Fridajf, Nnuary 2S, .190 .
THE 'JEWISH NEWS
Page Twenty-four
Aid Survivors,
Leaders' Plea
To U. S. Jewry
In '46 Appeal
The addresses appearing on this
page were delivered at the extra-
ordinary conference of the Jewish
Welfare Federation of Detroit last
Tuesday evening at Hotel Statler.
See story on page 1.
Texts of
1
GEORGE BACKER
Appeals to Detroit
3y GEORGE BACKER
Many competent observers back
from Europe have described their
horrified reactions with the phrase:
"The devastation in Europe has to be
seen to be believed." I have seen it. I
still find it hard to believe.
There are some things which the
eye may see, the ear may hear, but
the human mind still does not compre-
hend. It would be too simple to say
that the Nazis lived like beasts and
killed like beasts and that therefore
we humans would have to reduce our
thinking to the animal level to under-
stand the full meaning of their in-
human acts. No, in their war against
the Jews, the Nazis combined the
reasoning of the most advanced scien-
tific minds with their sadistic' animal-
like emotions. They needed the most
efficient scientific methods in order to
kill 6,000,000 Jews in three years.
Can we be just as efficient in saving
Jewish lives? The Nazis were only 80
per cent efficient in their war against
the Jews. One million, four hundred
thousand Jews in Europe survived the
Nazi extermination camps. Can we be
100 per cent efficient and save and re-
build the lives of every one of these
Jewish survivors, despite their starva-
tion, despite their tuberculosis, despite
their mental degradation after years
in concentration camps or hiding in
cellars?
. We must see to it that the excellent
efficient life-saving organizations that
we have set up to represent Amer-
ican Jewry—the Joint Distribution
Committee, the United Palestine Ap-
peal and the National Refugee Service
—have sufficient funds in 1946 to pro-
vide immediate relief and rehabilita-
tion for the destitute Jews in Europe,
to provide for the resettlement in
Palestine and the readjustment of
those who come here. Let us best the
Nazi murderers and be 100 per cent
efficient in saving and rebuilding the
lives of every Jewish survivor in
Europe.
Let us cure every one suffering from
tuberculosis or other diseases of mal-
nutrition. Let us give every boy and
girl the education and training that
they missed under the Nazi .regime.
I just want to say a few more words
about the National Refugee Service.
In our own American community, the
NRS represents American Jewry to
our fellow Americans. We can be very
proud of the fact that largely because
of the existence of NRS, President ,
Truman was able to tell Congress last .
month that not a single one of the
refugees that has come to this country
has become a public charge. We can
be very proud of the fact that the gov-
ernment accepted a corporate affidavit
of the NRS for the legal immigration
of the people of Oswego.
RUDOLF SONNEBORN
CHAPLAIN H. SCHACTER
GEORGE ALPERT
Jews for $100,000,000 UJA Drive
By RUDOLF SONNEBORN
There is almost universal agreement
that the year 1946 will witness a vast
emigration of Jews from Eastern and
Central Europe. The sole alternative
for a great part of the skeletonized
Jewish population of Europe-1,400,-
000 remain out of a pre-Hitler Euro-
pean Jewish population of more than
7,000,000—is to return to lands
drenched with the blood of their dear
ones and the scenes of their inhuman
persecution and degradation.
