In time for Halloween, the ghosts of the Goebbels’ goblins that once rallied in Madison Square Garden will be resurrected again.
Madison Square Garden will once again be host to a Hitler-admiring fascist when Donald Trump brings his vitriol and hatred to the N.Y.C. sports arena on Sunday. It is an ugly echo back to another rally 85 years ago when the German American Bund filled the arena with Nazi symbolism at its much-advertised “Americanism” rally, a vile night of white nationalism and anti semitism filled the arena in what would become the biggest Nazi rally in American history.
It enraged the Jewish community who refused to be silent.
Concerned Jews like my mother’s father Arthur Joseph who was among the thousands who gathered outside the Garden to protest the rally.
It was a cautionary and frightening story told to me as a child by my mother that was indelibly imprinted in my mind. This double ghost of American Nazism and antisemitism that has haunted me for years has now resurfaced.
1939 Pro-American Rally
(L) My grandfather Arthur Joseph, active in Jewish Community attended the protest for the German American Bund Rally at Madison Square Garden Feb. 1939
On an unusually balmy Monday night in February 1939, as my grandfather Arthur exited the crowded subway at 50th Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, he looked up at the brightly lit marquee of Madison Square Garden and got chills. It announced the evening’s main event- a “Pro American Rally.” With a sickening feeling, he knew as did the other thousands who stood outside the sports arena to protest the event being held inside, that it was anything but pro-America.
It was an evening organized by the Pro Hitler -German American Bund that was filled with hate.
Directed at those like him.
The large portrait of George Washington that hung along swastika banners and American flags at Madison Square Garden during German American Bund’s Pro American Rally 1939
The organizers had deliberately chosen the date of February 20th in celebration of George Washington’s birthday and displayed a 30-foot-tall banner of America’s first president on the stage.
More than 20,000 men and women streamed inside and took their seats in the large arena. The mood was jubilant. The view they had was stunning: Washington was flanked by red, white, and blue bunting — and swastikas. That giant portrait of George Washington was no coincidence. Indeed, the pro-Nazi group referred to Washington as “America’s first fascist.” One speaker even argued that if Washington was alive today he would be a staunch friend of Adolph Hitler.
The event was highly choreographed in the fascist style, with uniformed Bund members carrying American and Nazi flags, the display of the Nazi salute, and the playing of martial music and German folk songs.
Under the guise of patriotism, the assembly began with the Pledge of Allegiance and a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” as attendees improbably wore Nazi armbands, waved American flags, and held aloft posters with slogans like “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America.” There were stormtroopers in the aisles, their uniforms almost identical to those of Nazi Germany.
White Nationalism As American As Apple Pie
German American Bund Poster. “Mass Demonstration for True Americanism” 1939
One of the main speakers, Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, the national public relations director of the Bund, who fancied himself an American Joseph Goebbels, pointed to the white supremacy at America’s founding as a nation. “The spirit which opened the West and built our country is the spirit of the militant white man,” he preached.
White Nationalism was apparently as American as apple pie as Kunze rattled off the threads of racism that ran through American history to bolster his vision for a whites-only America. He cited anti-miscegenation laws, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Jim Crow policies and immigration quotas. “It has then always been very much American to protect the Aryan character of this nation,” Kunze told the rapt audience.
The crowd responds with a Hitler salute as uniformed members of a German-American Bund color guard march at a gathering in New York’s Madison Square Garden, Feb. 20, 1939. (AP Photo)
Calling upon his fellow Americans, he challenged Bund members to restore America to the “True Americans.”
“We, the German-American Bund, organized as American citizens with American ideals and determined to protect ourselves, our homes, our wives and children against the slimy conspirators who would change this glorious republic into the inferno of a Bolshevik paradise”
This elicited great cheers.
The Jewish Problem
Anti Jewish German Poster
The speeches were explicitly anti-Semitic, filled with time-worn tropes, stereotypes, and falsehoods about Jews creating degenerate art and music, Jewish teachers corrupting Aryan children, denouncing the Jewish control of Hollywood and news industries, and the themes of “Jewish world domination” blaming the “oriental cunning of the Jew Karl Marx.”
Angry tirades against “job-taking Jewish refugees” were met with thunderous applause.
In this cartoon, the claim is that FDR is under the control of the Communists and Jews.
