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DETROIT JEWISH

Detroit Jewish Chronicle

and THE LEGAL CHRONICLE

.Published Weekly by Jewish Chronicle Publishing Co., Inc.

JACOB H. SCHAKNE

Pres.-Gen. Mgr.

JACOB MARGOLIS

CHARLES TAUB

Editor

Advertising Mgr.

General Offices and Publication Bldg., 525 Woodward Ave.

Telephone: CAdillac 1040
Subscription in Advance

Cable Address: Chronicle
$3.00 Per Year

To insure publication, all correspondence and news matter
must reach this office by Tuesday evening of each week.
When mailing notices, kindly use one side of paper only.
The Detroit Jewish Chronicle invites correspondence on sub-
jects of interest to the Jewish people, but disclaims respon-
sibility for an endorsement of views expressed by its writers.

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

Sabbath Chol Hamoed Succoth Readings
of the TorI an

Pentateuchal portion—Ex. 33:12-34 :26; Num. 29 :
17-25.
Prophetical portion—Ezek. 38 :18-39:16.

Shemini Azereth Readings of the Torah,

Monday, Oct. 9

Pentateuchal portions—Deut. 14 :22-1-17 ; Num.
29:35-30-1.
Prophetical portion—I Kings 8:54-66.

Simchas Torah Readings of the Law,
Tuesday, Oct. 10

Pentateuchal portion—Deut. 33 :1-34 :12 ; Gen.
1:12-3; Num. 29 :45-30 :1.
Prophetical portion—Joshua 1.

OCTOBER 6. 1944

TISHRI 19, 5705

Danger or Nuisance?

Rev. Dr. Everett Clinchy, president of
the National Conference of Christians and
Jews, has asked 300 mayors of large
American cities to ban the injection of
racial and religious issues in the present
political campaign. Many of the mayors
will go on record in favor of the proposal
and those who do not answer may be
counted upon to ban religious and racial
issues.
All of this is to the good, and will no
doubt help to decrease anti-Semitic, anti-
Negro, anti-foreign activity. But will it
stop that perversive, insidious propaganda
that is being spread all all over the land
and which is causing much anxiety and
distress among our people?
There is an undefined and widespread
feeling among many reasonable and cour-
ageous people that the forces of hate,
bigotry and discrimination are organizing
their cohorts for an attack upon us.
Nothing that has been done or said has
succeeded in dissipating these fears,
doubts and suspicions. This is not a
healthy state of affairs and, if long con-
tinued, may do serious damage.
We believe that the fears are exagger-
ated and we base this belief upon the
record of failures of all anti-movements
in this country up till now.
The record up till now may not be a
guarantee that it will continue so, yet we
cannot very well go beyond the record.
The most successful anti-movement in
this country since the Civil War was the
Ku Klux Klan movement that emerged
after World War I. This racketeering
movement succeeded in enrolling a large
membership and even succeeded in elect-
ing men to office. The national conven-
tions of the Republican and Democratic
parties had to wrestle with the problem.
For a while the hate and fear mongers
found large segments of the American
people responsive to their propaganda.
With the subsidance of the hates and
fears engendered by the war, the move-
ment collapsed.
The other anti-movement that made
headway was the Coughlin movement.
The hollowness of the whole movement
was revealed in the presidential election
of 1940. At the convention of the Cough-
linites, Townsendites, Lemkeites, and all
other. anti-elements, Father Coughlin
promised that he would never again speak
on the air if his party did not poll 7,000,-
000 votes. The count showed less than a
million, and of these the old people who

CHRONICLE and

were promised $200.00 a month cast the
majority of the votes.
The Gerald L. K. Smiths are a nuisance,
and may even become a danger, but as
long as they do not get political control
they will remain only a nuisance.

