Friday, January 7, 7919
DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE
Page Foul
We the People Speak
Detroit Jewish Chronicle
Published by the Jewish Chronicle Publishing Co., Inc.
2805 Barium Tower, Detroit 26, Michigan
WOodward 1-1040
.■■■■■•■•
SUBSCRIPTION: $3.00 Per Year, Single Copies, 10c; Foreign, $5.00 Per Year
Haltered as Second-clan matte' March 3. 1916, at the Poet Office at Detroit, Mich., under the Act of March 3, 1879
GEORGE WEISWASSER, Editor-in-Chief
SEYMOUR TILCHIN, President
Vol. 51, No. 1
Friday, January 7, 1949 (Teveth 6, 5709)
Substitute for Dexter Center
Because of its scarcity, an empty store
on Dexter boulevard intended to be trans-
formed into a youth recreation spot will
be very difficult to find. Unless some pub-
lic spirited real estate man or landlord in
a sacrificial act offers such a center, it
seems to us that the Community Council
and the Jewish Center should look for
substitute quarters.
These should be available in the various
Synagogues, Hebrew schools and communal
offices in the area. We do not mean that
these should be permanent substitutes, for
a building where recreational activities can
be centered in one spot is much the more
practical idea.
•
• •
There are many afternoons and evenings
when the social halls and classrooms at the
Bnai Moshe or Shaarey Zedek or Jewish
National Fund offices or the Yeshivah can
be taken over by the Center for meetings
of clubs or for recreational pursuits of
youngsters and adults. Certainly these
public organizations will not turn a deaf
ear to a plea for use of their facilities on
a temporary basis as long as the Center
is willing to pay janitorial fees and per-
haps the electric costs in proportion.
United Hebrew School rooms have been
available to the Center for crafts, drama
and sports groups, and the undertaking has
proved enormously successful. There is no
reason why like success will not be met in
temporary quarters in Synagogues or other
institutions.
The Negev Offensive
•
It should be pointed out in surveying
Israeli reasons for its present offensive in
the southern desert that the Egyptians,
who have now been ignominiously driven
out, were in the Negev aS invaders, pure
and simple. No people with any self-res-
pect could be asked to sit complacently by
and see its territory violated with the ap-
parent condonation of the powers.
To those who would brush aside this
argument as either idealistic or a flouting
of the mandate of the UN, we must em-
phasize that an expected Egyptian attack
to offset Abdullah's recent successes had
to be forestalled. Secondly, it should be
remembered, Israel agreed to the Negev
cease-fire on the condition that an armistice
would be speedily arranged. Egypt stalled
and the truce negotiations collapsed. If
Egypt is sincere in arguing that she had
no intention of renewing her offensive, it
must still be countered that Israel could
not countenance a truce protecting foreign
invaders and which showed no signs of
developing into a peace settlement.
Had the UN insisted on Egyptian com-
pliance with its armistice resolution, the
new turn of events could be averted. There
seems to be no justification, then, for Secur-
ity Council insistence on Israeli compliance
in view of its apathy to Egypt's stalling.
A View on Hungai,
In view of recent events in Hungary, we
believe that Detroit Jews, particularly the
large segment with Hungarian antecedents,
will be interested in the recent report on
the country by George Seides, American
newspaperman who publishes the fearless
weekly "In Fact."
Hungary, he says, has made a marked
recovery and there is an abundance of
food there now. The standard of living
for working people and farmers is higher
than before the war, he declares. lie
denies reports of terrorism as alleged by
American correspondents and refutes the
assertion that Hungary is a Communist
state.
Only a handful of Jews are left in the
country and these, he points out, will ever
I, KIK. AOPULLMI
Sit AI IN THE NAME
OF IfiE
—
DETROIT 26, Mich.
be grateful to the Russian army which
saved the remnant.
"I am still not a Communist," Endre
Treppauer, one of them told Seides. "I am
a middle-of-the-road man, and I vote that
way. But I shall never say anything but
good for the Soviet Russians and I shall
never oppose any Communist , policies in
my country."
Colleges and universities, once open only
to the very wealthy and practically closed
to Jews, are free to the public today, he
reveals. One of the new regime's biggest
boasts, Seldes adds, is that every boy and
girl in the land can now get a college edu-
cation.
•
•
•
Cardinal Mindzenty, who was arrested
last week on charges of treason, is char-
acterized as a fascist and an anti-Semite.
According to the undersecretary for foreign
affairs, Ivan Boldiszar, the cardinal would
rail against the Jews to every newspaper
correspondent who interviewed hint. One
of the correspondents, a British journalist,
was told by the churchman, that "a group
of dwarfed men are ruling the country;
the majority consists of a Jewish gang of
terrorists; Jewish sadists are torturing
Hungarians at 66 Andrassy Strasse, where
scores of priests are imprisoned and tor-
tured, and naked women paraded before
them." •
"The statements of the cardinal were
false," Boldiszar asserted. "The British
woman, however, did not tell him that.
All she said on leaving him was: 'I am the
daughter of the Jewish Rabbi of White-
chapel'" Her name is Bertha Caster.
Boldiszar disclosed that 900,000 Hungar-
ian Jews were murdered by the Nazis.
