A call to “exercise a rigid boycott against all movies until Jewish filth has been swept away,” issued yesterday by the Catholic priest, Canon Palmer, has aroused the great indignation of many Englishmen and the intervention of the Board of Jewish Deputies.
The call was part of a notice read by the priest at all the morning services in the Roman-Catholic Church of Peter and Paul at Ilford, a London suburb. The action was a result of the showing of a film at the Ilford Cinema to an audience of a thousand children on the occasion of a visit of Princess Mary to Ilford.
The film in question is “So Like a Woman” and was approved as a Universal movie by the British Board of Film Censors. Father Palmer himself had not seen the movie, but being informed that there are cabaret and love scenes in it, he posted the notice in the church. Besides that, he also said: “Such films are disgusting. It is a Jewish endeavor to destroy the morality of our nation, because most cinemas are owned by Jews.”
This amazing anti-Jewish outburst from a Catholic priest during church sermons resulted in many protests by Jewish and non-Jewish residents. The Board of Jewish Deputies is making a special inquiry into the priest’s action. The Ilford English newspapers and the London press criticize the priest severely, especially because of his preaching anti-Semitism when he has not seen the movie.
“This is not an attack against the film. It is an attack against the Jews,” Brooke Wilkinson, secretary of the British Board of Film Censors, stated today.
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.
