The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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NEW YORK, Tuesday—Early yesterday morning I went to the Horace Mann-Lincoln School. This school certainly believes in "learning by doing" and their young people seem to have an extraordinary awareness about the world in which they live. The assembly yesterday dealt with the subject of the improvement of relations between the various races of the world. In one of the classrooms I later heard a discussion about whether the German people as a whole, or only a small group of them should be held responsible for Hitler and his activities.

It seems to me increasingly true that the educators are pushing young people to make their own discoveries through reading and discussion, and perhaps practical experiments. I suppose this is simply an acknowledgement of something which nearly all parents find out in the course of bringing up their children. The parents would like to pass on some of their hard earned experience, but they find themselves talking to deaf ears. As a rule they have to watch their children go through different experiences which they could have warned them about, but which would have had no meaning for the young people until they had been through the experiences themselves.

Yesterday evening I went to Carnegie Hall to the meeting of the B'nai B'rith Centennial War Service Convention. In 1843 B'nai B'rith was founded, and since then it has grown until there is no city with a fair sized Jewish community which is without an active chapter. They showed a short movie of the 825th recreation room which has been furnished for the Service Command guarding the District of Columbia. The head of the District chapter woman's auxiliary presented me with a plaque which I shall take to the recreation room on the first opportunity, and I shall formally present it.

In addition, I accepted for my husband a copy of the Salisbury portrait which is to hang in the Hunter College Inter-Faith House. I know my husband would have been glad to attend this meeting and to hear Justice Murphy's fine speech. Since that was impossible, he asked me to take his place, and I was very happy to hear the Justice take his stand so courageously against all religious and racial intolerance.

He pointed out that to allow anti-Semitism to grow among us would be to play into Hitler's hands. That is what Hitler wants—a division in our own ranks. If the seeds of intolerance towards other races and creeds which Hitler sowed in Germany were to crop up in the other nations of the world, Hitler might well feel satisfied that no military victory could be completely won over his ideas.

E. R.

(COPYRIGHT 1944 BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 10, 1944

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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