American Jewish Leaders Hope New Year Will Bring Salvation for Jews in Europe

Messages expressing the hope that the forthcoming Jewish New Year which starts tomorrow evening will bring salvation to the Jews in Nazi Europe and a complete victory of the United Nations were issued today by various Jewish organizations.

Mr. Paul Baerwald, honorary chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee, voiced the hope that the spirit of human kindness soon would again become a governing force in the world. He paid tribute to the devoted services rendered by men and women throughout the world to the welfare of their co-religionists.

“In the joint Distribution Committee,” he said in his message, “over a period of almost three decades, we have been allowed to see so much of that spirit of human kindness through the services rendered by countless devoted men and women all over the world and through the contributions we have received, that we may say in all earnestness that the activities of the Joint Distribution Committee are an expression of that spirit.”

Emphasizing that the concluding year “was the most dreadful in the many thousand years of our tragic history,” the World Jewish Congress, in its Rosh Hashonah message, said: “We now approach a year which must see the defeat of the Axis and the punishment of those guilty of the evil which has threatened the freedom of the world; a year which must reward the democracies for their determination to wipe out the menace of fascism and assure to stricken Jewry the reestablishment of a Jewish Commonwealth in Eretz Israel and the restoration of their centers of culture and learning in the ravaged lands of the earth.”

The Synagogue Council of America, in a message declared that “Israel, the first and greatest sufferer at the hands of Nazidom, is encouraged on this day to look more hopefully to the emergence of a new era, when the Jew will know justice and equity wherever he dwells, and when out of Zion a Jewish community dwelling in its ancestral home in peace and security may, as of old, radiate moral inspiration to all mankind.”

700 RABBIS THROUGHOUT COUNTRY WILL DISCUSS RESCUE TASKS IN SERMONS

During Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur services, more than 700 Conservative, Orthodox and Reform rabbis throughout the country will discuss enlarged rescue operations that will be required in the New Year to help the victims of Hitler survive and rehabilitate the lives of those who have escaped from Nazi-dominated Europe, the United Jewish Appeal announced today. In scores of congregations from coast to coast special appeals will be made during the High Holidays for funds to support the global rescue effort carried on through the agencies of the United Jewish Appeal.

Rosh Hashonah services for refugees temporarily detained by the immigration authorities and for Jewish members of the U.S. Coast Guard in the vicinity of New York have been arranged for Wednesday night, Thursday and Friday, by the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigration Aid Society. Services will be held at Ellis Island and in the Hias headquarters in New York.

The United Synagogue of America, in a message from its president, Louis J. Moss, asked for asylum for those who can escape the Nazi brutality. He said the Jews of American may well take pride in the work accomplished in the recent American Jewish Conference, which “served to call the attention of the world to the dire extremities in which Jews in many parts of the world find themselves and of the need for immediate relief.”