Keeping the Fire Burning . .

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 %.
Entered as second class matter Aug. 6, 1952 at Post Office, Detroit, Mich., under Act of March 3, 1879.

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Editor and Publisher

CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ

SIDNEY SHMARAK

Circulation Manager

Advertising Manager

FRANK SIMONS

City Editor

Sabbath Scriptural Selections
the following Scriptural selections will be
This Sabbath,' Rosh Hodesh Nisan, 5718,
read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portions, Vayikra, Leviticus 1:1-5:26, Numbers 28:9-15, Exodus 12:1-20.
Prophetical portion, Ezekiel 45:16-46:18.

Licht Benshen, Friday, March 21, 6:01

VOL. XXXIII. No. 3

Page Four

p.m.

March 21, 1958

i

Pattern for Allied Jew sh Campaign

A serious challenge faces our com-
munity in the current Allied Jewish Cam-
paign.
In the midst of a recession, we are
called upon to make generous increases
in our contributions to this major com-
munal fund-raising effort.
Unless we raise at least ten per cent
more than was secured last year, there
will be no assurances for proper upkeep
of our local and national educational,
civic and health agencies, and our gifts to
Israel may thereby be reduce-d.
Encouragingly enough, the contribu-
tions that have been announced until
now represent increases over the past
year. This is a good sign. It indicates a
genuine sense of responsibility on the
part of our community. It augurs well for
the entire campaign and for future com-
munity planning.
But these increases must be viewed
only as a good beginning. Only about a
third of the minimum goal has been

raised as of now, and much leg-work,
telephoning and explaining will have to
be done from now on in the process of
soliciting more than 25,000 potential con-
tributors.
It is essential that the needs should
be properly evaluated, that all of the
prospects should be reached and that
every effort should be made to secure
the urgently-needed increases.
The 1958 campaign officially opens
next Tuesday evening, at the public rally
at Temple Beth El, with Brig. Gen. Dan
Tolkowsky, commander of the Israeli Air
Force, as guest speaker. From that point,
we proceed to solicit — and to give—for
Israel's upbuilding, for the continuation
of our communal activities, for the reten-
tion of our dignity as a functioning Jew-
ish community.
Let us make Tuesday's beginning a
very good one, and let us strive to assure
total success for this year's drive, defying
all talk of recession and answering all
challenges in the most positive fashion.

What Fright Does to the Middle East

In a syndicated article for the Chicago
Daily News service, from Damascus, Sy-
ria, George Weller reported that "under
strict secrecy Gamal Abdel Nasser, presi-
dent of the new United. Arab Republic,
inspected his 48-mile-wide northern bor-
der facing Israel."
The purpose of such a "peek" at Israel
is obvious. It is not an easy task to satisfy
hungry hordes who parade and cheer an
agitating leader, unless the mobs can be
inspired to hate some one. The one to be
hated in that area is Israel, and there
always is the danger that the impover-
ished masses and the hungry and un-
healthy peoples in the Arab countries
will fume with hatred against their small-
est neighbor, in order to let off steam.
desegregation.

There remains the intolerable and
unfortunate situation among the world
powers who are faced by an East-West
struggle, into which Arab potentates al-
ways step in order to capitalize on an
unending resort to blackmail; and who
are so fearful of Arab threats that they
overlook the basic elements of justice in
dealing with conditions that can .be solved
by serious efforts for peace.
With peace and cooperation, there
can be an end to fear. But when great
powers suffer so -much from fright, the
urgently-needed amity is postponed.
That's why West still fears East; that's
why West yields to Middle Eastern black-
mail schemes; that's why Israel always
has to be prepared for war when she so
urgently needs peace and begs for it.

Anti-Semitic Vandalism: Jewry's Dilemma

Recurring anti - Semitic demonstra-
tions in southern cities are forging into
the limelight the awkward dilemma in
which many Jews in the South find them-
selves as a result of the civil rights con-
troversies and the difficulties created by
the desegregation process in southern
schools.
The anti-Semitic acts also point to
the futility of trying to appease bigots.
As long as vandals are out to destroy and
to create havoc among their fellow men,
no amount of appeasing will accomplish
any purpose.
For a number of years now, the Jews
in the South have been under pressure—
on the one hand of their liberal con-
science which dictated to them that they
should adhere to the humanitarian trend
in the country at large which calls for an
end to discrimination against Negroes,
and on the other from bigoted neighbors
who demanded that they should "act like
Southerners" in o p p o s i n g any and all
liberating measures in behalf of Negroes.
Jewish merchants in the South have
been threatened with boycott s, and in
some instances boycotts were practiced
against them, by groups that are opposing
desegregation.
Our national organizations definitely
are aligned with those who propagate in-
tegration. The American Jewish Con-
gress, the Bnai Brith Anti-Defamation
League, American Jewish Committee and
Jewish 'War Veterans, our religious or-

