Committee Inquiry Vindicates Mrs. Loehmann of Nazi Charge

Rumors of Mrs. Frieda Loehmann’s connection with local Nazis have been dispelled.

Mrs. Loehmann, who has a large dress shop at Bedford avenue and Sterling place, Brooklyn, sought an immediate investigation as soon as she heard of the existing of the rumors, since she has an extensive Jewish patronage and feared her business would be irreparably harmed.

Now she can display letters of vindication from the American Jewish Committee. Mrs. Stephen S. Wise and other prominent Jews. Mrs. Loehmann considers the accusations that the Loehmann family had contributed to the Nazi fund and that meetings were held in the rear of her store a closed incident.

NO SYMPATHY WITH NAZIS

Her son William, who like the two other children, Margie and Charles, is an officer of the corporation, explained to the Jewish Daily Bulletin that out of seventy-five employes in the establishment twenty-five are Jewish, that another brother is in business with a Jewish partner, that the family physician is Jewish, as well as a great many of the Loehmanns’ friends.

He further brought out that, as his mother put it in a letter to the American Jewish Committee asking for an investigation into the charges, “instead of this family being in sympathy with the Nazis, the contrary is the fact because we are opposed to discrimination against or persecution of anybody on account of religion or race.”

Fololwing an inquiry by the American Jewish Committee, Harry Schneidermann, assistant secretary, sent a letter to Mrs. Loehmann deploring the situation of which she complained, and stating that “as a result of our investigation, we are firmly convinced that there is absolutely no foundation in fact for the rumor. On the contrary, our investigation convinces us that your sympathies are quite the other way, as a result of your close association with Jews, both commercially and socially.

TIES ARE HARMFUL

“I may add that it is the feeling of our committee that nothing can be more harmful to relations between Jews and non-Jews than the maltreatment of non-Jews who are entirely innocent of any wrongdoing. It is such persecution as our people have been combating for centuries. We lose our moral right to protest against it if we ourselves indulge in it.”

Mrs. Wise wrote to Mrs. Loehmann “that after thoroughly informing ourselves about conditions connected with your store, we have come to feel that your statement that you have no Nazi connections and that you are opposed to all forms of Nazism is true. I am glad to be able to send you this vindication.”

Mrs. Loehmann suggested that the rumors might have been caused by competitors.

Although the Jewish Daily Bulletin reporter succeeded in locating a number of Jewish women who recently had ceased shopping at the Loehmann store, he was unable to elicit any reason for the customers’ attitude beyond the fact that they had heard the rumors of Nazi connections.