Tage Two

Purely
Commentary

I. By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
.nuBNow'S TRAGIC DEATH

I 'Last week's hair-raising 'story of the
death of the great Jewish historian, Si-
nion Dubnow, at the hands of a former
pupil, the Nazi commander of the Riga
ghetto, three years ago, represented one
of the most tragic descriptions of bar-
barism enforces by Nazi ideology.
Mr. Dubnow was recognized as Jewry's
ablest historian since Heinrich Graetz.
Some listed him as being a more creative
writer of history than Graetz.
.. He was 81 when he was murdered, but
until his last days he had been compiling
-facts and figures about Jews and Jewish
life, about the Nazis and their atrocities.
His genius at conducting research work
became evident when he brought to light
significant facts in Russian-Polish-Jewry's
history as he culled them from old Pink-
•ousim-Jewish community records.
.. When the complete story of this cen-
tury is written, the name of Simon Dub-
now will be recorded as that one of the
most creative figures, and the tragic
circumstances of his death will add. to
the disgrace of the German people.
* * * *
RUSSIA AND PALESTINE
Great hope is being placed in the possi-
bility that Russia may exert strong in-
fluence upon future events in Palestine.
The optimists place particular confi-
,dence in the report from Tel Aviv that
the RuSsian press attache in Teheran, M.
Baranov, speaking to a delegation of the
'Palestine Victory League, assured them
' that Russia will support Jewish independ-
ence in Palestine. He indicated that the
Palestine question will be included- in
the discussions on Middle East problems
which the United Nations must solve.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency report
from Tel Aviv also revealed the follow-
ing:

The delegation of the Victory League, return-
ing to Palestine from Teheran where it deliver-
ed a transport of gifts for the Red Army, re-
ported at a press conference here that the
Soviet authorities also extended an invitation
to the Jews of Palestine to send a delegation
to Minsk, capital of Byelorussia, to establish
Jewish orphanages • there for children of war
dead. Prof. Barian, chief representative of the
Russian Red Cross in the Middle East, who
transmitted the invitation, also stated that a
Russian medical delegation, which he will head,
will soon visit Palestine to study the Jewish
medical institutions.
The delegation was also told by Russian
re presentatives in Teheran that the Soviet
Government will have sixteen delegations at
the peace conference, representing individual
Soviet Republics, and that these delegations will
all fight against the mandatory system. The
Russian representatives in Iran all stressed
'Russia's appreciation of the fact that the Jew-
ish people in Palestine is progressive and op-
poses fascist plans, members of the delegation
told the press conference.

These facts are exceedingly interest-
ing, and it may be . of additional
importance that Prof. Solomon Mikhoels
and Itzik Feffer, leaders of the Jewish
Anti-Fascist Committee i n Moscow,
should have sent the following birthday
greeting to Dr. Chaim Weizmann, presi-
dent of the World Zionist Organization
and the Jewish Agency for Palestine:

"We cordially congratulate you on your
seventieth anniversary. It is being marked in
these days of heavy trials for our people but
also in days when on the sky of our long suf-
fering people have appeared rays of victory
over the treacherous enemy. We have a right
to say with pride that the Jewish people has
not wavered in the minutes of mortal danger
but united its forces in the struggle against the
enemy. The traditions of the Maccabees and of
Bar Kokhba have come to live with new force
in the ranks of the finest sons and daughters.
"United with all freedom-loving nations, and
our destiny linked with the destiny of progress-
ive mankind, with the heroic Red Army and the
armies of Great Britain and the United States,
we courageously look forward to the time when
in the family of the free nations Jews of the
whole world will attain to a happy, creative
and free life. We wish you many years of health
and fruitful activity."

