4

DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE

Detroit Jewish Chronicle

end THE LEGAL CHRONICLE

-ublished Weekly by Jewish Chronicle Publishing Co., Inc.
JACOB H. SCHAKNE
Pres.-Gen. Mar.
JACOB MARGOLIS
Editor
CHARLES TAUB
Advertising Mgr.

•••••= 0

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Entered as Second-class matter March 3, 1916, at the Post-
office at Detroit, Mich., under the Act of March 3, 1879.

Sabbath Readings of the Law

Pentateuchal portion—Ex. 21:1-24:18.
Prophetical portion—Jer. 34:8-22; 33:25, 26.

FEBRUARY 18. 1944

SHEBAT 24, 5704

What About Anti-Semitism?

Assistant United States Attorney Gen-
eral Norman L. Littell, speaking before
the Conference to Combat Anti-Semitism
in New York, pledged the aid of the
United States in the fight against anti-
Semitism.
Many may say "So what? We have
heard that stuff before." It is no longer
news when our good Christian friends
assure us that they are opposed to anti-
Semitism and that they view the mani-
festation of race hatred as unchristian
and unAmerican.
The assurances of those who enforce
the laws of the land must be viewed dif-
ferently from those who speak for volun-
tary associations and organizations. There
are many good and valid reasons for tak-
ing the news of governmental agents seri-
ously. It is the sad experience of our
people that if and when a Government
decides to treat its Jewish citizens differ-
ently from its other nationals, the matter
becomes one of the gravest concern to
the discriminated.
Many of our brethren who came from
Czarist Russia, Poland, Rumania, know
that many a pogrom was organized and
carried out by agents of these govern-
ments. And they know, too, that the cruel
anti-Semitic laws that deprived them of
a decent livelihood were not enacted be-
cause of popular demand, but were passed
because the rulers felt that they could
thus appease the discontented, poverty-
stricken, underprivileged peasants and
workers who were making demands for
better conditions.
Everyone knows that the infamous
Nuremberg laws of the Nazis were passed
because the Nazi rulers felt and believed
that they could better put over their
nefarious program if the Jews were sacri-
ficed.
All the evidence of the past and present
must convince the most obtuse that anti-
Semitism becomes a danger and a menace
when it becomes a political weapon. As
long as anti-Semitism expresses itself in
social and personal discrimination, it is
unpleasant and annoying, but not dan-
gerous.
It is not our purpose to minimize the
menace of anti-Semitism, but it is well
to realize that often that which appears
to be a manifestation of anti-Semitism
is really a form of anti-foreignism : the
dislike for the unlike and unfamiliar. In
a sense, the history of America is the
history of anti-foreignism. The older set-
tlers were never too friendly to the new-
comers. The anti-Irish, anti-"Hunky",
anti-"Dago" attitudes are still prevalent.
Certainly they are not as violent as they
once were because the Irish, Slavish, Ital-
ian, Hungarian and other later immi-
grants and their children have become
assimilated and integrated.
It would be sheer folly not to recognize
the fact that there is a difference in the
attitude of many toward the Jew and
toward those above mentioned. There is
in addition to the national and language
difference, the difference in religion.
Then, too, the Jew has many more con-
tacts with the general population because
of his business and professional activities.
The professional disseminators of hate
and discord take advantage of these facts
and whip up more feeling against the

February 18,

and The Legal Chronicle

Jew than against any other group in the
community, except the Negro.
We must continue to combat , anti-
Semitism no matter what form it may
take. We want the support of the Chris-
tian community for it is their fight as
much as ours. However, we should not
become too pessimistic about the annoy-
ing, often cruel anti-Semitic outbreaks
that have disgraced some of our commu-
nities. As long as anti-Semitism does not
become a political and economic weapon
of the State or a ruling party, we are not
in serious danger. We cannot imagine the
American Government becoming anti-
Semitic in the forseeable future.

Some Facts About Russia

Samuel Spewak, the representative of
the Office of War Information to Mos-
cow, told an American radio audience on
Sunday night that the Russian people are
not eating American butter, although
some Russian soldiers are.
Mr. Spewak was sent to Russia by the
OWI to inform the Russian people about
America, but in his radio talk he told
the American people some of the things
he saw in Russia, and these things he
told were not too pretty.
The people of Moscow, according to
Spewak, not only do not eat American
butter, but they wait in long lines to get
some black bread, which they often eat
on the spot. They often have no light or
heat, and when they do have heat it is
only when they are fortunate enough to
get some wood. He told a grim tale,
calmly and dispassionately.
What he said should go a long way to
disabuse the minds of many Americans
who have been persuaded that they are
not getting all they want because the
Russians are getting it.
We are not and have never been Bol-
sheviks, but we would like to find a
modus vivendi with the Russian people.
Certainly a satisfactory basis for mutual
understanding cannot be found if we take
a hostile attitude toward them, and if we
are always suspicious of their motives
and actions.
Many timid and uninformed people are
ready to give ear to tales that put the
Russians in a bad light, and there are
men among us who would exploit this
timidity and ignorance for their own, not
too honest, purposes.
The day will come, and we all hope
soon, when many difficult and complex
international problems will have to be dis-
cussed with the representatives of Russia.
Shall we meet these representatives with
distrust, suspicion and rancor, or shall
we meet them with trust and understand-
ing? The attitudes of the American peo-
ple will have much to do with the atti-
tude of our representatives. It is, there-
fore, very important that we know about
Russia and her people.
Mr. Spewak rendered a definite service
to us as well as to the Russian people
when he gave us the facts. Many more
such factual accounts will neutralize the
propaganda that seeks to create ill will
and bad feeling, of which there is al-
ready too much.