They demanded a white gentile America. They denounced President Roosevelt as ‘Rosenfeld,’ claiming Roosevelt was in the pocket of rich Jews. Kunze said the Aryan race follows the Golden Rule while Jews only follow the ‘rule of gold’
Echoing the white Christian nationalism of today the Bund continued to emphasize America as a Christian nation with Christian values. The notoriously anti-Semitic Father Charles Coughlin, the outspoken radio evangelist, was held high as a martyr and victim of the ‘Jewish-controlled’ media.
Kunze, went on about the Jewish domination of American culture and called for news and culture without “a Jewish accent.” He complained there is “no free speech for white men” in the United States and condemned ‘parasites’ like Walter Winchell, George Burns, and Eddie Cantor, for polluting the airwaves and taking the rightful places of Aryan Americans.. He called for the ethnic cleansing of the airwaves.
It’s not too much of a stretch to go from the Christian Nationalist rhetoric of 85 years ago to current allusions to Jewish control of Hollywood studios and other media outlets.
As Kunze exited the stage, 20 thousand Bund members chanted “Free America! Free America! Free America!” as riled-up attendees waved American flags and performed the Nazi Salute, in the biggest Nazi rally in United States history.
Protestors
Protestors outside Madison Sq. Garden N.Y. Mounted police form a solid line outside Madison Sq. Garden on Feb. 20, 1939, to hold in a crowd that packed the streets around the venue where fascist American Bund was holding a rally. Photo Murray Becker /AP
While there were 20,000 enthusiastic American Nazis inside the Garden listening as Kunze raged against “Jewish domination” and calls for “a socially-just, white, Gentile-ruled United States,” there were also thousands of protesters outside standing shoulder to shoulder including my grandfather who came with other members of his synagogue The Brooklyn Jewish Center on Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights.
Poster Issued by Socialist Workers Party to Picket Madison Square Garden Monday Feb. 20, 1939 “Wrapping themselves in the cloak of patriotism and ‘Americanism’ the fascists prepare to spew their anti labor and anti-Jewish poison throughout NYC.
This anti-Nazi contingent included everyone from veterans to housewives to members of the Socialist Workers Party all united in one cause.
Arthur would recall there was an eerie quality to being in this place with this crowd.
March 1933 Madison Sq Garden hosts a large rally to boycott Nazi Germany
Only 6 years early many of these same people had gathered together in the same spot when a mass protest rally was held at Madison Square Garden this time to protest Hitler and antisemitism.
Organized by the American Jewish Congress a crowd of 55,000 overflowed the Garden and into the streets to protest the deteriorating circumstances of Jews in Nazi Germany after Hitler’s rise to power The protest was held on March 27, 1933, five days after the opening of the first Nazi concentration camp in Dachau.
Adolph Hitler
After Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany in early 1933, civic leaders with the American Jewish Congress began to coordinate a response. Led by Rabbi Stephen Wise, the Congress organized a boycott of German-made goods beginning in March 1933.
The Congress also spearheaded a National Day of Protest on March 27.
After a day of fasting and prayer, thousands flooded Madison Square Garden and the streets surrounding it for the largest rally. The mass protest rally at Madison Square Garden was broadcast worldwide and Jewish leaders, union presidents, politicians, and Christian clergy addressed the crowd calling for immediate cessation of the brutal treatment being inflicted on German Jews.
1939
And yet just a few years later the streets of midtown Manhattan were packed again with Jews, with more than 100,00 protesters who were protesting the same hate in their own country, denouncing the American Nazi rally as traitorous.
At one point during that February evening, my grandfather recalled the orchestra from a Broadway musical near Madison Square Garden performed a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” for the protesters.
A mysterious crusader even set up a loudspeaker in a rooming house near the scene and blasted a denunciation of the Nazis out the window: “Be American, Stay at Home.”
The New York Police Department had deployed a record number of 1,700 officers around Madison Square Garden, enough “to stop a revolution,” the police commissioner said. New York City’s mounted police formed a line outside Madison Square Garden to hold in check a crowd that packed the streets.
By 11:oo p.m., the rally was over and Arthur watched as members of the Bund buttoned up their overcoats, conveniently hiding their uniforms, and were escorted through police lines along Fifty-Second Street amid the crowds of protesters waiting outside. Rally participants were greeted with a roar of catcalls, jeers, and even a few punches, but by midnight, all was quiet.
For now.
Postscript
My father (R) Marvin Edelstein, a freshman at University of Virginia 1939 in Charlottesville, Va
The following day in bucolic Charlottesville, Virginia my 18-year-old future father Marvin a transplanted New Yorker who was a freshman at the University of Virginia sat in the Shannon library and read with great distress the report in the New York Times about the Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden. The event had received broad national coverage.
