pleaded that the nation maintain its vigilance to protect the democratic institutions won through great struggle.
Col. George U. Harvey, Queens Borough President, praised the Seventy-seventh Division of the A.E.F. which, he said, was distinguished because it contained the greatest number of Jews.
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.
