Existence of an organized propaganda tie-up between neo-Nazi leaders in Germany and professional anti-Semites in the United States was revealed here today at the executive committee meeting of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.
Henry Edward Schultz, the League’s national chairman, addressing the session at the Hotel Roosevelt, said that the evidence gathered in an ADL study indicated efforts by Nazi-minded elements in Germany, now held in check by the Adenauer government. to acquire support–in particular, American dollars–from nationalist movements and sympathetic ethnic groups in the United States.
The League study noted that the low caliber of the propagandists drawn into the movement on this side of the ocean–they are mostly well-known professional anti-Semites, discredited by public opinion and acceptable only to the “lunatic fringe”–has negated any substantial results the German groups hoped to achieve by their propaganda.
The anti-Semitic pamphlets and literature, the study revealed, are transmitted on an international scale, with principal centers in the United States, Germany and Argentina. The League identified Frederick Charles Weiss, a German alien living in New York, as the local clearing house for the traffic in neo-Nazi propaganda. ADL officials said today they would ask the U.S. Immigration Service to investigate the alien status of Weiss and several of his associates in the light of their propaganda activities.
At an afternoon session, the League’s executive committee voted to ask State Department intervention to obtain a change in the discriminatory visa policies of the Arab nations. The League had previously protested the unwillingness of Arab governments to grant visas to Americans of Jewish faith.
In a resolution adopted by the executive committee, the League recognized the State Department was limited to “persuasion” in taking action on the matter. “But we believe that so long as any foreign country maintains a bigoted policy of denying visas to American citizens solely because of their religious faith, it will continue to be incumbent on our government to speak out in protest and to seek in every peaceful and feasible way to bring about elimination of such practices.”
PROSKAUER PLEADS FOR INCREASED SUPPORT FOR J.D.A. AGENCIES
At an earlier session, the League and the American Jewish Committee, meeting jointly under the auspices of the National Council of the Joint Defense Appeal, fund-raising arm of both organizations, heard a plea for increased financial support for the activities of both agencies from former N. Y. State Justice Joseph M. Proskauer.
Pointing to the steadily declining funds raised by welfare funds outside of New York and Chicago, Judge Proskauer warned that supporters of the JDA agencies must assume primary responsibility in their communities for providing adequate funds to enable both organizations to continue and safeguard democratic rights.
“The security of the Jewish community is wholly dependent on our ability to strengthen and bulwark our American constitutional safeguards and liberties,” Judge Proskauer said. “To this end we must drive home to our neighbors and business associates the primacy of the efforts of ADL and AJC to preserve the American heritage.”
Paul H. Sempliner, of New York, was re-elected chairman of the executive committee of the JDA Council. Philip Meyers of Cincinnati was re-elected Council chairman.
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.
