[wvns] History of the AJC
The History of the American Jewish Committee
Voltaire - billhermit @ hotmail.com
Sept. 2007
The First World War marked the decisive moment in the organizing of
the American Jewish Community for political action. It was a moment
which united the radicals, the Zionists and the assimilationists into
one umbrella organization which was later expanded into the World
Jewish Congress. The impetus for the organization was the eruption of
war in Europe and the threat of pogroms and mass deportations of Jews
from the war areas on the Eastern front.
The call for an American Jewish Congress was only one of many
organizational efforts of the same period. In 1915 the Joint
Distribution Committee was formed with the intent of providing relief
to Jews in the war areas. Also, in 1915, the Jewish Workmen's
Committee, an umbrella organization comprising five radical Jewish
organizations, including the Jewish Socialist Federation and
Poale-Zion, was formed to prepare for the upcoming Jewish Congress.
The powerful American Jewish Committee, headed by Louis Marshall and
backed by German-Jewish banker Jacob Schiff, wanted the Congress
delayed until after conclusion of the war with Germany. (The United
States had entered the European conflict in April, 1917.) The reasons
were fairly simple. The majority of the Jewish radicals were opposed
to participation in a "capitalist" war; hence holding the Congress
while the hostilities were still raging would taint the Jews with lack
of patriotism, a charge with which Marshall and the AJC were all too
familiar. Moreover, the Zionist movement under Louis Brandeis and
Felix Frankfurter were in direct contact with the British and American
governments and Marshall feared that a premature Congress might create
conflicting lines of authority.
Despite all this a preparatory conference was held in Manhattan in
1916. The Jewish Workmen's Committee went through several gyrations,
at first pulling out of the Congress and then, belatedly, deciding to
rejoin at the last moment, minus the number of delegates it had hoped
to obtain. The Zionists and radicals were at odds with each other, as
well as with the American Jewish Committee. Ultimately, the Zionists
and radicals made their peace, with the result that both "minorities
treaties" in Eastern Europe and a demand for a "mandate" over
Palestine became part of the Jewish delegations demands presented at
the Peace Conference. The delegation of representatives chosen to go
to Europe included delegates from the radicals, the Zionists and the
assimilationists. Chaim Zhitlovsky, Morris Vinchevsky and Nachman
Syrkin represented the radicals, Judge Julian Mack of Philadelphia and
Louis Marshall represented the assimilationists and moderates, Colonel
Cutler, Joseph Barondess and Bernard Richards represented the Zionists
and other factions.
The American Jewish Congress had orignally been intended only as a
temporary organization designed specifically to represent Jewish
interests at the Peace Conference. However, as so frequently happens
in these matters, the temporary became permanent. There were those at
the time who thought that the American Jewish Congress was far more
Jewish than American. It advocated specifically Jewish interests in
European countries where no direct American interest was involved. It
contained within its ranks many known reds and well wishers of the
bolshevik experiment. It did not demand the "state within the state"
in America but it came dangerously close to demanding it in Europe.
The same Jews who later denounced Fritz Kuhn's German-American Bund as
an instrument of Hitler's Germany and a threat to American security
applied no such standard to their organizing efforts. Kuhn was
something of an embarrasment to the Third Reich. He had no real power
and frequently got in the way of t hings. The American Jewish
Congress, by contrast, was a very real representative of a very real
power. Its influence on the world stage was a provable fact. Fritz
Kuhn did not have the ear of Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George and
Clemenceau at Paris. It is doubtful that he even had the ear of Adolf
Hitler. But Louis Marshall and Julian Mack had the ear of every
statesman at Paris in 1919. Felix Frankfurter exercised more genuine
power when he wrote the Mandate over Palestine at Paris than Fritz
Kuhn ever did with one of his Madison Square Garden extravaganzas.
The American Jewish Congress and its origins are little known to most
Americans. That is unfortunate because it was, in many respects,the
America-Israel-Public-Affairs-Committee of its day. The more it
changes; the more it stays the same.
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