Plain

American and British troops found
thousands of Germans in the towns and
villages taken by them. These Germans
did not obey the order to flee and scorch
the earth. The Gestapo could not threaten
or compel, so they stayed put. The young
men and the Nazi functionaries got out
as fast as they could. These few facts
can be interpreted in many ways and we
choose to interpret them according to our
special predilections or, if one prefers,
according to our special bias and preju-
dice.
The Nazis fled but the German people
remained. Whether one likes it or not,
the fact remains that the behavior of the
Nazis and the people was different. From
this we conclude that the people were not
all Nazis. Certainly they obeyed the Ges-
tapo as long as the Gestapo was present
to enforce its orders. Certainly they did
not protest and they did not revolt. In
this they were much the same as are
folk everywhere.
The vast majority of us obey consti-
tuted authority, and few of us ever pro-
test or revolt against overwhelming force.
Our obedience and our failure to protest
does not necessarily mean that we are in
agreement with, or approve of, what is
being done. The attitude of most people
is, "You can't fight City Hall." We be-
lieve the German people, under Hitler
rule, were not much different from the
German people under the Weimar•repub-
lic, or the people of Britain or America.
This is the first opportunity we have
had to appraise the German people since
Hitler came to power in 1933. This is
the first opportunity we have had to learn
what they would do when the Gestapo
was not around. They did not greet the
American and British soldiers as liber-
ators. Many explanations can be given
for this behavior, but we shall not offer
any at this time. We shall confine our-
selves to the one facet of their behavior,
their refusal to flee and their refusal to
scorch the earth.
We do not expect those who are com-
mitted to the policy of the extermination
of all Germans to change their attitude,
but whether they do or not, they are
faced by a stubborn fact. A section of
the German people did not obey Hitler
and the Gestapo.
There are unscrupulous. greedy, malic-
ious, ambitious, sychophantic and sadistic
Germans, but there are also scrupulous,
decent, honest, kindly and upstanding
Germans. We have protested and do still
protest against the indictment of a whole
nation—even the German nation.
We believe that when the final count
is taken it shall be discovered that per-
haps a majority of the mature German
people were only passively obedient at
first, and later on became apathetic and
hopeless, and could not respond even
to liberation.

The War Criminals

According to advices from London, the
Allied War Crimes Commission list does
not include the names of Hitler, Goering,
Himmler and Goebbels. The list at pres-
ent contains but 350 names. This infor-
mation will no doubt disturb and discom-
fit many, but we see no reason for being
disturbed by the revelation of the London
newspapers that carried the story.
Despite .the story we are still of the
opinion that the Axis war criminals will
be tried. The United Nations' representa-
tives have, on more than one occasion,
stated that the Axis war criminals will be
tried. They did not name them specific-
ally, but there can be little doubt as to
the identity of some of the war criminals.
This assumption is predicated upon the
fact that Secretary of State Hull, and rep-
resentatives of other United Nations coun-
tries, first requested the neutrals not to
give asylum to the Axis war criminals,
and later almost threatened the neutrals
if they gave them asylum. -
According to reports from Sweden,

Talk...

by Al

Segal

•

How Many Germans are Nazis?

(Continued on Page 5)

Friday, October 6, 1944

The Legal Chronicle

Crime and Punishment

R. IIILLEL, the business coast of South America
M
man, who occasionally asks acas in Venzuela there
pedestal a
to take over this column, says,

"Mr. Segal, it's several months
since I last wrote your column
for you, and what do you think
of my writing a piece for you
this week ?"
I said, all right, Mr. Hillel,
since I wasn't in much of a mood
of writing anyway. The season
is verging into Indian summer
and it's much more pleasant to
take a walk with Ellen who is
my granddaughter than to write
a column.
Mr. Hillel (which is not his
real name) said the craving to
write a column came over him
because he had a bone to pick
with me. That fact made Mr.
Hillel twice welcome, for there
is nothing I like so much as to
have a critic pick. particularly,
my own bones.
Mr. Hillel thereupon took from
his pocket the manuscript of his
column . . . "Here it is," he
said . . . It read as follows:
I suffered considerable pain
recently in reading a column by
Mr. Segal on what to do with
Germany after the war. Mr.
Segal seemed to be a softy. In
effect, he said that after we have
given Germany her spanking he
would tell her to go and sin no
more. He wouldn't break up Ger-
many into pieces.
That isn't the way I raise my
children. If that was the soft
way in which Mr. Segal brought
up his own children I am sur-
prised that they turned out to
be the decent people they are.
In my house wrong-doing always
has been followed by severe pen-
alties. The guilty are not al-
lowed to forget their sinning ;
the punishment they suffer ad-
monishes them sternly against
similar wrong-doing in the fu-
ture. On that policy I have
raised a God-fearing- law-abiding
family.
The human race and, particu-
larly, the German section of it,
needs to be hit hard in order
to learn moral lessons.

