THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1951
Member American Association of English-Jewish . Newspapers Michigan Press Association. National
Editorial Association.
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17100 West Seven Mile Road, Detroit 35,
Mich., VE. 8-9364 Subscription $5 a year. Foreign S6.
Entered as second class matter Aug. 6, 1952 at Post Office, Detroit, Mich., under Act of March 3, 1879.
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
SIDNEY SHMARAK
Advertising Manager
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Circulation Manager
FRANK SIMONS
City Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the "twenty-second day of Heshvan, 5718, the following Scriptural
selections will be read in our synagogues:
1:1-31.
Pentateuchal portion, Haye Sarah, Gen. 23:1-25:18. Prophetical portion, I Kind's
Licht Benshen, Friday, Nov. 15, 4:31 p.m.
VOL. XXXII, No. 11
Page Four
November 15, 1957
Peace Talks and Their Obstructionists
From time to time, reports circulate
that Israeli leaders had conferred with
Arab statesmen to negotiate peace. Then
the lid is blown off and attacks are
launched upon the men who reportedly
had met with the Israelis by spokesmen
from other Arab countries.
These exchanges of attacks may be
expected to be repeated as times goes on.
All we can hope is that there is a trace
of truth to these reports and that, even-
tually, an amicable accord may be
reached on the Arab-Israel issue.
In the latest of the rumors, it was
said that Israel's Prime Minister David
Ben-Gurion and his Foreign Minister,
Golda Meir, had negotiated a peace agree-
ment with King Hussein of Jordan. The
agreement reached was said to have stipu-
lated liquidation of the Arab refugee
0-4
ways advised Jews to fight, but they rare-
ly did." All the facts in Polish-Jewish his-
tory were libeled and desecrated by this
statement.
Gen. Bor even had the audacity to
assert that Jews tried to bribe the Ger-
mans with money instead of fighting for
their lives. Of the three million Jews who
lived in Poland, only about 40,000 survive
there today. But the memory of the mar-
tyrs is being dragged through the mud.
It is no wonder that the remaining Jews
in Poland, as in other anti-Semitic coun-
tries, are so anxious to escape the indig-
nities to which they are being subjected
by seeking escape to Israel.
Red Cross Should Welcome Magen David
The visit in Israel, this week, of the
president of the American Red Cross,
Gen. Alfred Gruenther, raises anew an
important issue involving the Israel Ma-
gen David.
Magen David is the Israeli counterpart
of the International Red Cross. But it has
worked on its own, independently, in
spite of the fact that its activities have
won the acclaim of Red Cross leaders
everywhere. The Magen David has been
isolated from the Red Cross, due to un-
- fortunate prejudices that were inspired
by Arab antagonists.
Gen. Gruenther's visit in Israel may
serve to renew the question of the Magen
David's admittance into the world Red
Cross organization. It would be an act of
justice to include this movement which
is doing a magnificent job for the Israelis
and whose inclusion in the world Red
Cross can further enhance the entire Red
Cross movement. Perhaps Gen. Gruenther
will exert his influence in favor of the
Magen David's admittance into the Red
Cross.
A Regrettable Catholic Anti-Israel Libel
From time to time, regrettable anti-
Israel propaganda appears in Christian
periodicals. The Pilot, the organ of the
Catholic Archdiocese in Boston, has been
especially guilty of emphasizing news
items tinged with anti-Israelism.
The latest and most regrettable of
such reports emanates from the Jerusa-
lem sector of Jordan, whence the Catholic
news service reports that "Latin Rite
Patriarch Alberto Gori, O.F.M., of Jeru-
salem has protested to the Israeli Minis-
try of Religious Affairs against efforts to
make Christian refugees in Israel be-
come Jews."
Anyone who is acquainted with the
situation in Israel and with the attitudes
there towards non-Jewish faiths will rec-
ognize at once the injustice of this charge.
Just because one periodical called for the
"conversion to Judaism" of foreign
women and their children who come to
DWI W
problem, establishment of friendly rela-
tions between the two countries and the
opening of the borders of the two coun-
tries for free transit.
Cairo -thereupon launched its furious
attack on King Hussein and a broadcast
from Egypt declared that "a nail cutting
from the finger of the poorest Arab is
worth more than the whole Hussein
gang." And a day later Jordan filed a
complaint against Israel with the United
Nations.
