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City May Bar Docks to Nazi Ships, Newbold Morris Tells Hias Parley on Refugees

December 12, 1938
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City Council president Newbold morris told a HIAS conference of 1,200 delegates today that he will take up with mayor Laguardia next week a proposal to bar Nazi ships from the New York waterfront. “If this barbaric persecution of the Nazis against defenseless Jews and Christians continues much longer,” he added, “we will all have to go to war for the defense of Democracy.”

The conference, which brought together the representatives of more than 600 fraternal, religious and welfare organizations in the metropolitan area, voted an increased measure of support for the organization’s world-wide emigrant aid service. A resolution urged all cooperating organizations to institute a voluntary per capita tax to increase contributions to the society’s emigration emergency fund, created to cope with the refugee situation.

Other speakers at the meeting, held at HIAS headquarters here, included Judge Jacob Panken, who advocated liberalization of the United States immigration laws to admit a greater number of refugees; president Abraham Herman; John L. Bernstein, chairman of the society’s foreign activities; executive director Isaac L. Asofsky and others.

FATHER COUGHLIN (CON’T)

“How can the General council of Jewish community councils who are about to answer me today…be so unkind to us as…to organize, with the law on their side, to protest against the innocent practices of Easter and Christmas….?” he asked. he warned the Jews of “the latent power” of the Christian majority, which, he said, was “easy-going” and “careless,” but which would evidence “resentment toward an organized group which assails its ideals.”

Adopting the attitude of one pleading with the Jews for “kindliness” toward Christian practices, he asked for “tolerance” and an avoidance by Jews of “persecution” of Christian ideals. In the concluding portion of his address, the priest said: “I appeal to American Jews and American Christians to stand shoulder to shoulder against godlessness. That is all I ask and that is all I plead for.”

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