Untermyer Hits U.S. Refusal to Enforce Goods’ Marking

Bitterly attacking the United States Treasury Department for its refusal to exclude German goods marked with the names of various German cities and states instead of the country of origin, as required by law, Samuel Untermyer, president of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, declared last night at a concert held under the auspices of the organization in Carnegie Hall that “a more ruthless, wilful defiant record of violation of our laws that these officials are sworn to enforce and disregard of the rights and interests of our merchants and consumers would be difficult to imagine.”

A capacity house, including many prominent figures in Jewish and non-Jewish life, heard the veteran attorney, leader of the boycott movement against the Nazi regime, criticize the present administration in Washington for having failed to “respond to the obvious demands of civilization that it promptly and in scathing terms, register its official protest against the proven outrages perpetrated by Germany upon its minorities, solely because of their race or remote ancestry.”

Untermyer attributed the failure of the American Government to protest to the “presence at the head of our State Department of a week-kneed, milk-and-water gentleman living in a past generation.”

OTHERS IN BOYCOTT MOVEMENT

The anti-Nazi leader ridiculed the idea advanced by the “seditious propaganda bureau known as the Friends of New Germany” that the boycott movement in this country was exclusively Jewish, pointing out that the American Federation of Labor and other non-Jewish groups had also joined the movement.

Recalling the Hitlerite suppression of the German trade unions, the campaign against the Protestant and Catholic Churches and the brutal persecution of the Jews Untermyer declared that the German-American citizens, loyal to American ideals, could never be inveigled into the Nazi movement.

“They love their fatherland,” he declared, “but to love one’s fatherland does not mean to love or support Hitler or his monstrous cruelties, These loyal American citizens of German birth or ancestry, in common with their American brethren, abhor and despise him and everything for which he stands.

SHOULD BE OSTRACIZED

“Many of them are and have been among our warmest sympathizers, but they dread the reprisals upon their families at home if their support is known. Those who have dared have had object lessons of the revival of that form of the reign of terror of the Dark Ages. A government that resorts, as has been done in Germany, to those methods of the Inquisition should be cast out of the brotherhood of nations. It is characteristic of the blind egotism of the Hitler regime that it should expect our German-American citizens to fail to realize that ours is a purely defensive boycott, as our only weapon against the brutal Hitler persecution and disfranchisement of its own citizens because of their race or ancestry.”

Turning to the failure of the Washington administration to protest Untermyer said:

“There is one other phase of this subject to which I must here briefly refer, and I do so with hesitation and regret, for it involves a criticism of the action of our Government in dealing with this situation which the best friends and supporters of the present administration deeply resent. I am and have always been an enthusiastic admirer and supporter of our great President. Convinced as we are of his broad liberal spirit, we have been unable to understand why the administration has failed to respond to the obvious demands of civilization that it promptly and in scathing terms, register its official protest against the proven outrages perpetrated by Germany upon its minorities, solely because of their race or remote ancestry. Where was abundant precedent for such action in our history on far less provocation. The country confidently expected at least that much, and is, I am confident, keenly disappointed at its silence.

ASSAILS STATE DEPARTMENT HEAD

“I attribute it to the presence at the head of our State Department of a weak-kneed, milk-and-water gentleman, living in a past generation, who is so deeply absorbedly furthering the long-exploded free-trade policies to which he has been wedded of negotiating treaties to open our flood-gates to the semi-pauper labor of Germany at the expense of our standards of living, and adding to our unemployment, that he has been unable to hear the cry of humanity against the crimes of Germany. He, too, seems to regard these atrocities against mankind as an internal affair.

“I am sorry also to have to say that the same unsympathetic spirit has characterized the Treasury Department, involving grave injustice to our own manufacturers for the profit of fraudulent German merchants against our repeated and violent protests for almost a year. The admitted facts, supported by documentary proof, present a thoroughly discreditable story, and a wanton, long-continued violation of the law by the Department.”

Reviewing the history of the persecution of the Jews in Germany, Untermyer pointed out that the boycott against the Jews in Germany began long before any action was taken in the United States against the Nazis. He called attention to the murder of 300 inoffensive Jews in Germany immediately after Hitler came into power and the wounding of 3,000 others.