I

I I

FEAR Mr. Segal, as a mem-
ber of the people that has
suffered most at the hands of
the Germans, thought it . would
be a noble gesture in him, the
Jew, to regard the Germans mer-
cifully. He disregards the facts
of German life a whole genera-
tion of which has been taught
that mercy is only weakness to
be spat and trampled upon. I
would forever keep the wreck of
Germany as a horrible example
of what happens to nations that
break the laws of God and man.
( On the winding mountain
road that leads from the north

to Car-

stands on

a high

wrecked auto
It was placed there long ago to ,
warn all people who drive that
way of the fatality that may be-
fall those who drive to fast
, or
carelessly, or heedlessly of human
life. Similarly, I would make the
wreck of Germany a solemn mem-
orial of the consequences of
cruelty, rapacity and hate.)
In writing this I separate my-
self altogether from my Jewish
identity. I speak as one of the
great multitude of human beings
who in the recent weeks have
been horrified by first-hand, auth-
entic accounts and photographic
evidence of sub-human savagery
among
te
Ghernriettinosr
mean the
ts of Amer-
ican correspondents who have
authenticated the butcheries at
Lublin, have seen the lethal gas
chambers and the crematories
have looked at the human bones '
which the fleeing murderers in
their haste failed to remove. They
have seen ,800,000 pairs of shoes
which the killers were careful
to take from the feet of their
victims for use by German feet.
Their photographic evidence sup-
ports all this.
Before this I myself found it
hard to believe reports of mass-
murder by Germans. I couldn't
believe it because to believe it
was disrespectful of the human
race. I had been brought up to
think well of the human race
which, despite some backsliding,
had gone pretty far on the way
to civilization.
UT this slaughter-house was
an insult to the self-respect of
the whole human family. These
million dead were beyond pain
but the evidence of this multiple
crime remains a degrading affront
to all the race whose self-respect
requires th-zt the guilty nation
shall forever lie wrecked as an
admonition that the like of this
crime never must happen again.
This is a moral imperative.
Mr. Segal has reminded us
that in his youth he knew some
kind German teachers. Doubt-
less, there are some good Ger-
good Germans; he remembers
mans, even in Germany. But
these million murders were not
private crimes; they were nation-
al policy executed by authorities
whose every hate and word and
act the nation belled.
It is unfortunate that the good
Germans can't be separated from
the evil-doers. But as participat-
ing members of the nation they
must go clown in the awful wreck
with the criminals. Certainly. the
murder of a million or more could
not have been done by th : e hands

B

See

SEGAL—Page 9

LET'S TALK IT OVER

By Z. TYGEL

QUESTIONS

One standing, as it were, on
the rim of the present maelstrom
of life, watching it from his lofty
vantage point, has many a ques-
tion to ask regarding the Jewish
threads interwoven with the daily
war news, questions to which he
knows no answer, yet questions
that fill him with apprehension.
These are the questions:
Why had not some central re-
lief organization provided ade-
quate funds to help the refugees
in Fort Ontario as soon as they
arrived there? Had this been
done, a number of organizations
would have been spared the trou-
ble of scurrying around in an
effort to collect clothes and other
articles for the newcomers and
it would have made it unneces-
sary for some of them to come
out with sporadic explanations
which have. often left the read-
ers in doubt as to their veracity,
owing to the fact that they have
not infrequently contradicted one
another.
Why did no one intervene re-
garding the incomprehensible fact
that as late as Sept. 2, 10 days
after the liberation of Paris, the
Ghetto was still in existence and
that the Parisian Jews were held
behind bars, according to a cable
in the New York Times of even

date? This, while we arc well
aware of the fact that when our
tirmie• matched into Italy the
Jews there were liberated at once.
Why have we not heard of any
important Jewish organization, as,
for instance, the American Jew-
ish Conference, which, according
to rumors, has begun to show
signs of life, getting in touch
with the Soviet government re-
garding relief work in the liber-
ated terrtiories in Poland in re-
gard to its political aspects? At
a time when information has al-
ready reached us that special
committees for this purpose arc
already functioning in the City
of Lublin consisting of reputable
Jewish personages from Poland.
victorious
ne(ot by
Why are not
arnie followed
n d
social workers, men and i-tw ila o i m ne e
familiar with Jewish life in Eur-
ope, in order to render material
and spiritual aid to indivduals
,
and to the thousands of RN
who keep flocking from their hide-
outs to the liberated 'cities and
towns in the wake of the armed
forces of the Allies? We have
not heard of any of our Jewish
organizations making a request
for permission to do this kind

See TALK—Page

9