Resistance fighters, he said, secretly called
on Cardinal Seredi, Mindzenty's predecessor,
to ask him to stop the slaughter since the
Hungarian Nazis were good Catholics and
one word from the cardinal would have
saved the Jews. Seredi's response, accord-
ing to Boldiszar, was that he could not mix
into politics.
The whole story can be found in the
Dec. 20 and 27 issues of "In Fact."
No Quarrel With JSSB
We would. be dishonest with ourselves
if we failed to acknowledge that we merited
some of the criticism leveled at us by Mor-
ris Lewis in his Letter to the Editor on our
editorial comments on the JSSB. We have
fortuitiously learned Lewis' identity and
we feel that his words were motivated by
a sincere analysis.
We would like to clear up this point:
We are not quarreling with the JSSB
on the caliber of its services. We have
agreed that the organization is generally
known to be one of the top social welfare
agencies in the city and we do not know
anything to controvert that opinion.
• •
•
What vexed us was the agency's refusal
to answer questions submitted to it in good
faith. It is not the agency's prerogative
to decide whose criticism it should answer
and whose disdain.
Our point is that the JSSB, an agency
supported by public funds, is answerable
to the press even if it considers the pfess
capricious. We believe its contemptuous
treatment of the Chronicle unwarranted.
4
r4 4
Letters to the Editor
ALDER SOUGHT
Dear Editor:
Information is being sought
of the whereabouts of Ivan Gor-
don Alder alias Martin Alder on
behalf of his wife, Minnie, and
six minor children whom he has
failed to support since February,
1948.
He is 30. 5 feet 10 inches tall,
weighs 180 pounds, has brown
hair, blue eyes, scar on left side
of head, also scar on left leg,
wears glasSes occasionally. Any-
one aware of his location is re-
quested to communicate with the
National Desertion Bureau, 105
Nassau Street, New York 7,
N. Y."
SAMUEL EDEI.STEIN,
Assistant Secretary.
PRENZLAUER THANKS
Dear Editor:
I want to thank you most sin•
cerely on behalf of the Eva
Prenzlauer Maternity Aid. Your
kind cooperation has made it
possible for us to achieve such a
wonderful response for our donor
luncheon.
MRS. SAMUEL KUHLIK.
Truman Gesture of Amity
Stirs Americans of Goodwill
By WILLIAM ZUKERMAN
(Jewish World News Service)
NEW YORK—President Tru-
man's act in attending the testi-
monial dinner of his former
partner, Eddy Jacobson in Kan-
sas City, was a beau geste of
democracy at its best and typi-
cal of the President as well as
of the average American whom
he represents.
A personal report of the event
in the New York Morning
Journal by Rabbi Moshe Doved
Solomon who participated in
the dinner, gives a graphic ac-
count of the incident. According
to the Rabbi, the President's
visit was a complete surprise to
Jacobson as well as to most of
the audience.
The dinner was tendered to
Jacobson by the Jewish commu-
nity of Kansas City in recogni-
tion of his philanthropic activi-
ties. The guests were mostly
Jewish business men, communal
workers, with a sprinkling of
Rabbis.
• • •
IN COMES PRESIDENT
SUDDENLY THE DOORS of
the hotel . dining room opened
and the President, accompanied
by his brother and newspaper-
men, appeared and sat at the
table.
The President's words about
his partner Eddy were simple,
sincere and folksy. He related
stories known to the average
American small business men of
how he and his partner strug-
gled to keep their haberdashery
going, and failed. From these
personal and trivial remarks he
passed to deliver one of the
most important political speech-
es of many months.
The impression left by the
visit was tremendous. Jacobson
was moved to tears and the en-
tire Jewish community of Kan-
sas City was deeply impressed,
and so were Jews and non-Jews
all over the United States. For
this was an act of democracy
at its best.
For the head of the greatest
state in the world to come down
to a dinner of an old partner in
business and pay homage to a
common citizen was an act of
humanity possible only in the
United States. It was one of
those simple acts which will go
down, like those of President
Lincoln, in the history of Amer-
ican presidency and will endear
Mr. Truman to the average
American, Jew and non-Jew
alike.
• • •
A PLAIN MAN
MR. TRUMAN has never been
a snob, and this has always
been his greatest asset. But since
the last election when his com-
mon Americanism won such a
signal victory, his un-snobbish-
ness and simple. unadultered
democracy have risen in the eyes
of the people from a position of
mere notice to that of a promin-
ent feature of his character. For
it is Mr. Truman's own; not a
reflection of his predecessor,
who was anything but un-snob-
bish. •
The incident at Kansas City
was a public assertion of this
fact and it deserves all the
applause that it has received.
As far as the issue of juvenile delin-
quency is concerned, we have not held that
the Jewish community is faced by any
such problem or that JSSB has been neg- Arbitration Committee Asks for More Cases
ligent in handling it. We suggested merely To acquaint the community About one new case every two
that certain indications in the Jewish neigh- with its work, the arbitration weeks is brought before the
borhoods implied a possible upsurge and committee of the Jewish Com- body. It also handles an equal
we advised Jewish agencies to be alert. munity Council has sent letters number of problems that do not
lawyers and Rabbis who may require full arbitration. A. C.
It is our job to so advice and we intend to
be in a position to refer cases Lappin is chairman and Louis
to continue it.
to it.
Rosenzweig, co-chairman.