How do you make it all out?
It is not difficult to recognize the
guarded language of the latter statement
and the caution taken by the Russian
Jewish spokesmen not to mention Pales-
tine or Jewish national independence in
Eretz - Israel. It is typical of the policy
they pursued in the course of their tour
of the United States a year ago.
It is too early, therefore, to judge con-
, sequences or to come to any conclusions
whatever regarding Russia's attitude on
Palestine. Most reports are conflicting,
and all we can do is to hope that Russia
will see fit to give the Zionist cause its
strongest support. Such assistance would
be tantamount to assuring complete suc-
cess to the Jewish aspirations in Pales-
tine.
* a *
IRONIC TRUTH
• There is truth in the following ironic
statement made on the floor of the U. S.
House of Representatives by Congress-
man Emanuel Celler of New York:
"The consideration of the Palestine
Resolution has again been put off. • This
has caused keen disappointment. The ex-
planation for the delay, in my humble
opinion, is most lame and lamentable.
They remind me of the story of Alice in
Wonderland. Alice at the Tea Party asked
The. White Queen for some jam. The

T1-1E-JEWISH NVEWS

Friday, Decembei. 29, '1944

JDC Woiker in Italy

By MAX PERLMAN, J.D.C. Overseas Representative

Editor's Note: Mr. Perlman, one of the two American social workers who were the
first to enter liberated Italy, left that country recently after spending eight months there
and six in North Africa. The Joint Distribution Committee, which derives its funds in
Detroit from the Allied Jewish Campaign through the War Chest, allocated special funds
for emergency relief in Italy during. 1944.

Today there. are 22,000 Jews in liberated Italy. Of this group, 5,000 are
non-Italian refugees. Although in all of Italy there is utter devastation of
homes and communities, hunger, nakedness, lack of protection from heat,
cold and rain, children who have been separated from parents, and a fright-
ened population, each area presents individual problems.
In the heel of Italy there is a camp called Santa Maria de :Bagni. Seven
hundred Jewish refugees live there in summer houses which formerly be-
longed to wealthy Fascists. Many of the refugees came through the fighting
lines from Germany, Austria and Poland. Others were , flown in secretly at
night -from Yugoslavia. Some came in small boats across the Adriatic. All
suffered malnutrition. They asked the J.D.C. for employment, food, a school
for their children and .ra synagogue—in that order. Because there were no jobs
of any kind in that region, we started workshops and I made the rounds of
the various army installations to seek salvage materials.
An incapacitated British Friends ambulance driver volunteered to initiate
the work projects. The shops began to function and soon the refugees were
producing beds of wooden frames with scrap telephone wire woven in place
of springs; clothing for men, women and children from captured German
canvas; pots, pans and stoves from • tin cans.
Another example- of J.D.C.'s work in Italy is the story of agricultural
schools, of which there are four in Italy. Two American medical officers-
Maj. Charles G. Polan of Charleston, W. Va. and Maj. Philip Hallock of
Minneapolis, Minn.—and one American sanitary engineer—Capt. I. David
Falker of New York City—have become "fathers" to a group of 33 battle-
shocked, malnourished refugee children whom they have restored to health
at this school. Their parents have been killed by the Germans in Italy, Czecho-
slovakia, Germany, Poland, Greece and Yugoslavia. When they discovered the
school, the three American officers volunteered to spend their free time
with the children. •
At the Italian concentration camp of Ferramonti there were 2,000 Jews,
nearly all suffering from malaria. Until the Allied Commission could arrange
to provide food for this group", J.D.C. subsidized their feeding program. Now
we provide funds for special diets, school lunches and clothing.
J.D.C., in cooperation with the War Refugee Board and the Jewish
Agency, arranged for the emigration of many of these refugees to the United
States or Palestine. When I left . Italy, it was our plan to emigrate part of
this group to Palestine and move the remaining to Santa Maria.
Every refugee camp and center in this - region is a member of the refugee
"parliament" at Bari, which speaks !for the 2,500 refugees in the area.
The Rome area presents a completely different problem. There are 11,000
Jews there. Throughout the occupation J.D.C.'s cooperating committee, the
Delasem, continued to work underground, financing its programs primarily
by loans which they made against the credit of the J.D.C. When J.D.C.
entered liberated Rome, with the help of AMG, it gathered 25 of the leading
Roman Jews together for the purpose of getting them to assume as much
financial responsibility as possible for their own communities. The local Jews
raised 800,000 lire to match the J.D.C.'s contribution.
A similar campaign was launched in Florence where local Jews, supple-
menting J.D.C.'s funds, allocated 300,000 lire to reopen community institu-
tions. In Naples, the J.D.C. has equipped and subsidized a hostel, a soup
kitchen and a school for children.
Incidentally, while operating in Italy, J.D.C. was able to help 1,400 Jews
stranded in the section of Yugoslavia called Croatia. The British Military
Mission provided clothing from their military • stocks and the Balkan Air
Force provided four planes which dropped eight tons of supplies by para-
chute to the stranded Jews.

