Its the Editor
Views the News ...

`Let Its Use It for Peace Instead'

Volume by George Backer

Draws 'The Deadly Parallel'

UJA's 1950 Status

In spite of earlier expressions of optim-
ism over the progress made in nationwide
drives for the United Jewish Appeal—the
major beneficiary of which is the Israel-
building United Palestine Appeal—it is now
becoming apparent that the UJA may not
do as well in 1950 as it did in the income-
declining year of 1949.
Cleveland's Jewish Welfare Fund raised
a total of $4,005,000 and fell $929,613 short
of its campaign goal of $4,934,613.
Several other communities are strug-
gling to match their last year's incomes.
The Detroit Allied Jewish Campaign still
is a million and a half short of the amount
raised last year.
This spells trouble for Israel whose popu-
lation is mounting, whose courageous people
continue to welcome large numbers of immi-
grants who must leave their present homes
if they and their families are to be safe from
indignities and pogroms.
UJA leaders will meet in Chicago this
week-end at a "report conference" at which
they are-obligated to view the existing situa-
tion seriously and to seek means of improv-
ing the fund-raising status of America's
Jewish communities. Our people surely are
interested in Israel's welfare and their con-
cern must be kept warm enough to assure
continued liberal giving.
Our community leaders also must think
in terms of collecting all the funds that are
being subscribed. It is interesting to learn
that the Vancouver community has decided
to publish the names of those who have not
paid their 1948 and 1949 pledges to the UJA.
Publication of pledges accomplished half the
task aimed at by campaign leaders. Unpaid
pledges merely add to a community's bur-
dens and handicap the funds which await
allocations from our communities. There-
fore emphasis must be placed on collections
the moment actual solicitation of -funds
stops.
Responsibility to the UJA, as well as to
the local causes included in our Allied Jew-
ish Campaign, is mounting. Perhaps the
necessary funds can be secured if the un-
solicited prospects are reached by more vol-
unteer workers. The drive continues for the
balance of this month. There still is time
for Detroit to adhere to its established tradi-
tion of leading the country with its liberal
gifts.

Romanian Exodus

David Giladi, Israel immigration officer

in Bucharest, last week reported, upon his

return to Tel Aviv from the Romanian capi-
tal, that 70,000 Romanian Jews have applied
for and received permits to enter the Jewish
state this year. On the day on which he
made his report, 1,070 Jewish immigrants
from Romania landed in Haifa and the after-
noon Tel Aviv newspaper Hador reported
that henceforth 6,000 Jews will arrive in
Israel monthly from Romania.
It will be recalled that Israel's Premier
David Ben-Gurion recently stated that Israel
will continue to take in as many Jews as are
able to leave their present homes where life
is made intolerable for them. He stated spe-
cifically that if another miracle should occur
and Romania should permit her Jewish resi-
dents to leave, Israel will welcome as many
as are prepared to come-100,000 or 200,000
—300,000 if need be. He made no conditions
and did not refer to the problem of a short-
age of food, housing and clothing in Israel.
As long as Jews are able to enter Israel,
the Jewish state welcomes them.
What a wonderful lesson in hospitality!
Would that all of us could emulate it ! If we
did, we would not have the existing problem
of fund-raising for the UJA.

THE JEWISH NEWS

Member: American Association of English-Jewish News-
ti.arers. Michigan Press Association.
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing
Co. 708-10 David Stott Bldg., Detroit 26, Mich., WO. 5-1155.
Subscription $3 a year; foreign $4.
Entered as second class matter Aug. 6, 1942 at Post Office,
Detroit- Mich., under Act of March 3. 1879.

PHILIP SLOMOV1TZ. Editor
SIDNEY SHMARAK Advertising Manager
RUTH L. CASSEL. City Editor

Vol. XVII—No. 13

Page 4

June 9, 1950

Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the twenty-fifth, day of Sivan,
5710, the following Scriptural selections will be
read in our synagogues:
Pentateztchal portion—Non. 13:1-15:41.
.prophetical portion—Joshua 2.
On Thursday and Friday, Rosh Hodesh Tam-
NUL Nona. 28:1-15 will be read during morning
services.

