INTERNATIONAL: Jewish Belgium

That boldest of bold Jews, massive, magnetic, organ-voiced Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, gave the World Jewish Conference in placid Geneva a mighty rousing last week. “We Jews are in the front-line trenches,” he cried. “We are the ‘Belgium’ of the latest German war against mankind. The mighty army of Christendom and Civilization stands behind us and around us.”

With such backing any conference could do much. Star Delegates who worked each other up to more and more spacious plans included Editor Samuel Margoshes of Manhattan’s Yiddish newsorgan The Day and such eminent Jews escaped from the German Fatherland as Dr. Nahum Goldmann and Georg Bernhard. Sessions were mostly secret. Leaks grew more and more exciting. Finally correspondents flashed that a “Super-Government” of World Jewry was in course of formation.

Repercussions in World Jewry were furious. Most Jewish leaders realize that the surest way to stir up anti-Semitism everywhere would be for Jews avowedly to organize a “Super-Government.” No first rank Jewish tycoon openly contributes to the World Jewish Conference. In Manhattan the organization most U. S. Jewish tycoons support, the American Jewish Committee, manifestoed:

“The meeting at Geneva … no more speaks for the Jews of America, let alone the Jews of the world, than does any haphazard roomful of oratory on East 86th Street speak for the German people. No more alarming and dangerous enunciations could have been concocted than those reporting that a ‘Super-Government of Judaism’ was in process of formation. . . . Nonparticipating are the Zionists . . . and a score of other leading [Jewish] constituencies.”

To this the Geneva World Conference tartly retorted through a spokesman: “It was to be expected that the American Jewish Committee would disavow the World Conference. The Committee is a philanthropic enterprise, not a movement. The relation of the Committee’s membership to the masses of Jews is like the relation of a paternalistic employer to his workers. He will do all sorts of welfare work, but he won’t recognize the union.”

Throughout the week Rabbi Wise and his Conference put on a good show of representing the “forgotten Jew,” the petty Jewish tradesman who fills his shop window with anti-Hitler slogans. In a cablegram to the Conference last week Spearhead Samuel Untermyer of the anti-Nazi boycott begged Rabbi Wise not to give the impression that the boycott is primarily Jewish. “Few influential Jews are supporting us,” declared Boycotter Untermyer. “No Jewish banker is a member of any boycott committee or has openly dared to support or contribute to the movement because of fear of German reprisals or because of German connections. There exists a misleading world impression that the boycott is distinctly Jewish. Its support comes largely from the Catholic and Protestant churches.”

All these efforts to persuade the World Jewish Conference to be a trifle discreet were utterly wasted last week. The tub-thumpers in Geneva projected themselves into world headlines with a ringing re-affirmation of Jewish boycott efforts against Germany, then proceeded to skate extremely near to attempting to form a Super-Government of World Jewry.

Though Rabbi Wise said it was “ridiculous” to charge the Conference with such an intent, its members voted to hold “elections” in leading Jewish colonies all over the world for a “Hebraic Parliament” scheduled to meet in Geneva during August 1935. To stimulate interest and get out the Jewish vote, Dr. Samuel Margoshes announced that prominent European Jews will be brought to the U. S. and sent on stump-speaking tours. The No. 1 stumpster announced last week: Captain Pierre Dreyfus, brilliant son of the hero of France’s great anti-Semitic “Dreyfus Scandal.”