That is how the entire scheme of
things has worked: a rumor is spread that
there were peace talks, then Arab politi- '‘SYRIA MI- 0 WS A
cians condemn their opponents, those
"accused" of talking peace retract and
start fuming against Israel, and peace
once again beComes a remote hope and
a postponed objective. -
Polish Anti-Semite Libels Martyrs
One of the acknowledged acts of hero-
ism in the days when Nazism threatened
the security of the world was the courage
that was displayed by Jews during the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
But neither the courageous spirit of
the embattled Jews nor their loyalty to
Poland, in whose defense hundreds of
thousands of Jews had given their lives,
seem to play a role with anti-Semites. -
Chief among the Polish Jew-baiters is
Gen. Bor-Komarowsky, whose anti-Jewish
utterances have long ago branded him as
a bigot.
Speaking in Zurich last week, Gen Bor
was so ungracious as to state that he "al-
JET
Israel "for the sake of the unity of the
Jewish people" does not mean that all
of Israel is out on a crusade to force
new settlers into the Jewish faith.
The fact is that all faiths are treated
with the greatest respect in Israel. No-
where is there an indication of prejudice.
The church bells ring in the Israel sector
of Jerusalem as regularly as they do in
the Arab section. The Baha'i have as
much freedom of worship as the Jews.
The Moslems are at liberty to observe
their religious rites whenever and wher-
ever they choose. Catholics are as united
as any other religious group in Israel.
The fact that the Pilot story comes
from the Jordan sector of Jerusalem may
explain the distortion of truth. But the
fact that a Catholic news agency has
picked it up and a Catholic newspaper
has played it up emphasizes the unfair-
ness of dignifying a libel.
0-44444
tir-A
eacy of GsgivE *.OTRALITY4
• .••• ZEJNEDD1NE
I
/
Robert St. John s Foreign
Correspondent Exposes Nazis
There was a ringside seat for Robert St. John in the capitals
of Europe during World War II. The Nazi atrocities, anti-Semitic
outbursts, political machinations and the struggle conducted
against brutality behind the scenes had an important observer
in this eminent writer.
St. John's "Foreign Correspondent,"
published by Doubleday (575 Madison,
N.Y. 22), contains his experiences in
and impressions of events in Paris, Bu-
dapest, Istanbul, Sofia and Belgrade. His
book relates his association with noted
correspondents who were with him on
the scene of action, as well as of the
Nazi rulers and of many anti-Nazis.
He describes the tragedy of the
Polish refugees, and he makes this im-
Robert St. John
portant observation.
"The unfortunates were the ones who had neither gold
nor cars nor any way of escape. We knew their suffering
might go on for years. One ominous thing we learned in
making a survey of the refugees was that only 2 per cent of
those who escaped into Hungary and Romania were Jews.
That meant nearly three million Polish Jews were trapped."
The tragedy in Romania matched that of Poland, and Carol
and Magda Lupescu were not free from guilt in the spread of
terror in their country.
Here, too, there is an interesting observation. St. John re-
ports that in Bucharest he heard cries of "Down with the Jews,"
"Down with Carol" and "Down with the Germans," and he
remarks: "They shouted without rhyme or reason. Where else
but in Romania would people be demonstrating against Nazis
and Jews at the same time?"
Many Romanian tragedies are recorded, and there is a sad
account of anti-Semitism in that land. Speaking of Ionescu he
writes:
"It was apparently Ionescu's hatred of Jews which had led
him into the Legion in the first place. He cursed whenever he
mentioned a Jew. Once he tried to get Leigh White expelled
because he decided that a man who wrote so sympathetically
about Jews must, of course, be a Jew himself. And in Ionescu's
eyes just being a Jew was enough of a crime to deserve con-
siderable punishment."
And it was about this anti-Semitic land that St. John
wrote: "And always it was the Jews who suffered."
A fantastic story is told about Hungary's Premier Imredy
who was accused of being a Jew, who denied it, who later, when
he resigned, admitted there was Jewish blood in his veins. "Be-
hind the Imredy resignation was a perhaps apocryphal story of
anti-Semitism in reverse," St. John writes, and relates what he
heard after arriving in Budapest.
Foreign hordes periodically overran Hungary, and as a re-
sult of the rapings new genes were injected in the Hungarian
bloodstream. But there came a period of peace without inva-
sions and Hungary began to show weaknesses "due to inbreed-
ing." A solution was found in a decree that no Jew could marry
another Jew in Hungary and thus, St. John's informant told
him, "there is hardly a family in Hungary today which can say
without danger of contradiction that it has no Jewish genes in
its make-up. (Horthy never denied that his mother-in-law was
Jewish)."
An apocryphal story, indeed!
And so on, from chapter to chapter, we read about the in-
trigues, -the plots to kill and the actual killings, the anti-Semit-
ism, which gave reality to the tragic assertion that "always it
was the Jews who suffffered."
"Foreign Correspondent" is an interesting book. It throws
light on many issues and on vital chapters in recent world his-
tory.