THE JEWISH NEWS
It's a Long Way to the Top
Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1951
Member American Association
Editorial Association.
Published every Friday by The
Mich., VE 8-9364. Subscription $5 a
Entered as second class matter
9, 1879.
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
of English--Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association, National
Jewish News Publishing Co. 17100 West Seven Mile Road, Detroit 35,
year. Foreign $6.
Aug. 6, 1942 at Post Office. Detroit, Mich. under act of Congress of March
SIDNEY SHMARAK
Editor and Publisher
Advertising Manager
IMMEDIATE
JEWISH
mews Of
IfOUCATI ON
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Circulation Manager
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the twenty-first day of Tammuz, 5720, the following Scriptural selections
will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Pinkhas, Num. 25:10-30:1. Prophetical portion, Jer. 1:1-2:3.
Licht Benshen, Friday, July 15, 7:48 p.m.
VOL. XXXVII No. 20
July 15, 1960
Page Four
Argentina's'Sensitivity'and Moral Guilt
Feverish activities in several of the
capitals of the world, especially in Latin
American countries, to correct previous
practices of shielding Nazi criminals defi-
nitely indicate that Argentina, in spite of
insistent demands for "reparations" from
Israel, was not equipped to be the judge
over Adolf Eichmann.
As a matter of fact, Argentina actually
had given asylum to the arch Nazi crimi-
nal. In a letter to the Christian Science
Monitor, Emilio von Hofmannsthal, of
Forest Hills, N. Y., charged that Argen-
tina's claim of violation of its sovereignty
by the kidnapping of Eichmann "is
estopped by Argentina's failure to fulfill
its duty as an allied power in discovering
and extraditing a war criminal." Von Hof-
mannsthal further charged:
"In addition, Argentine governments have
not always shown so much sensitivity toward
violations of Argentine sovereignty, at least
not by the Nazi government. A pre-Peron
government allowed Argentine citizens to be
taxed by the German Embassy for financing
the Nazi war machine. It allowed the Nazi
government to arm Nazi groups living in
Argentina for aggression against other groups,
for acts much more dangerous to the country
than those inflicted on Eichmann. This was
done against the protest of the best Argentine
citizens.
"Under Peron, Argentina was made a
haven for Nazi war criminals. Thus, Argen-
tina is morally and legally estopped from
asking for a restitutio in integrum by the
return of Eichmann."
The concluding paragraph in von Hof-
mannsthal's letter deserves special atten-
tion. He wrote:
"Is it not significant of the legal and
moral concepts of our times that not
infrequent kidnapping of innocent
people for murder by Nazis and Com-
munists has met only mild reproval but
never energetic reaction, while the
alleged kidnapping of a vicious mass
murderer for trial arouses worldwide
excitement and is being carried to the
highest international authorities?"
There is moral guilt in Argentina's
shielding an arch-Nazi, just as there is
guilt on the part of many other countries
where Nazis have been sheltered until
now. Even in this country, Andrija Artu-
kovic, who has escaped justice from Yugo-
slavia, is being given haven, in spite of
the exposes of his crimes.
Yet, little Israel still is being pressed
for "reparations." It is doubtful whether
Argentina, whose moral guilt as a shelter-
er of criminals is apparent, will gain much
ground in her unjustified claims that are
being pressed contrary to the spirit that
is inherent in the resolution adopted by
the UN Security Council.
M. E. Amity by Direct Negotiations
A Baghdad broadcast, monitored in
London, revealed that Iraqi authorities
decided to ban the showing in Iraq of all
films with Danny Kaye "because of his
pro-Zionist activities."
This is not the first time that unwise
Arab action was directed against promi-
nent entertainers, non-Jews as well as
Jews, who had shown sympathy for the
Istaeli and Jewish positions.
*
*
*
Thus, in a recent column in the New
York Mirror, Victor Riesel wrote:
"What the U.S. Navy couldn't do—Jackie
Bright and The American Guild of Variety
Artists did the other day.
"They broke the Arab boycott of the Jew-
ish folk. It was a slight cracking of the wall
but a crack none the less. Under pressure
from the vaudeville union, Jewish entertainers
can now work in Lebanon.
"AND—there will be no discrimination
against them if they work, or play, the pre-
vious week in Israel. It began when a Victor
Mussa, Director General of the Lebanon
Casino, 22 miles from the heart of Beirut,
sent his agents to the U.S. seeking our per-
formers. Among others, he wanted Sammy
Davis, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Harry
Belafonte and Nat King Cole for his two-
floor gambling palace which has a 1,300 seat
theater attached.
"Jackie Bright, speaking for all America's
Variety Artists, said no member of his union
would sign—not even for the offered $35,000
a week—unless the contract said there would
be no discrimination against any race, color
or creed.
"Specific mention was made in the con-
versations about Jewish entertainers.
"The Lebanese became the first to break
the Arab Boycott."
