U.J.A. Raises $31,296,000 in Five Months; Rabbi Friedman Installed

The United Jewish Appeal has raised $31,296,000 in cash during the first five months of this years campaign it was announced here today at the concluding session of the two-day UJA national conference which was attended by 1,200 community leaders from all parts of the United States The sum includes $5,500,000 raised at the conference.

Rabbi Herbert A Friedman, of Milwaukee, was inaugurated at today’s session as the new executive vice-chairman of the UJA succeeding Dr. Joseph J. Schwartz who last month became the executive head of the Israel Bond campaign Rabbi Friedman was in stalled by William Rosenwald, general chairman of the UJA A cabled message from Israel’s Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, hailing Rabbi Friedman on the assumption of his office and lauding Mr. Rosenwald, was read at the session.

In his address Rabbi Friedman called strongly on American Jews “to reappraise their thinking and giving at a time when hundreds of thousands of Jews in overseas lands are still in need many of them still in jeopardy.” He stated that the program of the UJA must be on such a scale “as to assure dynamic support to wipe out Jewish suffering in critical areas overseas and to establish Israel as a wholly self-sustaining land in the Middle East.”

Dr. Schwartz spoke of the flowering of Israel” as the most inspiring achievement of the United Jewish Appeal. “In every phase of the country’s progress” the former UJA executive vice-chairman declared, “in the vast immigration programs in the reclamation of the soil in the building of new settlements, the funds of the UJA are the leading pillars of support and growth.”

Mrs. Rose L Halprin acting chairman of the Jewish Agency and a former national president of Hadassah told the delegates that Israel’s program in behalf of refugees might serve as “an example for other countries and international agencies confronted with similar situations”

FRIENDSHIP TO ISRAEL PROVED “VALUABLE” TO U. S. GEN MCNARNEY SAYS

Gen Joseph T. McNarney who in 1945 succeeded President Eisenhower as commander of the American occupation forces in Germany addressing the UJA conference last night, said that American action after World War II sustaining Jewish displaced persons in Europe and favoring their resettlement in Israel has brought a valuable return “to the welfare” of the United States.

The former U. S. occupation commander expressed hope that the Arab states would not “long disregard” Israel’s devotion to freedom and peaceful pursuits. He urged the UJA to continue its “great work” stating that this would help peace come to the Middle East. “As the people of Israel learn to deal with their barren difficult land. “the General said, and knowledge of their agricultural industrial and political advances spreads, then neighbors should discover that they can learn much from each other by working together and assisting each other” Just as some of the difficult goals of postwar reconstruction ten years ago have become today’s realities in Europe and other areas. General McNarney said “this goal of peace harmony and further development” in the Middle East may come to pass###next ten years.

U. S. IS CHIEF AMONG ISRAEL’S FRIENDS SAYS EBAN

Israel Ambassador Abba Eban responded to General McNarney’s address with an expression of Israel’s debt of gratitude to the American people and the United States Government. “The people of Israel’s and the Jewish world together could not have achieved, still less consolidated. Israel’s newly-won freedom alone,” the Ambassador said. “The reinforcement–political, moral, and material–which we have thus received in the framework of our international friendships is beyond the usual measure enjoyed by new states in the early revolutionary period of their emergence.”

“Chief amongst our friends,” Mr. Eban said, “is the United States,” He told the assembly that “few more moving encounters in human history have ever occurred than that which brought these two people together in the past decade in so many acts of mutual helpfulness” He recalled that the United States was “the first country to recognize our statehood” and paid tribute to both the Democratic and Republican parties for their repeated support of a Jewish State in Palestine.

The Israel Ambassador revealed that in his recent high level consultations in Jerusalem. American friendship was stressed as the central factor in Israel’s foreign relations He said no substitute was possible. He indicated that he felt that if difficulties exist they must be handled with trust instead of denunciation. He reported that in the last five years Israel received $400 million from the United States in economic and technical assistance.

EISENHOWER HAILED AS LIBERATOR OF JEWS FROM NAZIS; GETS U. GIFT

The opening of the two-day conference was preceded by a ceremony at the White House at which a group of UJA leaders, headed by Mr. Rosenwald, conferred on the President a citation for “distinguished humanitarian service to victims of Nazy tyranny” and presented him with a 2.000-year-old “freedom lamp” unearthed in Israel. They hailed the President for his role as liberator of the enslaved Jews in Nazi Germany.

President Eisenhower in a brief talk to the Jewish leaders in the Rose Garden outside his office, said “I am delighted, on behalf of the Allied forces who advancing from the West, did so much to crush Nazi tyranny, to accept this beautiful and ancient relic of Jewish civilization. I am certain that those forces–the American forces and their Allies–were representing only what we would call the heart of freedom, the belief that all people are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness–that where these are denied one man, they are threatened for all.

“And so I am sure those forces felt that in uncovering these camps, relieving the disasters and correcting the terrible conditions under which those people were living, they were n###doing fundamentally and merely because they were Jews, or anybody else They were unfortunate human beings, and I think the heart of America and the heart of Britain and of France and the other Western Allies responded to that kind of inspiration and were delighted to do it.“It was a tremendous privilege and a great change from the killing of war to turn your armies to saving human lives and human dignity. I sincerely trust that all those people are now living in health and happiness, or at least under conditions that are those of self respect and decency”

Mr. Rosenwald in presenting the citation and the lamp, told the President that as supreme allied commander in Europe in World War he had blasted “the gates of the concentration camps and helped to save from extermination the remnant of the once-great Jewish populations of Europe. By your sympathetic understanding of the problems involved and by your effective action,” he added, “you set a pattern of humane and helpful Treatment Your example prevailed in the American zones of occupation and served to revive restore the newly liberated Jews in central Europe and those who sought haven ###re.The ancient Palestinian lamp###following inscription; “To Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States of America, who has kept the Lamp of Freedom burning presented in deepest gratitude by the United Jewish Appeal for his distinguished humanitarian service to victims of Nazi tyranny. This antique###from the land of the Bible, dating from approximately 50 C. E. symbolizes 20 centuries of Jewish history in which each generation renewed its devotion to freedom’s ideals”###in addition to Mr. Rosenwald, who acted as spokesman for the UJA leaders, the delegation visiting President Eisenhower included Dewey D. Stone. Brockton, Mass., Sol Luckman, Cincinnati, Joseph Holtzman, Detroit; Samuel H. Daroff. Philadelphia; Rabbi Herb. A Friedman New York; Robert W. Schiff Columbus, Ohio, Mrs. Hal Horne, New York Rabb. Isadora Breslau, Washington. D.C.; A. S. Kay, Washington, D.C.; Joseph Cherner, Washington D.C., and Louis L. Bennett, New York.

Awards for humanitarian service were presented by the UJA also to Gen. McNarney; Gen. John H. H###dring, Gen. Mark W. Clark; Gen. Lucious D. Clary, Gen. Clarence R. Huabner, and Sep. Herbert H. Lehman.