The fact that the event filled with Nazi sympathizers had been sold out did not surprise him necessarily. He had witnessed more than a few pro-German neighbors in his neighborhood in Astoria Queens. But the magnitude of this event in the heart of the city was alarming.
It was hard to imagine.
Charlottesville and Nazis
How I now wonder, would my father ever have imagined that one day his beloved town of Charlottesville itself would be associated with Nazi sympathizers and hate-filled, torch-carrying rally?
Or that the political party he worked for and believed in for so many decades, that Grand Old Party would have as their standard bearer, their nominees for president, speak so admiringly about Adolph Hitler.
Sargent Marvin Edelstein WWII
My father like others of the greatest generation had fought in WWII to eliminate fascism.
With the end of the war it seemed we had banished Hiter to the ash pile of history, only now to be resurrected again.
By a former American president no less.
The war was fought, and soldiers died so that hate and antisemitism would be eradicated as swiftly as they would eradicate polio.
But it lay dormant.
The German American Bund faded away, but the white supremacist ideology they championed remained. Today when a former president and current Republican nominee for the highest office an admitted Hitler admirer will fill that arena again, I am glad my grandfather and father are not here to see it, I will be haunted for the both of them.
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2024. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Envisioning The American Dream 
What an amazing story and how tragic it is that history is being repeated. The Trump campaign is truly following a playbook and it is a dark and sinister one. In his attack on the Atlantic, Trump went out of his way to reference the magazine’s owner as “a guy named Goldberg.” When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Thank you, Sally. You’ve again given readers yet another reason to recognize the true enemy of the people.
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The hidden and not so hidden tropes and digs Trump has referenced regarding the Jews is quite unsettling. It is no longer dog whistles. Its loud and clear for all to hear.
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That was an eye opening lesson in antisemitism in the US. I have never heard of it before, though it should have been part of our high school curriculum. Your knowledge of history, and your family’s involvement is fascinating. Seeing this hatred arise again to this level in our lifetime is frightening.
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There is so much history that wasn’t taught and certainly growing up in NY schools you would think it might be relevant. I am grateful that I came from a family with a love for and deeply curious about history and that keen interest was instilled in me from a very young age. I’m also grateful that my family shared the history around them, so that it became very alive for me.
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Have you ever thought of creating a YouTube channel? I think your posts might reach a larger audience, and that would be a very good thing!
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I do have a few video on you tube.https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkjbhQMEj8_LLRfeS5RxoRQ
I have thought of doing videos of my of my stories and think they would be very effective, appreciate your suggestion.
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That’s great that you already have a channel on YouTube. (I just subscribed.) I hope you can find a way to post your essays there 🙂
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I have enjoyed the process of creating in this format and has been gratifying. That is where John comes in and helps in the creation.
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Why does Israel argue that Apartheid UN Racism rapes the UN Charter which originally established the UN post WWII?
Mandate Palestine ceased to exist in 1948. Zionism stands on the premise established by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, that Jews have equal rights to achieve self determination in the Middle East. The post WWII peace imposed upon defeated Nazi Germany where the Allies awarded the “captured territory of Prussia” and partitioned those captured territories between Russia and Poland, that this post WWII peace negates the language of UN Resolution 242. The UN does not refer to Prussia as occupied territory! Arab States must recognize the Jewish equal rights to self determination in the Middle East for any future peace treaty.
Post Independence Israel ceased to be a UN Protectorate territory. Non Jews do not determine the international borders of the Jewish state. The wars Israel fights wins or loses determine our international borders. Israel won the June 1967 Six day war, Jordan’s UN condemned in 1950 unilateral and illegal annexation of Mandate Palestine territory, Israel reconquered these lands of “Samaria and East Jerusalem” in the 6 Day War. Hence Israel does not “illegally” occupy these recaptured territories of the original Palestine British mandate.
The UN, despite its arrogance and hypocrisy, UN Resolution 242 compared to Prussia being partitioned between Poland & Russia, together with the mass population transfer of some 13 million Germans forced to move from Prussia to West Germany. Post ’67 war “neutral” Britain and France, and Arab ally USSR – all voting States in the UN Security Council – they unanimously voted in the UN Security Council that Israel should not acquire land through war. No UN Resolution refers to Prussia as “occupied territory”.