Outstanding leaders from the shat-
tered Jewish communities of Europe,
including Dr. Leo Baeck, former chief
rabbi of Berlin; Josef Rosenzaft, chair-
man of the Central Jewish Committee
representing the 80,000 displaced Jews
in Germany; Dr. Salo Kleerekoper,
president of the Jewish Coordinating
Committee of Holland; Capt. Robert
Gamzon, president of the Eclaireurs
de France; Paul Philippson, vice-
chairman of the Association of Jewish
Victims of the War • of Belgium, and
Dr. Renzo Levi, vice-chairman of the
Jewish Relief Association of Italy,
testified at the extraordinary National
Conference of the United Jewish Ap-
peal in Atlantic City last month that
emigration from Europe was the com-
mon desire and hope of large num-
bers of these stateless
If Palestine is to become the sanc-
tuary for the weary masses of Euro-
pean Jews, the present rate of growth
and development will have to be vast-
ly accelerated. We are all conscious
- of the fact that large sums of money
will be required for this unprecedent-
ed reconstruction program. We all be-
lieve that it is the moral and legal
obligation of the United Nations to
Make available the resources to en-
able the impoverished and destitute
Jews of Europe to find new homes in
Palestine. But, in addition to this large
inter-governmental support, it will be
necessary for the Jews of America to
extend themselves to new horizons
of financial generosity.
The minimum requirements of the
:United Palestine Appeal agencies in
1946 are estimated at $53,000,000, of
which $43,000,000 must be contributed
by the Jews of America. This budget,
incidentally, was prepared several
months ago and was predicted on an
anticipated immigration to Palestine
of between 20,000 and 30,000 Jews. In
the light of the desperate position of
the Jewish survivors in Europe these
figures are far from adequate. Presi-
dent Truman, following publication of
the Earl G. Harrison report on the
plight of the displaced Jews, urged
Great Britain to admit at least 100,000
homeless Jews to Palestine.
The $43,872,000 that will go to the
United Palestine Appeal out of the
grand sum achieved in this historic
drive means hope, decency and free-
dom for men,
women and chil-
dren who only
one year ago
were breathing
the fumes of Na-
zi crematoria
and gas cham-
bers.
More than
nine million dol-
lars, or $9,618,-
750, will be used
for immigration
and housing and
care of the refu-
gee - survivors.
Included in this
sum is medical
care for the
thousands of
survivors in Pal-
estine.
By RABBI HERSCHEL SCHACTER
Last Spring, when American combat
divisions were destroying the disor-
ganized and demoralized remnants of
the Hitler Wehrmacht, I accompanied
the forward elements of the 8th Army
Corps as a Jewish chaplain.
In our bitter, sometimes costly, al-.
ways painful advances we left be-
hind us the shattered, ruined, lifeless
cities of the Rhineland and the Ruhr,
all of them- dead and heavy with the
stench of burned out conflagrations.
Before we left the Ruhr to strike
out into the rolling German interior,
our impression of Germany was that
it had been laid to total ruin; and
total ruin of a village, a town, a city,
a synagogue is something you cannot
imagine.
I was with our troops when we
liberated and captured the Buchen-
wald concentration camp. Soldiers
whom I had. known through all the
ferocious battles of the deadly winter
and early spring, men hardened and
inured to the sight of dead men, could
not believe their eyes while more than
one combat-toughened veteran broke
down to cry at my feet. But what is,
there to say of what I felt, I, who de-
spite the outrage storming through
my soul, had to summon the necessary
strength as I worked through the de-
fiant stench of death and filth to tell
these innocent victims that at long
last they had been freed.
But I had to listen, too. I sat for
hours with men and women who could
barely speak, who retched out their
stories of bereavement, of ruthless, in-
human pogroms, of prison tortures and
callous bayonetings.
Yes, the Hitler gangsters are today
on trial in Nuremburg. Their punish-
ment by the International Tribunal,
just and righteous as it will be, is an
infinitesimal retribution for the thou-
sands of Jewish babies who were
smashed to ' death against rocks and
for the thousands of naked Jewish
women who were poured screaming
into pits of roaring fire.
The Nazi terror exterminated more
than six million European Jews. Only
1,400,000 are left. I have seen, talked
to, fried to help in my own small way,
many of these survivors. For every
little deed I performed, for every
word of grace, for every small tin of
rations I distributed, they were pro-
foundly grateful. But the survivors
of the Hitler extermination need more
than the gracious word of a rabbi and
more than a miserable tin of soup..
