Judge Proskauer Thanks Roosevelt for His Appeal for Rescue of Jews from Hungary

The American Jewish Committee today made public the text of a letter addressed by its president, Judge Joseph M. Proskauer, to President Roosevelt, thanking the President for his recent statement in which he urged people in German-occupied countries to help rescue the Jews from Hungary and the Balkan countries and appealed to governments in Europe and Asia to open their doors to Jews escaping from Nazi hands.

“In extending to you the heartfelt expression of gratitude for the eloquent and forceful statement issued by you last Friday in connection with the Nazi invasion of Hungary and the Balkans, I am sure that I am expressing the sentiment not only of my fellow officers and the membership of the American Jewish Committee, but of all right-thinking Americans,” Proskauer wrote. “In promptly reaffirming the determination of the United Nations to punish perpetrators of crimes against civilians in general and against Jews in particular, you have taken a step which was characterized in a telegram sent by us on the previous day to Secretary Hull as “the most immediately available method of preventing or lessening typical Nazi mass murder.”

“We note thankfully your appeal to each and every person in Nazi-dominated Europe to take affirmative steps to rescue Jews, to ‘hide these pursued victims, help them to get over their borders, and do what he can to save them from the Nazi hangman.’ We welcome with especial gratitude the reaffirmation of the determination of our government to ‘persevere in its efforts to rescue the victims of brutality of the Nazis and the Japs,’ and to ‘use all means at its command to aid the escape of all intended victims of the Nazi and Jap executioner — regardless of race, or religion, or color.’ We are firmly convinced that your timely, stern, and vigorous warning will have at least a deterrent effect upon the brutal and barbarous enemies of mankind and that your noble appeal on behalf of the threatened victims will give them new courage to struggle for survival against the glorious day of liberation.”