UN Resolution 338 post Yom Kippur surprise attack, similar to Oct 7th 2023 surprise attack, comparable to the Dec 7th 1941 surprise attack, UN Security Council ‘Great Power States’ – framed UN Resolution 242, oblivious to Arab countries attack upon Israel through a surprise invasion! These arrogant prig “Great Powers”, they neither fought in the ’67 War (Israel shot down a few Soviet fighter pilots during the Yom Kippur War) and do not dictate peace terms based upon the UN Chapter VI “recommendations” of UN 242, 338, 446, 2334 ‘Great Powers’ propaganda.
Israel rejects UN Apartheid. The UN, no different from Arab Nazi like racism, refuses to recognize the 1948 Jewish State of Israel, specifically – as a member of the region of countries which make up the Middle East! This same arrogant treatment of United Nations policies of Apartheid, likewise doled out to Taiwan China! This prig Apartheid UN arrogance, which no different that Arab states at war with Israel, Arab leaders which fundamentally refuse to recognize Jewish equal rights to establish self-determination within our ancestral homelands, this apartheid threatens World War between the US and China! The UN Charter fundamentally rejects this disgraceful behavior!
Israel points out that the UN, originally established in the aftermath of World War II to promote peace, security, and cooperation among nations. Israel argues UN Resolutions, like Zionism is Racism or UN resolutions which compare Israel to South African apartheid, that such blatant hypocrisy undermines the principles of self-determination and sovereignty that the UN, founded & established to protect.
Arab states Universally rejected UN Resolution 181 in 1947. Arab states attacked and invaded Israel in 1947 and again in 1967, and yet again in 1973. President Nasser swore that in the up coming ’67 War that Arabs would negate the Nakba disgrace and throw the Jews into the Sea and therein complete the Nazi genocide of the Jews. UN Resolution ‘land for peace’, “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” – language of post War 242. This UN Resolution drawn up by Britain and France, it ignores the simple fact that both Britain and France declared their neutrality prior to the outbreak of the June war! Israel does not exist as a UN Protectorate territory and the UN does not determine the international borders of Israel. Wars determine the international borders, as they do every other country that fights wars with its immediate neighbor countries! The UN does not refer to North Ireland as “occupied territory”. The UN does not refer to Alsace Lorraine as “occupied territory”.
The June 1967 War, Jordan invaded Israel and thereafter lost the lands of East Jerusalem and Samaria. UN Resolution 242 fails to address this obvious fact. The UN in 1950 condemned Jordan’sannexation of Jordan’s “West Bank” and called it illegal. Following the Israeli recapture of these pre 1948 Independence War, these Palestinian UN mandate territories – post ’67 as “occupied territories” simply promotes Arab propaganda war narratives. Israel does not “occupy” territory within the borders of its own Balfour British mandate territories; especially after Britain lopped off Trans-Jordan in 1923 from the League of Nations awarded Palestine mandate territories! Post ’67 all UN Resolutions which condemn Israel repeats Arab States war-propaganda – “occupied territories”. Such declarations represent a racism comparable to UN Resolution 3379: Zionism is Racism!
Israeli representatives often claim that the UN and various human rights organizations exhibit a bias against Israel. We argue these biased Resolutions undermines the UN credibility. UN accusations of Israeli apartheid – hollow when confronted that the UN refuses to validate the land of Israel as part of the region of the Middle East! Israel asserts that such UN blood libels of Israeli apartheid accusations, they divert attention away from other countries with serious human rights violations, which sit on the UN Human Rights Council.
Post ’67 War, these hostile UN Resolutions of condemnation of Israel, the UN General Assembly and Security Council blatantly ignores the Israeli shalom requirements of direct face to face negotiations with leaders from Arab countries. The Camp David Accords where President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin negotiated terms of peace; the Trump Abraham Accords both serve as crucial precedents for valid Arab Israeli peace negotiations.
Repeated attempts to foist some international UN or Quartet intervention upon rejects the Israeli demand to direct face to face negotiation with leaders of other Arab countries. UN and Quartet propaganda of “International Law”. completely ignores the simple reality that Treaties like the Rome Treaty establish “international law”, neither the UN nor the Quartet unilaterally determines “international law”. Any pretence otherwise amounts to false propaganda.
