Page Six

THE JEWISH NEWS

Friday, Sepfember 7. 1945

Where Are the Jews of Europe?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Meyer Levin, Jewish Telegraphic
Agency war correspondent, and prominent novelist, who
recently returned home after covering the war in Europe,
had a better opportunity than perhaps any other Jewish
observer to see at first .hand what had become of the Jews
of Europe. He travelled the length and breadth of that
tortured continent seeking the Jewish survivors. The fol-
lowing article paints a sad picture of what he found.

By
MEYER LEVIN

(Jewish Telegraphic
Agency War
Correspondent)

(Copyright, 1945,
Jewish Telegraphic
•
Agency Inc.)

1'

and they hold meetings and they declare that the Jews
are at last united, having been persecuted as one they
shall- now rebuild as one.
But those who lived through the persecution are
more fanatic in their partisan beliefs than ever before.
Each man feels that his survival is somehow a proof
from on high that he was right, right and precisely
right in all his beliefs, he has been spared to prove
this. So the Bund and the Communists and the Zion-
ists and the French Jews of the Consistory are psycho-
logically as widely apart as ever before though they
cooperate more effectively in some practical matters.
All feel they must be right, for all have been
heroes. The Jewish youth organizations fought with
the greatest skill and bravery, in the resistance in
France and in Holland and in Belgium and- in Slovakia,
everywhere their story is the same. And those who
survive have great spirit, and are the best of Jews.
Many Remain in Camps
How many Jews survive altogether in Europe? In
France, Belgium, Holland, approximately 200,000.
In Luxemburg, 400.
In Germany, counting Aachen, Cologne, Frank-
fort, Munich, Leipzig, Hainburg—about 1,000, in all
these cities. For all Germany, at most 3,000.
And . in the concentration camps: Buchenwald,
Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Mulhausen, a total of at most
35,000, and in the scattered camps at most another
15,000, making a possible 50,000, most of whom are
broken in health.
That is all. There are no More to spring up from
the earth. There are no more places to be liberated.
There are no children to grow up—no more than 10,000
to replace 7,000,000 slaughtered Jews.
From Italy, the report comes of some 40,000 alive,
including the Jews of Jugoslavia.
From the Russian side, we learn of 150,000 still
surviving in Hungary, and a possible 200,000 survivors
of the millions of Polish Jews.
And the 300,000 Jews of Romania, surviving.
That is all. A, scant million, out of the eight to

ten million Jews of Europe. And of all the commun-
ities, all the Jewries with their live and flowering
cultures,. only Romania remains intact. Poland, the
center of Jewish life in Europe, is a monument to
the completeness of Hitler's one victory.
Can these communities be reestablished in Eu-
rope? Can the survivors return to their homes, and
take root?
Who are the survivors? In the German cities,
those who survive are the mix-married Jews, whose
children are half-Jewish and in most cases the chil-
dren who were allowed to live were only those who
had adopted Christianity.
Out of these people, nothing creatively Jewish
will come; there will only be individual complexes.
In the concentration camps, some few thousands
young people who are regaining vigor are to be found.
About half of these are clearly determined to have a
life in Palestine. They while away this time of
waiting, singing Hebrew songs, discussing plans for
their life in Palestine. They are psychically the best
balanced. The others, young and old, don't know
what they want; they only know that they do not
want to go back to their land of origin, to the place
where their families were murdered. Some, who still
cherish a shred of hope that a brother or parent may
be alive, want to go back in the hope of a reunion,
before seeking a new life. But all want eventually
to find a life anywhere but in Europe.
A young, tormented boy in Bergen-Belsen is
typical of these lost souls. He is gifted for chemistry.
He wonders, should he make his way to the Russian
side, or wait, and trust his life to the western world.
Would the Russians make a simple laborer - of him, or
would they give him an opportunity to study, to be-
come a chemist? And on the western side—hpw long
would it be before he could find his way fo some
country where his talents might' flower? All day, all
night he torments himself, trying to come to a de-
cision.' It means his whole life.
What shall become of these people? It is already
obvious that their problem will involve lengthy dis-
cussions; they will be debated upon as thdugh -they
were a vast mass immigration whose advent would
tax any country and create "problems." I am cer-
taM that in the debate everyone will lose sight of the
simple fact that in all, at the utmost, only a few hun-
dred thousand people are involved and that these
could be accommodated anywhere, even in Palestine,
without creating a change in the population balance.
For most of them, I believe Palestine is the only hope
of return to physical health.
One thing is certain. They, cannot recreate a
Jewish life in Europe. That is dead. The immediate
task is to bring out these remnants of Israel from
Europe, to heal them and give them a remainder of
life.

