Burke Urges Repeal of Embargo on Ground of Hitler’s Persecution of Minorities

Americans were called upon not to forget Hitlers’ record of religious persecution and racial atrocities as Senator Edward R. Burke of Nebraska spoke in the Senate today and threw his weight towards repeal of the arms embargo.

Burke, often a critic of the administration, said that neither keeping nor repealing the embargo could be called neutral but that he could see “no justification on any ground for permitting a law to stand that favors Hitler.”

Senator Burke quoted the Pope as damning the religious persecutions in Germany, and then he went on to say:

“In determining whether we shall continue a law that favors Hitlerism we can properly consider the attitude and conduct of those who direct that movement toward minority groups, particularly the Jews. The story of recent and repeated atrocities is so fresh in our minds that further proof is unnecessary. I give only this brief statement from an outstanding American citizen whose sources of information are complete and whose veracity is above question. He said:

“The sufferings of the Jews in Germany have been so horrible, so terrifying, so diabolical, that no man of sensibility would ever dare make a public recital of them.’ “

Burke told an applauding Senate: “It is my contention that traditional American policy does not require us to pursue a course of silence in the face of barbaric outrages systematically perpetrated upon helpless minorities anywhere on earth. Never in the history of this country has there been any hesitation to denounce such persecution and atrocities.”

Burke told how when 60 years ago the world was shocked by the persecution of Jews in Russia, mass meetings of protest were held throughout the country, in which President Grant was an active participant, and he recalled other occasions when America has risen to denounce racial and religious intolerance.

Germans in America, Burke said, “are as nearly unanimous as any other cross section of our citizens in their opposition to Nazi excesses, to persecutions based on race or religion, to suppression of freedom of conscience and personal liberty.”

“Let no one doubt,” Burke continued, “that the day will come when Germans themselves will take matters into their own hands, when they will put an end to a regime which subordinates the individual to the state and sanctions religious and racial persecutions and denies God.”