In summery: Israel argues that its right to self-determination, rooted in historical and legal precedent, particularly the Balfour Declaration (1917) and the subsequent League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which recognized the Jewish people’s right to self determination to establish a homeland in the Middle East region. This equal rights of the Jewish people, contrasted with the refusal of many Arab State leaders to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Israel asserts that this Arab Nazi racism has led to persistent conflicts since the League of Nations awarded the Palestine Mandate to Britain. Israel contends that both Britain and the international community, promotes a divide and conquer imperialism in the Middle East. Specifically that the UN has unfairly ignored this fundamental League of Nations recognized right of self-determination, when it condemns Israel’s actions and territorial gains.
The 1947 UN Partition Plan (Resolution 181) Arab States absolutely rejected. These same Arab States instead launched wars against the newly established Jewish state. The argument of the Jewish equal rights to achieve self-determination in the Middle East; Israel’s right to exist absolutely rejected by all Arab countries and this racism serves as the root cause of all Arab Israeli wars. The territorial boundaries of the Independent Jewish State, not defined by the UN nor the Quartet. But rather by military outcomes, and treaties which Israel directly negotiates with its Arab neighbor countries. The wars Israel fought, including the 1967 Six-Day War, legitimate Wars of self-defense. Any land acquired in the process, considered as part of Israel’s territorial integrity, and not “occupied territory.” Israel simply not an “occupying force” in these areas as Arab war propaganda promotes. Rather Israeli war victories reclaim recaptured lands within the historical and legal context of the British Mandate for Palestine.
The assertion that Israel is violating international law by holding territories “Samaria and Judea”, these territories, never recognized as part of any sovereign Arab state, (Mandate Palestine ceased to exist in 1948 just as “West Bank” ceased to exist post ‘67), Jordan’s illegal annexation of British Mandate Samaria, which the UN itself condemned as illegal in 1950.
Israel strongly rejects any UN, ICC, Quartet claims of apartheid. Comparing such bogus allegations to the 1975 UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, which declared that “Zionism is racism.” Israel sees such accusations as politically motivated, rooted in the broader rejection of Jewish self-determination in the Middle East. Israel argues that these accusations, simply part of a broader campaign of delegitimization, which unfairly singles out Israel for condemnation while ignoring the human rights violations in other parts of the world.
Israel claims that the UN Resolution, its hostile treatment of Israel, has consistently ignored the principles of sovereignty and self-determination enshrined in the UN Charter. Israel contends that the UN, rather than fostering peace, complicit – as on Oct 7th 2023, in advancing the agenda of states that deny Israel’s right to exist, often through biased resolutions. Israel argues that the UN should not dictate borders or impose solutions without direct negotiations between Israel and the Arab states. The Camp David Accords (1978) and the Abraham Accords (2020), these precedents shape International Law. The UN’s hostile stance towards Israel, undermines the peace process and the legitimacy of any final settlement.
The term “occupied territories” simply problematic. It misrepresents the legal and historical context of all Arab Israeli wars. Jordan never established a “Palestinian State” within the borders of its illegally seized “West Bank”. Hence the term “Occupied Territories” only exist as Arab war time propaganda, which adamantly refuses to recognize Jewish equal rights to self-determination in the Middle East; to rule our National ancestral homelands Independent from Arab domination. Arab racism continues to insist that Jews exist as dhimmi sub-humans to their Feudal lords and masters!
The division of Prussia after World War II or the ongoing disputes in Northern Ireland or Alsace-Lorraine. In these cases, the international community does not label these territories as “occupied,” and no equivalent demands for the return of lands taken during conflicts. Israel contends that the double standard applied to its territorial situation qualifies as a form of anti-Jewish discrimination.
Israel asserts that direct negotiations with Arab states are the only path to peace, rather than external impositions from the UN or the so-called “Quartet” (US, EU, Russia, and the UN). Israel points to successful peace agreements, such as the Camp David Accords with Egypt and the Abraham Accords with the UAE and Bahrain, as examples of how peace can be achieved through bilateral negotiations, not UN-imposed hogwash declarations.
The accusations of apartheid and racism, along with the UN’s, ICC’s, and Quartet condemnation of Israeli actions, based on a biased and politically motivated view aimed to undermine Israel’s right to self-determination, security, and sovereignty. Israel views these actions by the UN, ICC and Quartet as contrary to the principles on which the UN organization originally founded after World War II. Particularly and specifically, those related to self-determination, territorial integrity, and the rejection of colonialism. Israel argues that the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict lies in direct negotiations and mutual recognition, rather than in the imposition of international resolutions expressing ‘Great Power’ Imperialism of strategic interests which invalidates Israeli strategic National interests.
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