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nine months I sought the Jews
of Europe. When a city was entered by our troops,
I went in and asked whether any Jews were still
wive; in Paris, in Brussels, in Verdun, in Luxemburg,
in Aachen, and in Cologne, Trier, Frankfurt, then • in
the concentration camps, in Buchenwald and Dachau
and Bergen-Belsen and on the ,roads where the last
transports were disbanded.
Over and over I have heard the story. From
the beginning, in France, it was already a dirge, - but
as we went eastward what we heard in France echoed
as most favorable. In France, it was out of 400,000,
150,000, in Belgium, in Holland, the proportion grew
smaller, and then there began to be places where the
dirge went like this:
Out of 40,000, 100 remain.
Out of 20,000 who lived in this city, 17 remain.
Out of 2,000 who started _on our convoy, six remain.
Out of a 150,000 who have been through this camp,
3,000 remain.
I went to all the cities and all the camps and then
I went back to the places where people said, "but
more will turn up, surely thousands have been hidden
in the country, and they will turn up."
They had not turned up, nine months later, not
in any numbers.
I went back to the cities where they had said,
"things will be better for us now," and in the German
cities, such as Cologne, the few surviving Jews said
to me, "things are worse. Until our liberatian, we
were starved by the German's as Jews. Now we are
starved as Germans."
And in Luxemburg and France the few -Jews. who
had come back and • sought their apartments', Were
having to go to court to -sue' for the return 'of their
homes, and several times when the . courts ., returned
By JOSEPH KLAUSNER (Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature,
their homes to them, new anti-Semitic organization
Hebrew University, Jerusalem)
appeared, such as the "Locataires de Bonne Fois" .in.
Paris, to try to bar 'them from moving in.
Revisits. Concentration Camps .
ROF. LouiS Ginzberg, Institute dedicated to Jewish learn-
I went back • to the concentration camps, - weeks
leading authority - on the Talmud, _ ing should have the precedence
after they had been opened, and the French had gone
quotes a passage from the intro-
aver all other institutes, and dur-
home, and the Belgians' and the Dutch, and the Rus-
duction to the book of Hosea by
ing the first four years after the
sians were on the way, and there were liaison officers
'Jerome, one of the early Church establishment of the University the
from every government, to take -care of their people, - St.
Fathers, 'where that great Chris-
Institute was its heart and center.
only the Jews were unspoken for, feverish with mass
tian Bible commentator severely
Since 1929, when the University
anxiety. "Why have we the las1 few been forgotten?"
criticizes
the
Jew-
they cried.
ish scholars of this
They had not been forgotten. But representatives
day f o r spending
of Jewish organilations had been delayed, and de-
their time "in the la-
layed in their effort to get into the camps. -
boratories of physi-
cians. The_ Talmud
Everywhere, in the cities in Fri o
- nce,: Belgium,
employs :the . term
Germany, Luxemburg, and even in the concentration
."Askan . bi-Dvarim",
camps, I heard the same story; anti-Semitism is
stronger than ever: . I met. a . man who had travelled - which means, o n e
Who investigates na ,
all through Slavakia, arid . he said JeWs can' no longer
tural phenomena in
live in such an atmosphere. I met a Luxemburger
order to clarify reli-
who had been for six years in a concentration camp
gious
problems.
with others - from Luxemburg, but - on'the way honie
This close. contact
they put him out of the bus, they were not eager to
between Jewish and
have a Jew return with them.
general learning did
I met an American film director who had wanted - not cease even in
to film a scene of a Jewish religious service, in the
the Middle Ages;
concentration camp of Dachau, and had asked an
but it was broken
American rabbi chaplain, to arrange this service in off in modern times.
the main square of the camp, where various national
General leartiing
celebrations had already taken place. The following
and Jewish learning
day, Chaplain David Eichhorn informed this director,
then. became two
Col. George Stevens, that the camp committee—com-
separate worlds;
posed of representatives from among the liberated pris-
general subjects
oners—had banned the open service because "a large
Were studied by
Jewish affair of. this . kind might create incidents in
Jews in • the Univer-
U. S. Gift -
the camp."
sities of the Gentiles
Col. Stevens became red with rentiniscent fury
and . the Torah of This building, donat-
even as he told me of this.. "To find such a thing, in
Israel in Yeshivoth
ed by the family of
a concentration camp! I went to that committee and
and rabbinical sem-
the late Sol Rosen,
told them we were having the service, and we had the
inaries.
service, and I filmed it."
The Supreme
bloom of Pittsburgh,
Providence that
, Yes, we can insist on the service, here and there,
houses the 'Institute
works in 'Jewish
where we happen to be present. But those who have
of Jewish Studies.
history and does not
to live against the atmosphere, all their days, and
permit this s m a 11
with their strength already gone, can't do much in
and oppressed peo-
the way of insistence.
ple to be destroyed ,foresaw, so to
established its Faculty of Human-
French Jews Changing Names
speak, that one day the Jewr'Y of
ities, the Institute of Jewish Stud-
Eastern
Europe
would
step
down
In Paris, any day, I would pick up the Official
ies has been an integral unit of
from the stage of history, and that the Faculty. None the less, the
Journal of France and turn to the back pages and find
the springs of Torah and Jewish
a column of Cohens and Abrams changing their names
Institute enjoys a considerable de-
to Dupont or Leclerc. . "
learning would then dry up. And
gree of autonomy. It has its own
so
it
came
about
that
the
first
im-
chairman,
who' Is elected every
The one remaining Jew I found in Verdun said
portant cultural activity to be un-
year solely by the members of its
to me at the close of the interview, "but I must re-
dertaken in the period of settlement staff. A special committee for the
mind you, I am Catholic."
ushered in by the Balfour Delcar- „ Institute is 'presided over by Dr.
The first Jew I talked to in Germany was a Pro-
ation was the Institute of Jewish
J. H. Hertz ; Chief Rabbi of the
testant.
Studies of the Hebrew University.
British Empire.
And in all, what is left? Numerically, - perhaps a
In December 1924, this Institute
The Institute of Jewish Studies,
third of the Jews of France are left, but this includes
was dedicated several * months be-
still retains its central place in the
maw thousands who escaped from Poland, Germany fore the opening of the University Faculty of Humanities. The scope
and Holland. It is not really a 'community. The Jew-
itself. It was entirely •natural
of its .curriCulum is wider and the
ish organizations and congregations have set up .their
that, in the Hebrew University and number of its professors, lecturers
fralneWork again and they go through all the motions in the - Land of the Hebrews, the
and instructors larger than in any