The credit given the Lebanese is, re-
grettably, a bit exaggerated. Lebanon has
been yielding to pressures from the Arab
League as much as the other Arab states
—out of fear for repercussions and as-
sassinations.
•
•
On the other hand, there is heartening
news in the report from Jerusalem, re-
ceived this week by the Jewish Tele-
graphic Agency, to the effect that "the
Jordanian government has agreed to per-
mit entry of Jewish actors, directors and
technical staff who will work on the film-
ing in Jordan of a Hollywood production
based on the life of T. E. Lawrence (Lawr-
ence of Arabia)."
The JTA report states that "permis-
sion for the entry • of Jews into Jordan
was obtained directly from King Hussein
by Anthony Nutting, former British Mini-
ster of State, who resigned in protest over
the Suez campaign. Nutting was said to
have explained to King Hussein the im-
portance to the Arabs of the film, which
will show that they aided the Allies during
the First World War."
This is an indication of progress in
the direction of Israel-Arab cooperation.
•
*
Unfortunately, blind hatred continues
to dominate the thinking of Arab spokes-
men who are captives of a small group of
propagandists against Israel.
If there could be a way of coming to
terms with the Arabs for direct negotia-
tions with Israel, peace would undoubted-
ly be obtainable. If it is possible for
Jordanian and Israeli firemen to battle
blazes cooperatively, in Jerusalem's No-
Mans-Land, why can't they work together
when there are opportunities jointly to
improve the economic positions of the
two countries? If they can fight locusts
together, why can't they labor mutually
for the improvement of health and for
the attainment of accord in all their
neighborly endeavors?
The answers are in the positive, but
the external influences, especially those
that continue to be exerted by Cairo and
the former Mufti still are in the negative.
All must hope for time to solve the sad
problems and to bring amity to the entire
Middle East.
'A Peculiar Treasure'
Edna Ferber's Autobiography
Remains Noteworthy Account
Edna Ferber's "A Peculiar Treasure," the eminent novelist's
autobiography, first was published in 1938, by Doubleday. It has
just been published in a revised edition, with a new introduction,
in which Miss Ferber states:
"Soundly established publishing firms such as Doubleday &
Co., who originally brought out this book, do not function on a
basis of philanthropy. When they publish a book it is with the
hope and expectation that people will buy it and read it. When,
having successfully published such a book, they decide, after
almost a quarter of a century, to republish it, it is because they
consider it to be still timely and readable."
Doubleday is to be commended for reissuing "A Peculiar
Treasure." It is as interesting today as it was in 1938. Of special
interest is the following, from Miss Ferber's introduction:
"In 1938, when this book was first published, Nazism
threatened not only the peace but the existence of our world
as we then knew it
"In 1960 Communism threatens the peace and actual
existence of the world as we know it.
"In 1960 bigotry, religious and racial hatred, economic
instability and violence stalk the world, north, west, east, and
south.
"In 1938 bigotry, religious and racial hatred, economic
instability and violence brought agony, defeat, and death to
millions of human beings.
"The world is better. The world is worse. People are more
broadminded. People are more bigoted. The old are younger.
The young are older ...
"The book is what it originally was—the autobiography of
an American Jewish child, girl and woman, born in the Middle
West in the middle eighties. I am startled to note certain
prophetic pages, written before .World War II, for which, in
earlier centuries, I might well have been hanged for a witch."
If she had a choice to save one out of her 30 published
volumes, she adds, "I should choose this book as an honest record
of the life and times, up to the year 1938, of a receptive and
perceptive human being who has loved life and enjoyed living,
and to whom the world owes exactly nothing."
Her readers, too, undoubtedly would place "A Peculiar
Treasure" on top of the list of good reading. It is a document
full of warmth, replete with Jewish devotion, and as she
indicates in her story:
"All my life I have been proud of being a Jew . . .
America—rather, the United States—seems to me to be the
Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned,
envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warmhearted, over-friendly;
quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and
gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature,
moving, shiftless, restless; swarming in cars, in oceanliners;
craving entertainment; volatile."
She added that she wanted to write this story because "it
had been seething in me since the first poison of Nazism had
begun to ravage Germany. The Jews of Germany, the Jews of
the world, were to be destroyed - . . I was a Jew, born in the
United States of an American-born mother and a Hungarian-born
father. I knew that I wanted, more than anything else, to write
honestly and informatively about a family of middle-class Jews
in the United States of America. The family I knew best was
my own."
And, as throughout her account of herself and her
experiences, of the people she had met, of her devotions to
Jewry and to America, she concluded her revised edition as she
began it, in this spirit, with this statement: "It has been my
privilege to have been a human being on the planet Earth; and
to have been an American, a writer, a Jew." And she repeats
the dedication to her book, from which she borrowed the title
for the book, from Exodus XIX:5:
"Now, therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep
My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me
above all people; for all the earth is Mine; and ye shall be unto
Me a Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation."
See COMMENTARY—Page 2