Heard in
The Lobbies

By ARNOLD LEVIN

(Copyright, 1944 Independent Jewish
Press Service, Inc.)

NO ORCHIDS
Were there a jury to judge the political
morality of motion pictures, it would
ban "Tomorrow the World," which is
definitely immoral, preaching as it does
mercy for the Nazi killer species. The
hero, a Nazi-bred youngster transplanted
on American soil, commits every immag-
inable kind of brutality, including felon-
ious assault and attempt at murder. But
toward the end, trapped by his own
doings, he breaks down and weeps his
resentment, and all the other characters
in the picture group around him, singing
Hoshanahs to the miracle of his rehabili-
tation, and pointing out that this is evi-
dence that all Germany may yet be
rehabilitated with kindness and sym-
pathy. I can't comprehend this at all.
Capital punishment or,: at best, life im-
prisonment, are the accepted mode of
rehabilitation for murderers. Why should
the murderers of Maidanek, killers of
thousands, be treated any better than
murderers holding a smaller score?
BUFFALO SHUFFLE
Quite a huff in Buffalo over a speech
delivered there by a Jewish educator,
who reportedly criticized plans for a
Jewish parochial school. The Superin-
tendent of the Catholic parochial schools
resented what he regarded as an implied
slur on the entire parochial school sys-
tem and appropriately came to the de-
fense of the yeshivahs as well as the
schools of his own 'denomination, a Buf-
falo correspondent reports to us.
G. I.'S AND VETS
Jewish War Veterans are going in for
a large scale campaign to enroll in their
ranks the newest vets. Some people of
means are ready to offer resources for
this recruitment, feeling that a strong
Jewish vets organization is the most ef-
fective goodwill and civic-protective in-
strument yet devised.

Queen responded, 'The rule is jam yester-
day- and jam tomorrow, but never jam
today.' So the tragedy of the Jews, all
over the world, is a follows: 'The tempest
tossed Jew could get relief yesterday, can
get relief tomorrow, but can never get
relief today'. "
Not only the excuses are lamentable.
The role, played by Great Britain and
our State Department are lamentably
tragic.

Between
You and Me

By. PHINEAS J. BIRON

(CoPyrighy. 1944, by Seven Arts
Feature Syndicate)

LISTEN HERE
Not enough publicity was given in
either the Jewish or the general press to
a resolution passed by the CIO at its
recent annual convention in Chicago .. .
The resolution stated in unmistakable
terms that "we pledge our support, for
the enactment of a4 Federal law which
would make anti-Semitism a crime pun-
ishable by imprisonment" . . Corning
from the most powerful labor organiza-
tion in America, this is of tremendous
importance at a time when Fascist
groups are girding their loins for a new
offensive.
Some representatives of the exclusively
Aryan population of Bronxville, N. Y.,
have been carrying on a campaign to
change the town's name to Lawrence-
ville . . . They feel that "Bronxville" is
too remindful of the Bronx, the borough
where so many Jews live . . . Which
reminds us: This business of giving the
city of Berlin some Jewish name such
as Ginsberg may have been all right as
a gag, as it originally appeared in a letter
to the editor of Time magazine—but we
do think it's being auoted too often, and
usually with too little humor . . . Some
of the comment sounds as if the com-
mentators were shrewdly spreading anti-
Jewish feeling.
Timely reminder from W. Winchell:
"Who cares if Hitler is or isn't dead? . • .
Isn't it more important to make certain.
we don't allow Hitler's ideas to live?"
* * *
YOU SHOULD KNOW
The announcement by the chief of the
Political Department of the Jewish Ag-
ency for Palestine that it is seeking
recognition of the demand for a Jewish
Commonwealth not only from Britain but
also from America and the Soviet Union
means that Dr. Weizmann is drastically
changing the Zionist policy . . . He has
come to realize that the Mandate for
Palestine, now held by Great. Britain,
may be reconsidered at the forthcoming
peace conference.
* *
.
.
BOOK NEWS
The American Jewish Committee re-
cently contributed $5,000 to the Jewish
Division of the New_York Public Library,
for the purchase of books.
Next column we shall list the names
of the winners of our contest, who -qual :
ified for autographed copies of Pierre
van Paassen's "The Forgotten Ally" . . .
Sixteen readers sent in the correct an-
swers.
Brook Willow, by Nelia Gardner White,
is a novel that should be listed as anti-
Semitic . . . Disparaging comments on
Jews are distilled by a character pre-
sented as a Jew.
* * *
-
ABOUT PEOPLE
Composer Jerome Kern's completion of
40 years of work was celebrated all over
the country . . . Kern, as you should -
know, is a member of that non-Aryan
race which Hitler is exterminating in
the concentration camps of Europe . . •
Here in America the musical world pro-
claimed Kern as the most distinguished
creator of popular music . . . The master-
mind of this triumph of promotion was
none other than Maurice Bergman, ad-
vertising genius of Universal Pictures.
News from Palestine calls Henrietta
Szold's condition critical . . . Orthodox
Jewry in Eretz Israel has decreed special
prayers for the first lady of Zionism,
now in her 85th year.
Theda Bara, whom your parents knew
as "The Vamp" of the movies, and who
has been living a quiet domestic life in
Hollywood for some decades now, is said
to be reutrning to the screen ' world—but
this time as a scenarist.

