Jewish Problems Reviewed by Dr. Goldmann at W.j.c. Parley in London

A three-day European session of the World Jewish Congress opened here today with delegates from 15 different countries participating. The main address at today’s session was made by Dr. Nahum Goldmann, acting president of the W.J.C., who reviewed the position of the Jews of the world. He told the delegates that the following three facts dominated Jewish life today:

1. The destruction of European Jewry. Dr. Goldmann said that it would be some generations yet before the full impact of the havoc wrought by the Nazis is felt, and many decades would pass before Israel could make up the loss of the spiritual creativeness of European Jewry. Even American Jewry is feeling the lack of leadership and ideas which once flowed from Central and Eastern Europe, he said. He warned that the danger of disintegration of Jewish life and assimilation is greater today than it was 15 or 20 years ago.

2. The international situation, in which the world is split into two blocs. Although this has created a “disastrous situation” for the Jewish people, Dr. Goldmann said, he could not see what could be done to achieve joint action with Jews in Eastern Europe. He reported that none of the Jewish groups in that area which were affiliated with the W.J.C. had officially disaffiliated.

3. The emergence of the State of Israel. This situation had created some new problems, the W.J.C. head declared, but unlike other matters affecting Jewish life these problems could be solved by joint action. He warned that it is not yet possible to solve the problem of relations between Israel and Jewry abroad, but said it could create a new division in Jewish life. He pointed out that the Jews in Israel had a tendency to develop their life on different lines than Jews elsewhere. But since the Israelis were “in the good sense of the word egotistically minded,” Dr. Goldmann declared, they might overlook the problems of Jews abroad.

Referring to the problem of enlarging the Jewish Agency, Dr. Goldmann told the delegates that there was no formal or legal obligation on the part of the World Zionist Organization to enlarge the Agency and the non-Zionists had never taken a stand on this issue and that if the Zionists did decide to invite the non-Zionists into the Agency, “it would take some time to achieve.”

He also touched on the problem of increasing the representational character of the World Jewish Congress. He asserted that if there had been an all-embracing Jewish organization, the German-Jewish reparations “would have been settled a long time ago.” He favored the granting of all sorts of concessions to achieve complete representation in the W.J.C., providing that: the organizations affiliated with the W.J.C. be widely representative; and, that the enlarged Congress be able to act without being hampered with conflicts on necessary actions.

A.L. Easterman, political secretary of the Congress, who reported on the world political situation as it affects the Jews, stated that the “impact of the complex issues which constitute the Jewish problem” now falls elsewhere than on Europe–on the Jews in Arab lands, North Africa, Latin America and “even in its social aspects on the Jews of the United States.”

He also declared that the World Jewish Congress had sought “every possible way and canvassed every possible channel” to establish contact and reunion with the Jews of Eastern European countries, “but so far all our efforts have failed and it must be said quite simply that the iron curtain has fallen heavily on Jewish communities and our brethren in Eastern Europe.”