They need the aroused conscience of
the Jews of America to come to their
rescue through this unparalleled drive
of the United Jewish Appeal for one
hundred million life-saving dollars.
They need an avalanche of food, cloth-
ing, medical supplies and tools with
which to rebuild their lives, their
homes, their shops, their families and
their houses of worship.
As one who' has seen the terror in
the eyes of orphaned children, who
has felt the pulse of tubercular men,
I plead with you: let mercy and your
conscience be your -guide in helping
the United Jewish Appeal to attain its
goal . . . our goal. Let us, in our
pride as well as in our grief, in our
determination as well as in our dis-
tress, help with all our heart, with all
our might, with all our prayers, with
every means in our possession, in this
gigantic task of bringing new hope
and new life to those who have come
out of the shadow of death.
By GEORGE ALPERT
Jewish suffering on three continents
is today so vast, so profound, so uni-
versal that one is virtually at a loss
to encompass its .scope.
When I reveal to you that of seven
and a half million Jews in pre-war
Europe only one and a quarter mile.
lions are left, the cold statistics have
a way of obscuring the terrible human
disaster that has overcome our people.
But what of the survivors, the desti..
lute, starving and homeless men and
women whom a Providential Fate
saved from the gas chambers end the
crematoria?
What of the bereaved, orphaned
children, the most truly innocent vic-
tims of all.
. The statistics of murder, of extes.
mination,• of extinction by fire, disease,
exposure. and the bayonet must now
give way to the statistics of mercy.
For its life-saving relief and re-
habilitation work among the surviving
Jews of Europe, Asia and Africa, the
Joint Distribution Committee in 1946
requires an estimated $58,350,000.
The Joint Distribution Committee,
which is responsible for the rescue and
rehabilitation of the Jewish $ictims of
totalitarian oppresSion and war, in 1946
will operate in 50 countries on three
continents. •
Here, in brief, is what the. Joint Dis7
tribution Committee has found, and
what it must do, in the overseas areas
of suffering and destitution.
POLAND : Poland is the mass grave
of Europe! Of a pre-war Jewish' popu-
lation of 3,300,000, only 80,000 are alive
today. In addition, the 150,000 Polish
Jews who fled to the Soviet Union,
will soon be repatriated, returned, that
is, to a land from which other Jews
are emigrating as fast as conditions
will permit. That is why this year, for
Poland alone, the Joint Distribution
Committee must allocate seven times
as much as it did in 1945, or a total
of $8,400,000.
ROMANIA: Romania has the largest
concentration of Jews in continental
Europe. Romanian Jews have suffered
grievously from economic displace-
ment and discriminatory policies. Ap-
proximately one-half of the 350,000
survivors are unemployed and in im-
mediate need of assistance. For Ro-
mania's survivors, the JDC in 1946 re-
quires $7,200,000.
HUNGARY: The condition of the
200,000 Jews in Hungary is desperate.
Displaced, impoverished, homeles s,
without means of support, their plight
is further complicated by uncontrolled
inflation, reported to be the most seri-
ous in the world. The need is $6,000,000.
GERMANY AND AUSTRIA: There
are 85,000 Jews in Germany and Aus-
tria, of whom 60,000 are displaced per-
sons in camps! The 85,000 Jewish sur-
vivors in Germany and Austria re-
quire $1,200,000.
FRANCE: War and the Nazis re-
duced the Jewish population of France
from 350,000 to 180,000, including 5,000
who have returned from concentration
camps. Reports from France plead im-
mediate assistance to another 60,000
persons. The need in France is for $4,-
800,000.
CHINA (Shanghai) : V-J Day re-
vealed the tragic situation of 15,000
Jewish refugees. in Shanghai. Through-
out the war, these refugees lived on
one meal a day. The need for
Jewish relief in China is $3,960,000.
These conditions of want, misery and
homelessness are true in other coun-
tries.
Never has there been such a pano-
rama of world-wide grief. And never
before have the Jews of America been
called upon to do so much.