Jewish Congress Demands German Guarantee Against Anti-semitism

Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the American Jewish Congress, today declared that the pending treaty between the three Allied powers and Western Germany might prove to be an “uncalculated disaster rather than a calculated risk” unless the strongest guarantees are established and defined against a “resurgent nationalism already very much in evidence and likely to grow even stronger” and a recrudescent anti-Semitism.

Dr. Goldstein’s warning was contained in a statement submitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee now considering ratification of the treaty with the Bonn Government. He urged the banning of the military from any significant role in the political life of Germany; an intensive campaign against the spirit of racial superiority and anti-Semitism through education, the enactment of necessary legislation and appropriate administrative measures; ending the agitation for further modification of the sentences of war criminals and the prohibition of neo-Nazi movements or meetings.

Asserting that official American spokesmen had themselves admitted that the treaty represented a “calculated risk,” the American Jewish Congress president declared: “For the Jewish people, the consideration of a partnership between the free nations of the world and the Government of Western Germany is an occasion on which we are bound to search our minds, our hearts and our souls. This is a time when we cannot disentangle our memories from our hopes, our logic from our emotions.”