"Obnoxious Practice"

Last week was National Fur Week. But the biggest fur story did not come, as planned, from the furmen's expensive publicity outlets.

A Jewish boycott against German imports into the U. S. has been in effect ever since Hitler began making things tough for German Jews. At first it was directed from the American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee. Two years ago the two organizations joined forces, set up a Joint Boycott Council, whose present chairman is Dr. Joseph Tenenbaum. Though it has no legal boycott powers, the council is potent, for it marshals the opinions of 2,800,000 Jews.

With offices in London, Paris and Brussels, Dr. Tenenbaum's aids maintain eternal vigilance over trade relations with Germany to spot violations of the boycott. If the boycott council ferrets out evidence of such a violation, the firm involved is asked for an explanation. If none is forthcoming, the council pickets its offices, publishes its name and offense, does its best to prevent customers from trading there until the firm agrees to arbitrate.

Last week's fur story involved three of the most potent fur firms in the country: Eitingon Schild Fur Corp., whose $9,789,000 sales last year entitle it to the position of world's largest fur dealer; Balkan Importing Corp., New York office of the big Rumanian firm Pellimpex; and Alexander Bernstein Co., privately owned so that its figures are kept secret, but generally believed to be among New York's ten biggest. Some months ago Eitingon and Bernstein received shipments of furs worth $800,000 from Pellimpex, were aided by Balkan in selling them. Pouncing on the deal last May the boycott council declared that it was "one of the most carefully planned and seemingly foolproof devices yet evolved by the Nazis in an effort to improve their foreign exchange position. ... Its existence was discovered by the Joint Boycott Council's European agents who were long puzzled by the substantial savings effected by American importers in the purchase of Rumanian fur;. The scheme as it revealed itself follows: American importers pay for their furs through London banking facilities and thus have in their records canceled checks showing that they do not deal with Nazi Germany. The American dollars are then forwarded from London to Germany thus allowing the Nazi regime to build up its foreign exchange balance. Meanwhile, Germany buys the Rumanian furs, paying for them in lei that were placed to its credit in Rumania as a result of barter arrange- ments. ... As the Rumanian money has little value in the foreign exchange marts, the German Government gains materially by an exchange of this money for American exchange. ..."

Last week an arbitration board composed of Messrs. David L. Podell, Emil Schlesinger, J. Winogradsky, I. Edwin Goldwasser and Samuel D. Leidesdorf sat down in Manhattan's Hotel Governor Clinton, decided that all the defendants were guilty of the "obnoxious practice," fined them a total of $75,000.

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