JEWISH NEWS
A Weekly Review
VOL. 8, NO. 19
34.40, 22
Detroit 26, Mich.
of Jewish Events
January 25, 1946
10c; $3 Per Year
$2,000,000 Drive
Launched to Save
European Jewry
They Can Smile Again:
Orphaned by Nazi brutality
and enslaved in peat pits, this sister and brother are two of
many thousands rescued and resettled in the Jewish National
Home with the aid of the United Palestine Appeal. UPA
fundS will help them adjust to their new surroundings and
provide financial assistance, vocational training, temporary
housing. An agricultural settlement built with UPA funds
by the Keren, Hayesod on Keren Kayemeth land will become
their permanent home in the Jewish homeland. Funds for
this great effort will be provided by Detroit's Allied Jewish
Campaign for $2,000,000.
Jewish homelessness and suffering in Europe have reached such disastrous propor-
tions that only an unparalleled relief, reh abilitation and reconstruction program can
stave off further mass deaths among the 1,2 50,000 Jewish survivors in Europe. This
message was brought to the boards of directors of the Jewish Welfare Federation
of Detroit and the Detroit Service Group, and a group of Detroit Allied Jewish Cam-.
paign leaders, Tuesday evening, at a conf erence and dinner meeting held at Hotel
Statler, by a delegation of nationally kno wn American Jewish leaders.
The visiting leaders came to Detroit to stress the urgency of the plight confront-
ing the Jews who are still alive today. The conference was called to formulate De-
troit's program of action and participation in the record United Jewish Appeal cam-
paign of 1946 for $100,000,000 to "assure the survival of the Jewish people, whether
they choose to stay in Europe, or to build a new life in Palestine, or to begin anew
elsewhere."
qe
Tuesday's meeting served to set in to motion the campaign for Detroit's
$2,000,000 share in the $100,000,000 driv e. The decision was unanimous to start
the drive through the reconstituted Allied Jewish Campaign machinery.
Included in the visiting • delegation, se veral of whom recently had returned from
a first-hand survey of shattered Jewish communities in Europe, were George Backer, a
member of the board of directors of the J oint Distribution Committee; George Al-
pert of Boston, noted attorney and communal leader; Chaplain Herschel Schacter,
who returned recently from Germany; Ru dolf Sonneborn, chairman of the National
Council of the United Palestine Appeal, and Henry Montor, executive vice-chairman
of the United Jewish Appeal.
"Jewish suffering on three continents is today so vast, so profound, so universal
that one is virtually at a loss to encompa ss its scope," Mr. Alpert told the Detroit
meeting. Stressing that American Jewry d are not sidestep the • challenge of destiny to
rebuild the Jewish people, Mr. Alpert said:
"The statistics of murder, of exter mination, of extinction by disease, hunger
and the bayonet must now give way to the statistics of mercy.
A Child Dies in Germany: In mid - December, 150
Jewish women and children set out from Lodz, Poland, hop-
ing to find food, clothing and lodging in Berlin. Not all of
, them made their goal. One of those who failed was a three-
year-old boy who died of starvation in his mother's arms as
the mother and others struggled. along a railroad track.
This is the picture of that tragedy. Its memory can be
eradicated through Detroit's UJA drive for $2,000,000.
"Never has there been such a panorama of worldwide grief, and never before
have the Jews of America been called up on to do so much. The world never again
can be free until the innocent Jewish vic tiros of oppression are rescued from their
present plight. You have the facts. Let your conscience do the rest."
Mr. Sonneborn, member of the administrative committee of the United. Jewish
Appeal, emphasized that emigration to P alestine remains the only hope of large
numbers of the Jewish survivors in Europe.
"Their sole alternative to emigration," he said, "was to return to lands drenched
with the blood of their dear ones and the s cenes of 'their inhuman persecution and
degradation'."
