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