,

•

Hebrew Instituate of Jewish Studies

--Citadel of the Jewish Spirit

P

other institute of the Faculty. Two
professors teach the Bible, three
Talmud (there is also an instruc-
tor in Talmud in the preparatory
tours), -two professors and an in-
structor in Hebrew literature, two
professors, two lecturers and two
instructors in Jewish history and
the sociology of the Jews, two pro-
fessors in Jewish philosophy and
mysticism, one professor and one
external teach the Hebrew lan-
guage, a n d one instructor in
Palestinology.
The fact that the Institute is,
as mentioned above, an integral

Hebrew
University
In Action

.

•

•

Prof. Joseph Klaus
ner, author of this
article, is shown
here (left) lecturing
t o students at the
Hebrew University
on modern Hebrew
literature.

tittif riff nu

part of the Faculty of Humanities,
is very advantageous, because un-
der this arrangement the Jewish
subjects are not separated from
the general subjects.
In our days. the Talmudic say-
ing, "The Torah returns to her
Home" has been fulfilled. For,
the Torah that went forth from
Zion has now returned to Zion.
In this thought we may find some
comfort for the destruction of the
great seats of Jewish learning in
'Europe. The saying of the prophet,
"And ye shall be comforted in Jer-
usalem," has been fulfilled in our
day. CopyFriegahtturle94EynSdeiNcreante Arts

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