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MILAM
COMPANY
GUY L. WENTWORTH
Manager
AUTO BODY
and
FENDER REPAIRING
17 Piedmont Ave., N. E.
ATLANTA
WA. 8970 I
Every Type of
Commercial
Refrigeration
LARKIN REFRIGERATING CORP.
ATLANTA, QA.
Red Flash Gasoline
Direct from Tank Car to
Consumer
No Warehousing
No Trucking
The Saving Is Yours
REED PETROLEUM CO.
Peachtree at Brookwood
ATLANTA
Rushton Co.
)o// yidanufacturers
51 Mangum. S. W.
ATLANTA
Our Dairy Products Are of the
Highest Quality
Grade-A Milk Pasteurised
Special Buttermilk
Whipping Cream and Butter
CLOVERDALE DAIRY, Inc.
0-252 Forsyth St.
Gordon St., S. W.
Phone WA 4943 |
Phone RA 3919 l
OPERATED BY PEEK BROS.
J. C. Peek and L. C. Peek, Sole Owners
ATLANTA
AMERICAN JEWRY — ITS REACTION
TO THE NAZI MENACE
(Continued from page 14)
with Hitler. They are guided by such
German Jews as Max Warburg, of the
great Hamburg banking house, whose firm
was threatened one day with dissolution
by the Nazis and then agitatedly reas
sured the next day by the Reirhsbank.
When Doctor Hjalmar Schacht of the
Reichshank visited this country, some
members of the American Jewish Com
mittee had him meet for dinner a number
of very influential Americans, who indi
cated to him that Americans do not like
pogroms. People like that are accus
tomed to settling things in private con
ference, over a luncheon table, quietly,
confidentially. Phis business of bring sud
denly face to face with King Kong had
them completely baffled.
Accordingly the American Jewish Com
mittee tried to soft-pedal things. It ad
vised watchful waiting. It refused to
participate in parades, demonstrations,
protest meetings. It tried to get the gov
ernment to do something, but very, very
quietly. Hush—hush! was the word. In
short, while the stress of the situation de
manded leadership, the American Jewish
Committee offered restraint. It did noth
ing, most diplomatically.
The results were swift and simple.
The committee was flooded with letters
and telegrams, denouncing its attitude.
The Jewish press turned on it savagely.
The American Jewish Committee reeled
a bit. It almost apologized. But the dam
age to its prestige was done.
What is bad for the American Jewish
Committee is good for the American
Jewish Congress, which is entirely the
sounding hoard of Kahbi Stephen S. Wise.
While the late Louis Marshall lived he
did his best to sabotage the dramatic
qualities of Doctor Wise. I he Congress
was, indeed, organized some years ago in
opposition to what Doctor Wise consid
ered the racial conservatism of the Com
mittee. The Congress is Zionist and mil-
itantly race-conscious.
Normally, the American Jewish Con
gress is a pure paper organization. It
represents nobody hut itself. T he Com
mittee represents wealth, which is real.
The Congress represents leadership—
without followers. It is by no means in
vidious to say that Rabbi Wise is a
“leader in Israel” mainly in Gentile eyes.
But, unlike the Committee, the Congress
invited mass following. It is a propa
ganda organization. Its aim is to make
the Jews more Jewish, to make them
Zionists, to stem the inevitable assimila
tion of the American Jews.
Nobody doubts Rabbi Wise’s sincere
belief in the gospel of racial solidarity,
of race-consciousness, of the absurd doc
trine that every Jew who believes in as
similation is a “renegade.” But there
also can be no doubt that the American
Jewish Congress saw in the Hitler anti-
Semitic outbreaks the chance of a life
time to gather some mass following. The
rank and file of the American Jews
wanted to protest. Doctor Wise was very
glad to lead them. And to a large extent
the reaction of the American Jews to
Hitlerism can be studied in the relations
of the American Jewish Congress with
the Jewish masses.
The Hitler persecutions profoundly
stitred and outraged the Jewish masses.
The Jewish workers, who with their fam
ilies make up more than half of American
Jewry, tend to stick to an old-fashioned
socialism in theory, though in fact they
are both in psychology and in their mode
of life a part of the lower middle class
as is the rest of our trade union move
ment. I'he Jewish petit bourgeoisie sim
ply believes in American democracy.
Both of these groups, which constitute
90 per cent of our Jewish population,
wanted to voire their protest in parades,
mass meetings, demonstrations. Unfor
tunately our organized labor movement
does not think it necessary to protest in
behalf of their German comrades. Un
fortunately the liberal forces in America,
though not silent, seem unable to demon
strate their disapproval of the facist
terror. The Jewish masses would have
preferred, avowedly, to march under the
banners of American labor and democ
racy. Since the American Jewish Con
gress was the only organization which
was willing to lead them, they did for
a brief time, from early March to the end
of May, rally around the Congress. But
friction soon developed.
I he Congress, being professionally race-
conscious, wished to confine all protests
to the persecution of the German Jews.
“Opinion,” a highly chauvinistic Jewish
journal of which Doctor Wise is one of
the editors and the chief contributor,
published an article on “Italian versus
German Fascism,” praising the “states
man” Mussolini and indicting Hitler, im
plying that the Jews do not object to
fascism but only to the injection of anti-
Semitism into it. Nothing is farther from
the feelings of the Jewish rank and file
in this country. The American Jewish
Congress also constantly invited on its
platform ministers of every denomination
who protested against the “religious” in
tolerance of Hitler. This antagonized the
Jewish trade unionists, who rightly con
sider the German Jews the scapegoats of
social and not of religious persecution.
Then again, the Congress wanted a boy
cott of German goods. Jewish labor ob
jected and forced the Congress to aban
don the idea. Rightly or wrongly, Jewish
labor wished to be guided on this vital
question by the attitude of German labor,
not by the tactics of professional Jews.
It is interesting to note that whenever
there were demonstrations in the streets
of our cities the Jewish masses carried
banners protesting against the Hitler per
secutions of republicans, socialists, com
munists, liberals as well as Jews. But
whenever there were meetings, like the
great Madison Square Garden meeting in
New York, which were managed by the
professional Jewish leaders, all protests
were carefully limited to the plight of the
German Jews, whose predicament was ab-
surdedly compared to the troubles of the
church in Mexico and Russia. Such
fundamental diversity of aim soon alien-
iated the Jewish masses from the Amer
ican Jewish Congress. The truth is that
the vast majority of the Jews are not in
terested in professional Judaism. Now
the Congress is once more Rabbi Wise’s
personal bureau.
The masses of the American Jews are
against Hitler on many grounds besides
his anti-Jewish program. They are for
democracy. They are for civil rights.
(Please turn to page 40)
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Telephone JAckson 8365
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512 McDaniel St., S. W., Atlanta WEIR, Prop.
S. H. Kress & Co.
3 Stores in Atlanta
73 Whitehall St.. S. W.
43 Whitehall St., S. W.
1012 Peachtree at Tenth
Star
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Jine JMeats
600 Marietta. N. W. ATLANTA
A. O. Howard, Inc.
Wfyole^U
Hats Caps
Gloves Sweaters
•
175 Whitehall, S. W. WA. 3827
ATLANTA
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S. L. SHANNON, Pratidant
113 Courtland, S. E.
WA. 6852 ATLANTA
Powers
Regulators Co.
Automatic Temperature
Controlling Equipment
Southern Office
Bona Allen Building
ATLANTA
THOS. F.
SEITZINGER'S SONS
900 Ashby Street, N. W.
ATLANTA. SA.
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IE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE *
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