Appointment of Bernard G. Richards as Executive Secretary of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League of which Samuel Untermyer is president was announced yesterday at the League offices, 729 Seventh avenue.
Richards is one of the founders of the American Jewish Congress and for sixteen years was its executive secretary. He also served as secretary of the American Jewish Delegation of the Versailles Peace Conference, which obtained minority rights for the Jews of many of the Eastern European nations. Judge Julian W. Mack was chairman of that committee.
“The necessity not only for pressing the boycott against Nazi goods but also for combatting Nazi propaganda in this country along non-sectarian lines,” Richards declared in his first public statement as the League’s secretary, “is once more demonstrated by the Nazi attack at the recent Madison Square Garden meeting on the gubernatorial candidates of the two major parties in New York State, not because they believed them unfit for the high office but because they are Jews.
SHOULD FIGHT BIGOTRY
“It is not the purpose of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League to enter into or become involved in any political campaign, but the League feels duty-bound to point out that foreign bigotry and tyranny are being transplanted to this country by foreign propagandists and it feels that it is the duty of every American to fight such activity.
“The principles and the spirit of the Constitution are being violated by these breeders of racial hatred who are attempting to elect our public officials not according to their ability and integrity but according to religious belief.”
Richards has had a long career as a journalist. He was associated with the Boston Post, the Boston Journal, the Boston Evening Transcript and the New York Globe, since merged with the Sun. At various times he has been associated with such writers as Mark Sullivan, Richard Washburn Child, Walter P. Eaton, John J. Leary Jr., and Michael Williams, editor of the Commonweal.
He was editor of the Chronicler, the New Era Magazine, the Jewish World, and the Maccabean, predecessor of the New Palestine. He has also lectured extensively on phases of Jewish life and is the author of “Discourses of Keidansky,” a book of humorous essays.
Long identified with the Zionist movement, Richards is a member of the administrative and executive committees of the Zionist Organization of America. He is also a member of the administrative committee of the American Jewish Congress and chairman of the Jewish Council of Greater New York, one of the first organizations to join the anti-Nazi boycott movement.
Richards gave up journalism in Boston thirty years ago to come to New York as secretary of the Jewish Community of New York City, with which Dr. Judah L. Magnes, the late Jacob H. Schiff, the late Louis Marshall, Cyrus L. Sulzberger, and Nathan Bijur were identified.
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.
