In re the Certificate of Incorporation of German Jewish Children's Aid, Inc.

151 Misc. 834, 272 N.Y.S. 540, 1934 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1392
CourtNew York Supreme Court
DecidedJune 7, 1934
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 151 Misc. 834 (In re the Certificate of Incorporation of German Jewish Children's Aid, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In re the Certificate of Incorporation of German Jewish Children's Aid, Inc., 151 Misc. 834, 272 N.Y.S. 540, 1934 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1392 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 1934).

Opinion

Levy, J.

A certificate for incorporation of a charitable organization to be known as German Jewish Children’s Aid, Incorporated,” is submitted to me for approval, pursuant to section 10 of the revised Membership Corporations Law (Laws of 1926, chap. 722). That statute requires the approval of a justice of the Supreme Court. The second paragraph of the proposed certificate of incorporation reads as follows: “ The purposes for which it is to be formed are purely charitable, to wit (1) to facilitate the entry of German Jewish children into the United States in cases in which their parents or other relatives desire them to come over with the consent of the United States authorities, (2) to give for such children suitable and proper bonds or undertakings, in such amounts and containing such conditions, as the Secretary of Labor of the United States may prescribe, to the United States and to all States, Territories, counties, towns, municipalities, and districts thereof, holding the United States and all States, Territories, counties, towns, municipalities, and districts thereof, harmless against such German Jewish children, or any of them, becoming public charges, and for schooling and other incidental purposes, such bonds to be given without charge and without indemnity, and are to be delivered in Washington, D. C., to the Secretary of Labor and approved of there by that officer, (3) to aid such children and prevent such children from becoming public charges, and (4) to expend the net funds of the said Corporation, if deemed desirable, for the benefit of the said children, to care for such children by placement in foster homes, either free or at board, or in an institution or otherwise, and (5) for such other matters as may be incidental to the foregoing pur[836]*836poses; all without profit to the Corporation, its members or its officers, and none of its net income may inure in whole or in part to the benefit of any member or private individual.”

It is well to notice the strong emphasis placed at the beginning of the recital upon the fact that the purposes are purely charitable, and to note the language following subdivision (5) of the purposes, which designedly uses the verbiage of the State and Federal tax laws to insure exemption from taxation of the charity in question. True, a mere statement of charitable purpose is not always necessarily borne out in an analysis of the actual intention of the corporation, and the possibility exists of its true purposes being cloaked in a charitable mantle.

The high sponsorship of this corporation and the personnel of the intended board of directors, on which are a judge of the Court of Appeals, a former justice of the Appellate Division, and a large number of persons well known in philanthropic activities, is a genuine guaranty of the sincerity of purpose. And the written approval on the certificate of incorporation of the State Board of Social Welfare under subdivision 1 of section 11 of the Membership Corporations Law gives assurance that further examination is unnecessary. It is, however, the duty of the justice to whom the approval of a certificate of a membership corporation is submitted, to determine whether the objects and purposes of the proposed corporation are in accord with public policy. (Matter of Daughters of Israel Orphan Aid Society, Inc., 125 Misc. 217.) Worthy as they may be and high-minded as the sponsors behind it are, nevertheless, if public policy should not approve the exercise of the powers for which a grant is sought by a private corporation, it would be a subject of disapproval. (Matter of Catalonian Nationalist Club, 112 Misc. 207.) The determining factor of a charitable enterprise is thus described in Union Pacific Railway Co. v. Artist (60 Fed. 365, 368): The test which determines whether such an enterprise is charitable or otherwise is its purpose. If its purpose is to make profit, it is not a charitable enterprise.”

The purposes of the proposed incorporation are so obviously unselfish and altruistic that no further discussion of this phase of the proposed undertaking would be necessary save for the possible criticism that the relief is limited to German children of Jewish extraction. ■ Except in connection with religious corporations, mild criticism is sometimes indulged in where sectarian objects in charitable enterprises are emphasized. The situation here is entirely free from such criticism if one contemplates the particular disabilities which visit Jewish children in Germany and which condemn them, by virtue of their birth, to a position of social [837]*837inferiority and deprive them of educational opportunity equal with others. The discrimination is due to the well-known national socialist Weltanschauung ” or world view which so positively dominates present-day Germany. A well-known non-Jewish observer (Dorothy Thompson, in a symposium entitled “ Nazism ”) has clearly expressed the reasons which make the plight of German Jewish children a greater object of immediate sympathy than that of German non-Jewish children of the so-called prescribed liberal or democratic classes. She says: “ Since a fundamental tenet of this World Outlook is the theory that all virtue is biological, and inheres in racial characteristics and racial inheritances, that the German people are Aryans, and that no non-Aryan can, or should, be included in the brotherhood of the new order, the persecution of the Jews is directed at removing them altogether from Germany. In this it differs from the other forms of persecution, in that it regards the victim as — and for no fault of his own —■ incorrigible. Actually the physical terror exercised against the Jews as such has been less active than that exercised against other groups, and for a very good reason: from the other groups what is wanted is submission. But it is the aim to eliminate the Jews. * * * therefore the cold pogrom ’ is undertaken which forces them to leave Germany by closing down one by one opportunities to earn a living or educate their children beyond the elementary grades, and by social ostracism.” (Italics in the original.)

The actual misery of these German Jewish children is poignantly described by the noted author, Stefan Zweig, himself a victim of the application of the Nazi racial ideology, in a published address entitled Their Souls a Mass of Wounds,” delivered in London November 30, 1933. It is very likely that the irresistible appeal contained in that address has furnished the immediate motive for the organization of this laudably humane movement. The following statement from that address appears appropriate and leaves its impress on the souls of all lovers of children: “ Many of the children who are growing up now in Germany, must, I fear, become embittered, and bitter, infected by the hatred which incomprehensible injustice will arouse in them. It must be our ambition, our duty to see that the new Jewish generation rises superior to the present in strength and ethical feeling, that it should not grow up as a hating people, a people of vengeance, but will be a people of understanding, carrying further our historic mission of being the mediator between all nations, the warrior against all war and all hatred.

That is why it seems to me important and essential that as many Jewish children as possible should at the present moment [838]

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151 Misc. 834, 272 N.Y.S. 540, 1934 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1392, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-the-certificate-of-incorporation-of-german-jewish-childrens-aid-nysupct-1934.