1000 Attend Ceremony Marking Dedication of Workmen’s Circle and Jewish Daily Forward Building

More than 1000 persons participated for five hours Sunday as East 33rd Street between Park and Madison Avenues became “Workmen’s Circle Plaza” and the new $750,000 home of the Workmen’s Circle and the Jewish Daily Forward was dedicated by Mayor Abraham D. Beame. Israeli Consul Shlomo Levine and national Jewish and labor dignitaries.

With leading officials of the Jewish Labor Committee, Israel Bond Organization, Histadrut, Farband, HIAS, United Hebrew Trades, American Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee and the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council in attendance. Harold Ostroff, president of the 63,000-member Jewish family fraternal order said that after 62 years on East Broadway, the Workmen’s Circle had decided “to move uptown and continue to be the bridge between Jewish fraternal secularism and the American labor movement.

Levine, speaking in Yiddish, praised the Jewish labor movement singling out the Workmen’s Circle and the Jewish Daily Forward for their, efforts on behalf of Israel.

Mayor Beame revealed that “sixty years ago or so, a devoted activist with the ideals of social justice, freedom and human dignity, took his young son to Workmen’s Circle forums,” and said that he was the young son of his father. Philip, who “brought me up in a home where the Workmen’s Circle slogan. ‘All for one. and one for all,’ and the Jewish Daily Forward were part of our heritage.” He added. “The first voices against Czarist oppression. against Hitler’s dictatorship, against Stalin’s tyranny, came from the ranks of the Workmen’s Circle and the pages of the Jewish Daily Forward.”

The six-story building at 45 East 33rd Street houses the administrative offices of the Workmen’s Circle and its medical, social service, camp and other departments. The Jewish Daily Forward composing and editorial and business offices occupy other floors.