ganizations and other groups are on rec-
ord in support of desegregation and for
equal rights for the Negroes. As a result,
some southern Jewish communities have
threatened to withhold funds from na-
tional movements if they persist in propa-
gating a "pro-Negro policy."
Such an attitude has .not helped the
Jews in the South. The bombing of Jewish
centers in Tennessee, Florida and Ken-
tucky emphasize the fact that basic
principles of equality and justice cannot
be sacrificed to threats, since you can
never fully appease bigots and vandals.
Responsibility for preventing re-
currence of the bombings of Jewish cen-
ters in the South rests upon the Federal
Government, and it is encouraging to
know that the FBI has stepped in to do
the investigating. Investigation a 1 o n e,
however, is not enough. Definite action
should be taken, in order that the Jewish
communities, together with their neigh-
bors, should be in position to act firmly
in support of desegregation which has
become established American policy.
Southern Jewry's position is not an
enviable one, but the challenge to our
kinsmen is to stand firm in support of
American policy of desegregation. Else,
that which has caused terrorism to be in-
flicted upon Jews will be increased rather
than diminished. Only by adhering to
basic principles can we ever be certain
that our p o s i t i o n, as Jews and as
Americans, will be secure.

Presser's 'Breaking Point'

Tragedy of Collaborationism

One of the most deeply moving documents of our times is
the "factual novel" by Jacob Presser, "Breaking Point," pub-
lished by World Publishing Co. (2231 W. 110th St., Cleveland 2).
It is the story of the Westerbork concentration camp in
Holland,, which was the clearing-camp for Jews whence selections
were made every Thursday morning of groups that were placed
on trains for the Polish death camp of Auschwitz.
It is the manner in which the selections were made, the
fact that Jews were chosen to select the quotas for shipment
death-ward, that gives this story its aspect of an unimaginable
horror that was nevertheless an historic truth.
"Breaking Point" is the story of a man who was to do
the choosing, of the people to be chosen, of an eventual revolt
which nevertheless forces upon the reader the question: what
would he have done if he were faced with such a challenge?
To understand the book in all its aspects, it is necessary
that the reader should know the author. Prof. Presser, who was
born in Amsterdam in 1899 and was graduated with honors
from Amsterdam University in 1926, is a teacher, scholar and
historian who went underground during the Nazi occupation
of Holland. His first book, "The Eighty Years' War," was
suppressed by the Germans. His wife was sent to Sobibor
extermination camp. He has remarried, has three stepchildren
and is now professor of contemporary history at his alma mater.
•He has been working on an extensive book on the Dutch
Jews during the German occupation since 1950. It will be
published by the Government Institute fcir War Documentation
in Amsterdam. "Breaking Point" is his -first work of fiction.
His other works include "Napoleon, History and Legend,"
published in 1946 when it won the Wijnadts-Francken Prize;
the poem "Exodus" issued clandestinely in mimeographed form
in 1942 and followed by "Orpheus" in 1943, and "In Memoriam,"
the tribute to his wife who did not return from the German camp.
Now, about "Breaking Point" itself. It was published in
April of 1957 as the selection of the Association for the Promo-
tion of the Interest of the Book Trade as the year's Book Week
gift and was distributed by Netherlands booksellers to 150,000
people. It attained immediate success and a jury of Dutch
authors unanimously awarded it the Van Der Hoogt Prize for
Creative .Literature.
In a sense, it became the second "Anne Frank story"
because of its revelation of the great tragedy that was inflicted
upon Dutch Jewry—as it also was inflicted by the Nazis on all
Jews who fell under their domination.
In "Breaking Point" we are taken through the harrowing
experiences of the narrating hero, Jacques Henriques, who goes
to the horror camp, Westerbork, ahead of his scheduled time
when he is offered a job in the Jewish disposition service which
was charged with the gruesome responsibility of selecting victims
for •concentration—and extermination—camps in Poland.
How far does a person go in order to save his own skin?
Jacques meets the German Jew, Siegfried Israel Cohn, who out-
Nazis the Nazis in order to preserve themselves. This more-
Nazi-than-the-Nazis Jew explains the set-up of the Jewish
disposition service by assuring Jacques •that all Jews will land
in Auschwitz but that those in charge of the disposition will be
the last to go. That's how Jacques begins his task, sees his
mother sent off, carries his girl friend to the death train, ships
off former students of his own.
But Jacques also meets a saintly man who imparts religion
to him. He gains faith from Jeremiah Hirsch who teaches
him religion and the Bible. A new life is instilled into him.
When Hirsch is led to the death train, the new faith rises to
the surface and to avenge Hirsch and to punish Cohn he
sacrifices his life.
Jacques must tell his story. He rushes to write it, to make
a record of his experiences, to make sure it reaches public
opinion so that it should not be hidden. The result of the
narrator's story is "Breaking Point." While the characters in
the book are fictitious, the story is factual. It is an expose of
the horrors of Nazism and the anguish of its victims and
sufferers. Nazi brutality once again is brought out into daylight,
and with it the problem of those who were called upon to
collaborate with the Nazis. Some worked with the beasts, but
there were others who sacrificed their lives in protest against
the great tragedy.

