Responding to protests from a number of associations charging the Stevens Hotel here with sheltering the DAWA, the economic branch of the Nazi movement here, John F. Bowman, director of the hotel’s conventions and exhibits, states in part:
“The Nazis, as mentioned in your letter, we understand to be a group whose activities are conducted on soil foreign to the United States, and the DAWA we understand is an organization of Americans.”
The reply, addressed to James M. Yard, recretary of the Chicago Committee for the Defense of Human Rights Against Nazism, indicates that no action will be taken to cancel arrangements for a national DAWA convention to be held in the Stevens Hotel from October 21 to 23.
SOLICITS INFORMATION
Bowman does provide. however, that “if you have any information indicating that the DAWA or any other group planning use of the Stevens Hotel facilities propose to engage in activity inimical to our national well-being or in violation of any of our municipal, state or national laws, we will be grateful to you if you will communicate the facts to us.”
The DAWA has rented one of the hotel’s largest rooms for the purpose of exhibiting German wares and has arranged accommodations for a large number of delegates from all parts of the country.
Yard is writing as follows to Bowman:
“I have your letter of July 25 in which you entirely evade the issue stated in my letter of July 20.
“It is inconceivable to me that a man in your position should not be acquainted with the aims and activities of the DAWA. It is true that the homeland of the Nazis is Germany. It is also true that the Nazis are operating in the United States, as you can easily learn for yourself by consulting the magazine Today in a series of articles published last March, or by consulting the daily papers of the last six weeks, in which is reported the work of the Congressional Investigation Committee.
UN-AMERICAN MOVEMENT
“In those places you will discover that the DAWA is an arm of the German Nazi movement, that it is un-American and inimical to the peace and well-being of our country.
“May I hope that when you have ascertained these facts you will refuse the hospitality of your hotel to the DAWA?”
Representatives of Jewish groups, which have in the past held conventions in the Stevens Hotel, have also appealed to the management to keep the DAWA out. Among those who have protested are Sigmund David, president of the Chicago Division of the American Jewish Congress, and Adolph Copeland, president of the HIAS.
The DAWA is led by Hans Froehlich, a German citizen living in New York, and a number of other German citizens. Its purposes are to inspire increased sales of German goods in this country and to instigate a boycott of Jewish and other merchants failing to buy German goods.
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.
