B’nai B’rith Defends Order As Nazis Resume Their Attacks

B’nai B’rith, Jewish fraternal order, was defended against the charges which Nazi papers have been directing toward this organization in Germany for being a “secret order against Aryans” in a statement received here yesterday by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from Alfred M. Cohen, international president, from Cincinnati.

Mr. Cohen declared in his telegram that “during the three-year period from 1928 to 1931 B’nai B’rith in Germany expended $350,000 a year for philanthropic and social work. If these benefactions are ‘against Aryans’ then B’nai B’rith must plead guilty to the charge.” These benefactions are still being given, “unless interfered with by force,” Mr. Cohen further stated.

SEE NEW ATTACK

The specific charges to which Cohen’s telegram referred appeared in Monday’s edition of The Jewish Daily Bulletin. In this story, a Jewish Telegraphic Agency wire from Berlin, the resumption of attacks against B’nai B’rith in Nazi papers was announced.

The West Deutscher Beobachter, the wire from Berlin stated, carried a long leading article denouncing the B’nai B’rith as a “secret order against Aryans” and declared that the 1,500 members in Germany were “responsible for the bitter anti-German campaign abroad.”

This vicious attack seems to indicate that the drive, actually begun in March, will be resumed.

LISTS BENEFIT PROJECTS

The statement from Mr. Cohen follows:

“Against the charge made by a malicious or uninformed journal that B’nai B’rith is a ‘secret order against Aryans,’ it may not be inappropriate to direct attention to the very many eleemosynary, charitable, educational and patriotic undertakings which B’nai B’rith has supported in Germany, and which unless interfered with by force still continue as blessings not only for Jews, but of all peace-loving Germans.

“They include very many halls, the Manheimer Foundation, the Ahlem Agricultural School, the training schools for nurses in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich, the technical schools for instructions of boys in trades and mechanical handicrafts, employment bureaus, a sanitorium for poor Israelites at Taunus, a sanitorium for poor Jewish children at Bad Nauheim, a German Jewish children’s home at Dietz, numerous orphanages, asylums and schools for backward children and recreation centers.

SPENT HUGE SUMS

“During the three-year period from 1928 to 1931, B’nai B’rith in Germany expended $350,000 a year for philanthropic and social work. If these benefactions are ‘against Aryans,’ then B’nai B’rith must plead guilty to the charge.

“B’nai B’rith, in Germany, follows the course pursued by B’nai B’rith in twenty-nine countries. B’nai B’rith’s close cooperation with the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America is one of the ways in which it seeks to promote better understanding among people of various creeds and nationalities.”