C.D. Jackson, president of the Council for Democracy, has declared that “loose, irresponsible talk” such Rep. John A. Rankin’s anti-Semitic insinuations in the House last Wednesday “plays directly into the hands of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi propaganda machine.”
“Certainly there is nothing that the National Socialists of Germany desire more than a confusion of issues in our democracy by this irrelevant exploitation of prejudices against American citizens of the Jewish faith,” Jackson declared in a letter to the Times. “However? innocent the strategy may have been, it is also sinister and perhaps catastrophic because it is a threat to the unity of the American people.”
The remarks of Rep. Rankin were assailed as “an exact parallel to constant utterances by Hitler and Goebbels” in a statement by 18 churchmen, educators, labor leaders and other prominent citizens. The criticism was initiated by the Rt. Rev. Henry W. Hobson, chairman of Fight for Freedom, Inc.; Lewis W. Douglas, chairman of the national policy board of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge.
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.
