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World Brotherhood
in Germany — Part II
World Brotherhood Can Become a More Potent
Factor lor the People Pent Asunder hv Nazism,
nccj' s labeling writes from I ran kfurt am Main
in his Second Kxclusive Article lor I ill Soi riiKRN
ISRAELITE.
By HERMAN EBELING
Americans are generally great believers
in the efficacy of education. There are
scores of “educational” agencies in the
United States. Education seems the answer
to most of the evils of the world. American
educational optimism strikes many Euro
peans, from where they stand after so
much education, as youthfully exuberant
and somewhat naive. In Germany, the at
tempts at “re-education" during the first
few years after the war (long since given
up) were resented in all quarters; and re
education as a noun which entered the
German language, pronounced with a
sneering accent, covers a wide range of
anti-American feelings.
Such belief in education presupposes a
high respect for educational research. In
deed, there is hardly an American private
organization of standing concerned w'ith
the (educational) problem of changing hu
man behavior and attitudes which does not
pride itself on its scientific foundation.
What social scientists have discovered dur
ing the past ten or fifteen years about the
neurotic and group-pathological nature of
prejudice, about the phenomena of group
structure and dynamics, has deeply af
fected the work of such organizations. They
know now that goodwill, religious or ethi
cal motivation, enlightening propaganda
and exhortations as such are no longer
sufficient. In order to be effective and eco
nomical they must be able to master meth
ods and techniques which the educational
researchers developed for the benefit of the
practitioners.
Under the impact of this wave of re
search almost all educational organizations
have modified the scope of their work.
Since we are now in a position to under
stand the interrelatedness of the various
symptoms of discriminatory behavior —
anti-semitism, hatred of foreigners, nation
alism, etc. — as flowing out of the same
source of disease, i.e. prejudice, it seems
natural that the isolated approach to one
symptom should give way to the all-en-
globing intergroup approach. The National
Conference of Christians and Jews, in
pursuing its specific aims, has, at any rate
developed a total approach and integrated
its commissions on religious organizations,
educational organizations, community or
ganizations, mass media and labor man
agement, a program to better human re
lations.
It is with this concept that NCCJ began
its international work. When in June 1950
some 150 delegates from fifteen nations
gathered for a world conference in the
UNESCO House at Paris, the very name
of the organization founded then and there
indicated its purpose: to overcome the
sickness of prejudice, whether religious,
racial, national, social, or cultural, with the
therapy of brotherhood amity and coopera
tion among individuals and groups. World
Brotherhood (Fraternite Mondiale, Welt-
bruderlichheit or however it
may be rendered in the lan
guages of the races and nations
making mankind) is now op
erating, outside the continental
United States, in Hawaii, Cuba.
France, Italy, Switzerland, the
Benelux countries, and Ger
many with many groups in the
making in other places: Japan,
India, the Philippines, South
America, Austria, Denmark, the
Saar.
It is interesting to note that
among the social scientists who
through their research brought
about such far-reaching changes
in the practical work of educa
tional organizations, quite a few 7
German refugees from Hitler’s
persecution have played a lead
ing part, Max Horkheimer and
Kurt Lewin, to name just two.
Horkheimer, of course, who as
an American citizen was elec
ted rector of Frankfurt’s Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe Univer
sity, is widely known and re
spected in German scientific
circles. Yet the monumental “Studies in
Prejudice Series” (five volumes, Harpers &
Brothers, New York) which he edited to
gether with Samuel H. Flowerman after
they had directed the enormous experi
mental work under the sponsorship of the
American Jewish Committee, is practically
unknown. It can safely be stated that the
findings of these studies have not affected
the practice of German intergroup agen
cies. Kurt Lewin who for his revolutionary
experiments and discoveries has seriously
been hailed the Freud of social psychology
in the United States is only now being in
troduced to German scientists and educa
tors through an adequate translation of his
“Solving Social Conflicts” which just ap
peared on the market with an introduction
by Prof. Horkheimer.
All those branches of knowledge which
Ralph Linton has tried to unify under the
common denominator “The Science of
Man” were not only sorely neglected dur
ing the Third Reich, they were frowned
upon, hampered, and forbidden. In 1933,
German sociology, psychology, anthropolo
gy etc. came practically to a standstill.
There was not and there is not now any
thing comparable with the vast research
activity carried on in the United States in
the field of intergroup and human rela
tions. There is not even a generally ac
cepted translation of the term “human re
lations.” If German scientists have in the
meantime caught up with the research
done abroad during the time of Germany’s
isolation, nothing much, if anything at all.
Not yet have the echoes o/ the Hitler gangsterism
died down when today Jewry must face new perse
cutions, new anti-Semitic acts. . . .
(14)
The Southern Israelite