M. Gerschmann, representing labor organizations in the United States and Canada, accused Governor Alfred M. Landon of anti-Semitism in an address today before the International Conference against Race Prejudice and anti-Semitism.
Leon Lagrange, Undersecretary of State for Sports and Leisure, declaring that the French Revolution had first proclaimed the principle of equality of races, said that emancipation was inseparable from democracy.
In an attack on anti-Semitism he asserted that no one has a right to be neutral on this vital issue.
“To be neutral about anti-Semitism,” declared Lagrange, “is to surrender. Anti-Semitism can only be brought to life under certain social conditions. I am not neutral on this issue. One cannot surrender this point.”
The congress will be followed tomorrow with a meeting of the International League against anti-Semitism.
The conference, as its first order of business, last night elected as symbolic presidents Stephan Lux, who killed himself at a League assembly session in protest against Hitlerism, and David Frankfurter, who assassinated Wilhelm Gustloff, Swiss Nazi leader.
Two hundred delegates from 20 countries attended the conference, which was called as a reply to the Nuremberg Nazi Congress. It was sponsored by Roger Baldwin, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, Heinrich Mann and Arnold Zweig, exiled German novelists; Romain Rolland, Andre Gide, Leon Jouhaux, Leon Lagrange, Victor Basch of France; Emile Vandervelde and Camille Huysmans of Belgium, and Lord Marley of Great Britain.
The agenda includes a discussion of anti-Semitism as a form of social regression and the racial movement in various countries. The conclave will also seek to form an organization for fighting anti-Semitism and provide assistance to Jews who have been hit by anti-Semitic propaganda and legislation. Formation of a world congress against anti-Semitism and the question of aiding German refugees are final topics to be considered by the congress.
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.