—

By BORIS SMOLAR

(Copyright. 1944. JTA, Inc.)

THE AMERICAN SCENE
Everything points to the fact that the
tendency to "snipe" at Jews which was
displayed during the past session of Con-
gress will not be present in the 79th
Congress . . . This is a result of • the fact
that some outsanding isolationists, behind
whom many anti-Semites operated, were
defeated in the November elections . . .
However, Clare Hoffman of Michigan
and John Rankin of Mississippi won re-
election to the House of Representatives
. .. On the other hand, a number of new
liberals will enter the Senate . . . They
include at least three liberal Democrats
and two liberal Republicans.
It has now been established that in
neither volume, nor variety, did scur-
rilous literature play as great a part in
the election campaign as it did four years
ago . . . The annonymous outpourings of
vituperative, un-American, for the- most
part anti-Jewish, material at that time
flooded the records of the special com-
mittee set up by the Senate to investigate
campaign expenditures . . . Approximate-
ly 250 different examples came to its
attention . . . The most scurrilous and
libelous propaganda conducted during
the elections this year was carried under
the slogan: "Clear Everything With Sid-
ney" . . . Pennsylvania's Republican
chairman M. Harvey. Taylor admitted
before a Senate committee that his group
financed to the tune of nearly $15,000
the printing of. 3,000,000 copies of a
pamphlet "Clear Everything With Sid-
ney" . . . This pamphlet was barred from
the mails by the Post Office Department
. . . About 200,000 copies, however, were
actually distributed.
* •
THE JEWISH SCENE
Jews have sacrificed 25 times more
lives in this war than the British Empire
has lost on the battlefield and through
the bombings . . . Hardly a million and
a half Jews remain in European countries
where there were 6,000,000 but a few
years ago . . • These figures have been
compiled by the Jewish Agency for Pal-
estine . . . Confirmed by direct contact
with the centers of European Jewry, the
figures establish that approximately half
of the 1,500,000 Jews are in the Balkan
countries — about 350,000 in Hungary,
300,000 in Romania, 45,000 in Bulgaria
and 10,000 in Greece . . . In three west-
., European countries — France, Belgium

.

.

,

Strictly
Confidential

and Holland—less than 200,000 Jews have
remained, and in Poland not even that
many . . . About 22,000 Jews have found
refuge in Switzerland; 11,000 in Sweden;
3,000 in Portugal, Spain and Tangier .. .
Several thousand are in Italy and 25,000
in Shanghai . . . Eliyahu Dobkin, who,
in behalf of the Jewish Agency, made
an extensive visit to refugee centers in
Europe, charges the great powers with
doing nothing for the rescue of Jews
. . . He emphasizes especially the fact
that "not even one boat was used to
rescue refugees from the Balkans, at a
time when ships plied back and forth
carrying food and war prisoners" . . .
This, he says, remains a black mark
never to be erased, since those ships
could have carried the refugees under
international protection . . . He also
establishes that food could have been
supplied to the Jewish ghettos by the
Allied powers.