Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota.

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota originated in Minneapolis in the 1930s as a response to a number of contemporaneous events. The presecution of Jews in Nazi Germany; the activities of the Silver Shirts, the German-American Bund, and similar organizations in Minnesota; and the antisemitic overtones of the 1938 Minnesota gubernatorial campaign all encouraged the formation of an organization to monitor and protest those activities. From 1936 to 1939 an informal organization, the Anti-Defamation Council of Minnesota, was the vehicle of Jewish protest against all forms of antisemitism. Members included Arthur Brin, Charles I. Cooper, and 21 other Jewish leaders in Minneapolis. A sister organization was established in St. Paul.

After the 1938 gubernatorial campaign, the Council realized the need for a more formal, activist organization. An attempt was made to enlist the aid of the national Anti-Defamation League headquarters in Chicago, but the Minnesota group's intent to function as a local, grassroots organization precluded this. The Anti-Defamation Council, as organized in 1938, included individual Jews in Minneapolis and St. Paul and representatives from the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, and the Jewish Labor Committee.

...