"Palestine today, as in the past, stands ready and willing to absorb as many as
possible of the Jewish refugees from Europe who are anxious to begin life anew in
the Yishuv," the speaker declared. "How ever, if Palestine is to become the sanctu-
ary for the 'weary masses of European Je ws, the present rate of growth and de-
velopment in Palestine will have to be greatly accelerated.
"One thing is clear," he continued, "the remnants of the Jews in Europe cannot
go on living indefinitely in displaced persons camps. Polish Jews cannot possibly
return to Poland where even today bitter and bloody pogroms are thinning the ranks
of the Jewish survivors. They are traveling on foot, by truck, by train, by any
means of transportation, to Palestine. They cannot be stopped now from reaching
the goal which nurtured them in their darkest hour."
Pointing out that the Nazis were 80 per cent Y efficient in their systematic pro-
gram to annihilate the Jews of Europe, Mr. Backer, an official of the United Jewish
Appeal of Greater New York, asked: "Can we be 100 per cent efficient in saving and
rebuilding the lives of every one of the the 1,250,000 survivors, despite their starva-
tion, despite their tuberculosis, despite their mental degradation after years of con-
centration camps and hiding in cellars?
"We must see to it," he continued, "that the excellent life-saving organizations
which we have set up to represent American Jewry have sufficient funds in 1946
so that they do not haVe to save one life at the expense of another. Let us be 100
percent efficient in saving and rebuilding the lives of ALL Jewish survivors." _
Chaplain Schacter, the first Jewish chaplain with the United States armed forces
to enter the notorious Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald, declared that condi-
tions there defied adequate description.
.
He stressed that the fate of the Jewish survivors of Europe . hinged on the
success of the $100,000,000 campaign of the United Jewish Appeal.
"Let us remember," he said, "that the work of relief and rehabilitation could
not be carried on without the Joint Distribution Committee; that the program for the
development and upbuilding of Palestine as a sanctuary for the rescued Jews of
Europe could not be carried on without the United Palestine Appeal; and that the
men, women and children coming to the United
States to begin life all over again would hardly
know where to begin without the adjustment as-
for
sistance of the National Refugee Service."
Enlist
Service in
$2,000,000 Drive
r .
Brotherhood Week:
Annual American Brotherhood
Week will be observed throughout the land during the week
of Feb. 17-24, Hon. Harold E. Stassen, former governor of
Minnesota, Captain in the U. S. Navy, is national chairman.
Federal Judge Frank A. Picard, chairman of the Michigan
Chapter of the American Christian Palestine Committee, is
State chairman of Brotherhood Week celebrations.
The Allied Jewish Cam-
paign is again in force as the
Detroit Jewish community's
instrument for the great relief
responibilities for the surviv-
ors in Europe.
Machinery for the $2,000,000
drive—Detroit's share in the
national United Jewish Ap-
peal for $100,000,000—has al-
ready been set in motion.
Enlist NOW as a volunteer
worker in the campaign by
calling the office of the Jewish
Welfare Federation, 51 W.
Warren Ave., CO. 1600.
(Excerpts from addresses of the four New York lead-
ersers who addressed Tuesday's meeting appear on
Page 24 of this issue.)
Judge William Friedman and Abraham Srere, presi-
dent and chairman of the board of governors of the
Jewish Welfare Federation, presided at the board meeting
of the Federation at 4 p. m., preceding the evening dinner
and conference, and at the conference.
Plans for Detroit's forthcoming drive were outlined
by Isidore Sobeloff, executive director of the Federation.
Personal testimony of the impressions they had
gathered at the Atlantic City United Jewish Appeal con-
ference in December were given by the Detroit delegates
—Mrs. Joseph M. Welt, Theodore Levin, Judge Friedman,
Fred M. Butzel and Mr. Sobeloff.
Others who participated in Tuesday's conference were
Irving Blumberg and Maurice Enggass, president and
chairman of the board of the Detroit Service Group.