As the tension mounted and dissatisfaction grew during 1946 the leaders of She'erith Hapleitah were painfully reminded of their basic impotence and, in response, renewed their efforts to be recognized by the US Army as the legitimate representative of the “liberated Jews” in the Occupation Zone. At the end of February 1946 they had turned to General Truscott with a request for the formal recognition of the Central Committee as the authorized representative of the Jews in Germany. The problem of the ZK, as they wrote to the General, was not with the overall policy of the Supreme Command but with its implementation on the ground. Beyond the immediate damage caused by the disparaging attitudes and dilatory tactics they often encountered, these actions of the lower ranks were closely observed by the local German population who saw them as legitimizing their own deeply rooted hostility to the Jewish people. Many of these difficulties could be avoided if the Supreme Command would issue a directive informing its officers that “The Central Committee of Liberated Jews … and … [its] branches should be considered as representing the interest of the Liberated Jews. This should be the base line for policy on the local level.”

The leaders of the Central Committee hoped, in addition, that legalization would open the way to unmediated access to the military authorities and would thus allow them to dispense with what they saw as the dubious role of UNRRA.