Extra police units today patrolled seven synagogues in the city following the dynamiting yesterday of the Miami Hebrew School and Congregation building. Jewish leaders were inclined to believe that the tossing of dynamite at the synagogue from a moving automobile was the work of the Ku Klux Klan.
Parents were afraid to send their children to Hebrew schools today. However, no further incidents were reported. Officials expressed doubt that there is any connection between the bombing of the synagogue and the dynamiting of a Negro housing unit in the city.
The City Council will meet tomorrow to approve the expenditure of $10,000 for an investigation and $5,000 for a reward for information leading to the arrest of the dynamiters. City Councilman Burnett Roth, speaking on behalf of Jewish groups, told a meeting that he does not believe that children bombed the synagogue. “Kids don’t know German phrases like these,” he said, holding up photographs of defamatory signs written in German on the walls of synagogues.
Leaders of the Jewish War Veterans and of the Anti-Defamation League here demanded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigate the situation. Mayor Chelsie J. Senerchia interrupted his vacation in Nassau and returned by plane yesterday to order effective action. Meanwhile, the police were checking on all sales of dynamite in the hope of finding a clue to the terrorists.
(In Washington today a spokesman for the Department of Justice said that the bombings are under “active inquiry” by field representatives of the Department’s civil rights section to determine whether Federal law has been violated and whether the F.B.I. should be brought into the case.)
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.