Stalin and the Terrible Ivan

George Backer, former chairman of the board
of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, one-time ed-
Ito -' of the New York Post, has written a provoc-
ative book—"The Deadly Parallel: Stalin and
Ivan the Terrible" (published by Random House,
457 Madison Ave., New York 22)—which. is cer-
tain to stir considerable discussion.
Startling parallels are drawn between Russia's
adulation of the Terrible Ivan of 400 years ago
and Dictator Stalin of our own time.

Mr. Backer points out that "the Soviet his-
torian has acknowledged as just and right
the goals sought by Ivan.
And that acknowledg-
ment interprets for us
present Soviet activity in
the field of foreign rela-
tions."

Abuse of Public Trust in Press

Elementary responsibilities to the public they serve
often are abused by newspapers which appear to be moti-
vated by political prejudices rather than the duty of gather-
ing true facts and presenting them as news to the vast
American public.
A typical example of abuse of privilege is the article
that was published a few days ago in the Chicago Tribune
under the heading: "3 Men Called a Government in Them-
selves: Frankfurter Rated Most Powerful." The other two
listed—also Jews—are U. S. Senator Herbert H. Lehman
and former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr.
The Tribune article charges that the three men "who
have played. important roles in the U. S. for almost a score
of years weave in and out in the curious pattern of British,
American and Soviet relations." It continues to state that
"a person with highest state department connections identi-
fied these three figures as the secret government of the
United States."
Lehman is pictured as "spokesman of the powerful Zion-
ist groups." He is accused of having played a major role
in opposing Senator McCarthy's "efforts to expose Com-
munism in the government."
Frankfurter, linked as an ally of the late Harold Laski,
is referred to in a quotation from Gen. Hugh S. Johnson as
"the most influential single individual in the United States."
Morgenthau is charged with the crime of deciding "the
policy of harsh peace toward Germany." He, too, is linked
with Zionist influence and with prejudice against Britain.
The series of tales about these men, who rated the
complete eighth column on the first page and more than
a column and a half on the second page, in the Tribune's
charges, sounds like an accusation against the American
people who are pictured as being duped by "a secret govern-
ment." There is nothing in the article to indicate that Frank-
furter is only one of nine judges on the U. S. Supreme Court
bench, that Lehman is only one of 96 U. S. Senators, that
Morgenthau long ago was relieved of his duties in the Presi-
dent's Cabinet and is not a well man.
But the emphasis nevertheless is laid on the charge of
the existence of "a secret ..overnMent," dominated by men
who are Jews, aided by others who happen to be Jews.

The Tribune should have angered all the Supreme Court
Justices, the entire United States Senate, the President's
Cabinet, who are accused of being led by the nose by a hand-
ful of powerful men. Its article should arouse the indignation
of the entire American people which emerges as a flock of
sheep being misled by a small group who are accused of
weaving a "curious pattern" in foreign relations involving
our government.
Fortunately, the people at large know how to deal with
such wild charges. When the showdown comes, on election
judgment days, they seem to be ignoring the advice offered
them by the newspapers the,y read—for the obvious reason
that they are fed up with false accusations. But it would
not hurt if newspaper readers were to demand of the Tribune
and of other newspapers which may at times be responsible
for the spread of wild rumors to present the facts when
claiming that the fairy tales they publish come from "a
person with highest state department connections." Anyone
accusing the American people of suffering from a "secret
government" should be compelled to present the facts.
*
Similar indignation is in order when dealing with wild
remarks like the one that appeared in an editorial in one of
our own afternoon newspapers which saw fit to state, in`con-
nection with the decision of the Big Three Powers in favor
of shipment of arms to Israel, that the Jewish state is "reach-
ing out for whatever might be grasped in the hour of op-
portunity."
This comment is so lacking in elementary grace that
it compels a loss of respect for its maker. The editorial
writer did not take the trouble to ascertain that Israel is a
citadel for democratic ideals in the Near East, that Arab

states have been threatening to align themselves with the
Communists, that Egypt has made a public threat of moving
in the direction of the Soviet Union.
When newspapers resume a policy of respecting the
thinking of their readers, they will abandon the hurling of
insults such as We have read in Detroit and the witch-hunting
in Chicago. Meanwhile the public should be trained anew
to let itself be heard in order that ignorance and arrogance
should be eliminated from the American press.

