An attempt to unite the permanent Jewish communities is the four zones of Germany has “died stillborn,” according to Dr. Philip Auerbach, (##)rian Commissioner for Racial and Political Persecutees.
Unification seemed near last June, when representatives from the three western (##) and Berlin met in Frankfurt to form a central organization. Committees were appointed, plans drawn up and a seven-point memorandum on Jewish religious practices accepted. However, subsequent developments have been disappointing.
Dr. Auerbach attributes the chief obstacle to the recent merger between the central Committee of Liberated Jews in the British zone and the local Jewish communities. He feels that the problems facing the two groups are sufficiently different to (##)rant two distinct organizations, although strongly urging cooperation between them and deploring any tendency to preach differences between “eastern” and “western” Jews.
While considering that a merger between the Jewish communities in the British and American zones is practically impossible, Dr. Auerbach is also possi(##)stic concerning cooperation with the 2,000 Jews in the Soviet zone, charging that certain officials” of the American military government are opposed to intercourse between the Jews in the two zones. However, responsible AMG officials told the Jewish telegraphic Agency that “AMG didn’t care one way or the other.”
Dr. Auerbach also claims that cooperation with the 8,000 Jews in Berlin is impossible because of the “four-power bureaucracy” in that city. There is “regular contact” with the few hundred Jews in the French zone, but they represent a negligible (##)portion of the total Jewish population of Germany. So, for the present, he sees little prospects of any union of the Jews in the four zones.
Dr. Auerbach has come under fire from certain Jewish circles who favor merger of the Jewish communities in the U.S. zone with the DP Jews here, along the lines followed in the British zone, which would make at least a bi-zonal union possible. His apponents accuse Auerbach of fearing loss of his personal power if the quantitatively German Jews unite with the DP’s, of whom there are ten times as many.
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.
