"On March 1, 1943, a great demonstration, one of the largest ever held in the United States, took place in Madison Square Garden at the initiative of the Congress and under the joint auspices of the American Jewish Congress, the American Federation of Labour, the CIO, and the Church Peace Union. Twenty-two thousand people crowded into the great hall, while 15,000 stood outside throughout the evening listening to the proceedings through amplifiers. The demonstration was addressed by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Dr. Stephen S. Wise, Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, Senator Robert F. Wagner, William Green, and others. The British Section transmitted cable messages from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the late Cardinal Hinsley, whose last public utterance it was before his death a week later. The meeting laid down a 12-point program for the rescue of European Jewry prepared by World Jewish Congress experts. The effect was immediate. On the following day, Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles declared that a note had already been sent to Great Britain on February 25 offering the cooperation of the United States in organizing an intergovern- mental meeting for study of methods to save 'political refugees' in Europe. The meeting came to be known as the Bermuda Refugee Conference…" [566]
On March 1, 1943, the Executive Committee of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America appealed to the Governments of the United States and Great Britain "to consider offering financial assistance to Jewish refugees who have escaped to neutral countries from Nazi held territory, and the possible establishment of temporary places of asylum for those evacuated from Europe".
The committee urged that the proposals be considered at the forthcoming conference in Toronto of representatives of the two governments on the Jewish problem. The suggestion was part of a three-point program calling for a report by the council's department of research and education on the treatment of Jews under the Nazi regime and setting aside May 2 for observance in churches as a "Day of Compassion" for the Jews in Europe. The committee's action was a sequel to the adoption at the council's biennial meeting in Cleveland in December of a statement setting forth the organization's determination "to do our full part in establishing conditions" in which harsh treatment of Jews should end. The proposals outlined by the committee for consideration of the British and American representatives at Toronto were: <263> "To offer financial assistance for the support of refugees that neutral governments (for example, Switzerland, or Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Turkey) may receive from areas under Nazi control, as a result either of infiltration across their borders or of negotiations with the Axis powers, with the expectation that, after the war, such refugees would be repatriated in their own countries. "To provide places of temporary asylum to which refugees whom it may be possible to evacuate from European countries may be removed, these refugees to be supported in camps for the duration of the war, with the understanding that they will then be repatriated in their own country or be provided with permanent homes in other ways." At the same time the committee urged Christians throughout the country "to give their moral support to whatever measures afford promise of rescuing European Jews whose lives are in jeopardy." The committee invited all Christians to "join in united intercession on May 2 for the victims of racial and religious persecution as a special occasion for the expression of Christian sollicitude." [567]
The practical steps proposed by the Executive Committee of the Federal Council to the Governments of the United States and Great Britain were similar to the steps proposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the House of Lords at about the same time, [568] and to the Aide-memoire sent by the Secretariats of the World Council of Churches and of the World Jewish Congress (Geneva), to the American and British Governments. [569] Not withstanding all this, the Bermuda Conference became "a monument of moral callousness and inertia". [570]
d. Different Churches Speaking on Different Occasions
The following is a chronological record of statements made by Churches or Church leaders in the United States from May, 1943, until the end of the second world war.
Henry St. George Tucker, Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church and president of the Federal Council of Churches, in a statement on the observance by the Council of a "Day of Compassion" for persecuted European Jews, said that there had been found a "rising tide of concern among Christians" over their fate. <264>
Dr. Tucker said it was the first time Christian churches had set aside a specific day for a "united expression of their sympathy with a suffering and persecuted Jewry".
"What is happening to the Jews on the Continent of Europe is so horrible that we are in danger of assuming that it is exaggerated," he said, and cited a recent survey by the council of evidence that he said indicated that under the Nazis a policy of deliberate extermination of Jews was carried out. "The survey shows that the actual facts are probably more, rather than less, terrible than the reports," he continued. "The Christian people of America vigorously protest against this brutal and cruel persecution. But protest is not enough." Two remedial measures have been set forth by the council: First financial assistance for support of refugees reaching neutral countries from Nazi- occupied areas, and second, provision of temporary asylum to which refugees evacuated from European countries may be removed. [571]
On October 20, 1943, American religious leaders denounced "the recent acts of terror in Denmark" and expressed sympathy for the Jews in that country. The Rev. Dr. P.O. Bessel, president of the Augustan Synod, Minneapolis, said that the synod was shocked at the German barbarism in Denmark, but was happy about Sweden's firm stand in offering refuge to the persecuted Jews. The Rev. Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert, general secretary of the Federal Council, said that "the American churches have been thrilled by the news that the Danish Church has refused to be cowed into silence in the face of the Nazi attack upon Jews in Denmark". [572]