The West's outcry against
the principle • that destiny;
"hangs on the life of a.
man, whether he be an
Ivan the Terrible or a Jo-
sef Stalin" is ably outlinecl.
by Mr. Backer in his pres-
entation of the theme that
"in the West, the progress
of man is measured in
terms of his ability to
govern himself, and any
George Backer
dictatorship, no matter what its pretensions, rep-
resents a regression."
Mr. Backer advances an interesting opinion:
that if a middle class should exert its view be-
fore Stalin's death "it is possible to see that the
Russian necessity for world dominion will dis-
appear with the Dictator and that the energies
of this new class will be devoted for generations
to come to the internal expansion which the
sixth of the earth that is Russia so greatly
needs."

The point is emphasized, however, that
"neither Stalin nor Ivan the Terrible need be
the price paid for progress; indeed, they can-
not be."

Mr. Backer's book is highly scholarly. It re-
views the history of Russia, makes interesting
observations on Russia's literary geniuses in
their relation to the country's life and political
views and comments on anti-Semitism. He shows
that while the Russian Constitution "makes
anti-Semitism illegal" and this 'is often pointed
to as "the essentially civilized nature of the
state," "it is somewhat astonishing to find that
in the'latest drive against 'cosmopolitanism' the
organs of the regime should attack, in the first
50 afflicted, 49 Jews .. . It is hard to see what
object—other than informing the mass of the
Russian people that cosmopolitanism is a disease
almost peculiar to Jews—is to be•gained from the
practice . . . When we leave the question of how
anti-Semitism can be reconciled with the Marx-
ist faith, we must still face the question of how
a genuine Socialist can look upon cosmopolitan-
ism as an uncomplimentary a t t r i b u t e." He
charges that the interchangeability of patriotism
of the Soviet state and loyalty to the Communist
ideal is responsible for this alarming policy.
"The Deadly Parallel" dispassionately views
the existing conditions in Russia.

'I Did Not Interview the

Dead' Exposes Nazi Terror

Eight personal documents of survivors from
Nazism, incorporated in Dr. David P. Boder's "I
Did Not Interviews the Dead," published by the
University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Ill., expose
the Nazi terror in a new light and provide addi-
tional evidence about the horrors that were per-
petrated against the Jews.
Visiting DP camps in 1946 to get the impres-
sions of those who had survived the Nazi out-
rages, Dr. Boder, professor of psychology at the
Illinois Institute of Technology, a native of Li-
bau, interviewed war victims in France, Ger-
many, Italy and Switzerland.
Anna Kovitzka, Jorn Gastfreund, Fania
Freich, Abe Mohnblum, Fela Lichtheim, Julius
Braun, Anna Prest and Jack Matzner are the
eight who provide testimony of the horrors that
were visited upon 6,000,000 of our kinsmen.
The testimony is presented in the words of
the survivors themselves—in English transla-
tions. The book is an actual transcription of
their stories. They are indictments of the tragic
era of man's inhumanity to man. But they are
proof that the survivors themselves were able to
retain faith and a measure of confidence that
the good things in life may overbalance the cruel
and the barbaric acts which were visited upon
them and their people.
The author, in the introduction in which he
explains the approach to the evaluation of the
type of traumas sought for presentation among
those he interviewed, makes this statement:
"The verbatim records presented in this
book make uneasy reading. And yet they are

not the grimmest stories that could be total—I
did not interview the dead."

As a reminder of the horrors that were vis-
ited upon the living and of the death toll among
the tragically afflicted Jewish people, Prof. Bo-
der's "I Did Not Interview the Dead" is a signifi-
cant book and another strong indictment of
Nazism and those who condone it.