Plain Talk...

1944

by Al Segal

CUCKOO'S NEST

■

IERRE VAN PAASSEN, chief
P in non-Jewish
Zionist spokesman,
his book, "The Forgotten

Ally," speaks of some Jews who
are not nationalists: "Making a
high virtue of historical fatality,"
he says, "they proclaimed Is-
rael's mission to be dispersal
among the nations of the world,
to be a light unto the Gentiles
and an example to the peoples.
They said they believed in the
tradition of justice which they
considered their heritage as
American citizens of the Jewish
faith . . . 'What the Jewish peo-
ple want more than a home of
their own,' said one of their
spokesman, is the right to call
any place home'."
And Mr. van Paassen adds:
"Like the clever cuckoo, I sup-
pose, which lays its surrepti-
tiously in other birds' nests?"
Did I not know that van Paas-
sen is among the warmest friends
of Israel I could feel affronted
by this simile. It is as much as
what Hitler said to us:
"This Germany is our nest
and you've laid your eggs in it
cleverly and surreptitiously . . .
Your scholarship, your act, your
science, your literature . . . Get
out and stay out."
It's what's being heard in some
circles in the United States:
"This America is our nest and
Jews had better get their eggs
out of it if they know what's
good for them."
It's what anti-Semitism always
has said everywhere of Jews. It
is saddening that some Jews,
frightened by tragic events, are
ready to confess that they are
in the wrong nest and are eager
to pick up their eggs and go
elsewhere. They seem to have
accepted the idea that their right
to live is bounded by Palestine.
I am one of those non-nation-
alist Jews who Mr. van Paassen
seems to deride: I insist on the
Jew's right to call any place
home. Any place! I insist on the
Jew's right to live in Germany as
a free man, in Poland, in Rou-
mania as well as in the United
States. Unless there is a free
world in which the rights of all
men are equally respected, this
war is only a craby nightmare
that ends with mankind walking
through the window.

I

DALESTINE is only one of the
L places. It is a dot on the
immense map of the world, and
if there abide in Palestine two
million Jews there will still be
13,000,000 Jews elsewhere in the
world. Yet gentlemen speak as if
the fate of the Jews were all
encompassed within the narrow
borders of Palestine; the contro-

versies of Israel rage around its
olive groves. There is little or
nothing being said about the right
of Jews to live any place at all,
as if it has already been gen-
erally accepted among Jews that
we have been wrongfully occu-
pying others' nests and that we'd
better hurry and take our eggs
to Palestine.
I don't think that their spokes-
man's suggestion that we have
been like cuckoos laying eggs in
alien nests is in the minds of
most Zionists. The suggestion is
rather unfair to them. I am sure
the Zionists with whom I am best
acquainted have never thought of
themselves as cuckoos that, by
reason of the misfortunes of his-
tory, are obliged to lay their
eggs in strange nests. They are
gentlemen who have laid most
creditable eggs in the world—
their good contribution to Ameri-
can life, their humanitarian ideal-
ism, their civic zeal.
They would be the first to re-
sent any suggestion of enemies
that they are in the wrong nest,
and get the hell out of here.
They would say this is our nest,
too. We occupy it by right of
having been born in it and by
the right of being contribution
members of it and by the simple
right of being people.

THEY would resist any effort

A to snake them take their eggs
elsewhere. These eggs, they
would say, belong to America,
our country. They are our gift
to America that we have given
as Americans. This is the nest
of our nationality; it is our nest
and we resent being told that
our nationality belongs to an-
other nest.
For, as Mr. van Paassen says
of anti-nationalists, these Zion-
ists also have made "a high vir-
tue of historic fatality." If they
ever think of themselves as dis-
persed people they try to make
the best of their lot by being
bright lights in the world. The
fact is, though, they are never
found lamenting their lives in
galuth. They aren't exiles but
people at home who do all they
can to make their home country
a good place for themselves and
their neighbors to live in. Pal-
estine is a place they hope to
visit briefly some day when
th, in.igs. are good again in the
world.
They are assimilationists at
heart and in practice. I mean
that they are assimilationists in
the sense that. Jewishly, they are
not isolationists who feel they
do not belong in the common

See

SEBAL—Page

13

BROTHERHOOD WEEK
0 ifi

Israel Singer Dies

Israel Singer, author of "The Brothers
Ashkenazi" and "Yoshe Kalb," has passed
away. His death is a loss not only to
Yiddish literature, but to the whole world
of literature and drama.
His "Brothers Ashkenazi" was a trans-
cription of Jewish life of Lodz that for
sheer realism has not been surpassed by
the greatest novelists of Russia or France.
It did not please those who would have
Jewish life portrayed as a pretty picture
of sweetness and light.
The literary artist paints a word pic-
ture of the sounds, smells, intrigues, bru-
talities, greed as he seems them, whether
he writes of his own people or of others.
The life of Israel Singer came to an
end much too soon. He was but 50 years
old. He no doubt would have produced
many more masterpieces, but on the basis
of what he did he achieved for himself
a place among the immortals of world
literature and drama.

NATIONAL CONFEREkil CHRISTIANS AND JEW

