THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle cornntencing 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 $6.
Entered as second class matter Aug. 6, 1942 at Post Office, Detroit, Mich. under act of Congress of March
8, 1879.
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
SIDNEY SHMARAK CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ HARVEY ZUCKERBERG
Business Manager
Advertising Manager
City Editor
Scriptural Selections for Concluding Days of Passover
Pentateuchczl portions: Friday, Ex. 13:17-15:26, Num. 28:19-25; Saturday, Deut. 14:22-16:17,
Num. 28:19-25. Prophetical portions, Friday, II Samuel 22:1-51; Saturday, Isaiah 10:32-12:6.
VOL. XXXIX. No. 6
Page Four
April 7, 1961
Eichmann Trial--An End to Genocide
All eyes are directed at- Jerusalem
where, starting next Tuesday, proceed-
ings will commence in the most important
court case in mankind's history.
Only one person will be in the pris-
oner's docket. But Adolf Eichmann will
be the symbol of an entire people's guilt,
of a crime that was committed by this
mass murderer in the name of an entire
nation against millions of defenseless
people.
Eichmann will have defense counsel
at his trial for having master-minded the
murder of six million 'Jews. Even the
worst criminals are entitled to legal aid,
and Israel has assured it for him. But
there can be no defense for the crime of
genocide, and both Eichmann and the
German nation stand indicted at the bar
of justice, during the trial in the Holy
City starting next week.
Eichmann supposedly has a defense:
that he acted on the orders of his super-
iors. It is well that such a claim should
be made, in the interest of exposing the
worst crime ever committed in the history
of the world. This means that not Eich-
mann alone, but the peonle he represent-
ed, will be exposed to the world's naked
eye for crimes against Jewry and human-
ity.
There already was a trial of war
criminals—at Nuernberg—at which the
Nazi brutalities were revealed. The world
has begun to forget them. The time has
come to remind peoples everywhere of
atrocities that remain unmatched for their
horrors. So that the Nazi crime may never
again be repeated, it must be exposed
continually for all to remember it.
When the American forces finally
ousted the Nazis from power, in 1945,
General Dwight D. Eisenhower invited a
group of leading American editors and
publishers to make a tour of German_
prison camps. Incbided in that group was
the late Malcolm W. Bingay, then editorial
director of the Detroit Free Press. Otheri
in the delegation of newspan-rmen were:
Julius Ochs Adler, New York Times; Amon
Carter. Fort Worth Star-Teleg.ram; Norman
Chandler, Los Angeles Times; William L. Chen-
ery, Collier's; E. Z. Dimitman, Chicago Sun; John
Randolph Hearst, Hearst Newspapers; Ben Hibbs,
Saturday Evening Post; Stanley High Reader's
Digest; Ben McKelway, Washington Star; William
I. Nichols, This Week Magazine; L. K. Nicholson,
New Orleans Times-Picayune; Joseph Pulitzer, St.
Louis Post-Dispatch; Gideon Seymour, Minneapo-
lis Star-Journal; Duke Shoop, Kansas City Star;
Beverly W. Smith, American Magazine; Walker
Stone, Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance, and
M. E. Walter, Houston Chronicle.
In a statement issued by these men
of great responsibility, the United States
was urged to adopt a strong policy on war
criminals and to empower "speedily" the
War Crimes Commission to put such a
policy into effect. Their statement, issued
by the U. S. War Department, has become
an official document. It reads:
"This delegation of newspaper and
magazine editors was brought to Europe
at the suggestion of General Eisenhower
to investigate reports of German atroci-
ties.
"We have visited and spent consid-
erable time investigating the prison
camps at Buchenwald and Dachau. We
have interviewed recently freed polit-
ical prisoners, slave laborers and civil-
ians of many nationalities. We have
studied a great mass of documents
covering the German occupation of
. France which contained photographic
evidence and testimony taken in many
places and painstakingly authenticated
with the sworn statements of witnesses
and victims.
"The conclusion is inescapable that
the Nazis had a master plan for their
political prison camps. That plan was
based upon a policy of calculated and
organized brutality. The evidence we
have seen is not a mere assembling of
local or unassociated incidents. It is
convincing proof that brutality was the
basic Nazi system and method.
"This brutality took different forms
in different places and with different
groups. The basic pattern varied little.
"Actual Nazi methods ran the
gamut from deliberate starvation and
routine beatings to sadistic tortures too
horrible and too perverted to be pub-
licly described. Murder was a common-
place.
"Prisoners whose only crime was
that they disagreed or were suspected
of disagreeing with the Nazi philosophy
were treated with uniform cruelty.
When death came, as to multiplied
thousands of them it did, it must have
been a relief from worse than death.
"By these tortures most of the Jews
in prison camp had already been de-
stroyed. After the Jews, the most
cruelly treated victims were the Rus-
sians and the Poles.
"To the basic policy of brutality
toward political prisoners there were
however no significant exceptions.
"This, we believe, is the inexorable
consequence of the whole Nazi-German
philosophy. By this philosophy and the
cunning and persistence with which it
was propagated the German mind be-
came contaminated and diseased.
"For these crimes the German -peo-
ple cannot be allowed to escape their
share of the responsibility. Just punish-
ment must be meted out to the out-
standing party leaders and the German
General Staff, to party office-holders,
to all members of the Gestapo, all mem-
bers of the SS (Elite Guard). Simple
justice and the future peace of the
world require that all these, by virtue
of their position, be indicted as war
criminals.
"In punishing these crimes the his-
toric principle of individual and per-
sonal responsibility must be nreserved
and all those responsible for these
atrocities must be punished in accord
with the accepted laws _of civilized
nations.
"We strongly urge that United Na-
tions policy in regard to war criminals
be speedily agreed to and, the War
Crimes Commission - speedily empow-
ered to put those policies into action.
"As we witness the collapse of the
Nazis' experiment in ruthlessness and
totalitarianism, we are more than ever
convinced that there can be no peace
on earth until the right of the earth's
peonies to -life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness is recognized and protect-
ed under law."
Now the world will hear additional
evidence of an even vaster crime — of
brutalities against civilian populations, of
an organized effort to exterminate an
entire people.
The master mind of that great crime
was Adolf Eichmann. By exposing him,
the trial in Jerusalem again reminds all
peoples that the nation Eichmann repre-
sented had condoned these crimes.
The truth will sprout forth again. Let
the world listen and may mankind never
again permit anything approximating
such a crime to be repeated.
May this trial, instead of being a
sensational case, emerge as a great human
effort to put an end, for all time to come,
to. any attempt at genocide.
Wife's Tribute to Husband
Biography of Rabbi J. X. Cohen
Rabbi J. X. Cohen gained considerable fame for his public
services, as assistant to the late Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and as a
fighter for civil rights.
His widow, Sadie Alta Cohen, pays him great tribute in the
biography she has written of him under the title "Engineer
of the Soul," which has been published by Bloch.
It is a deeply moving story in which Mrs. Cohen shows that
her husband, who died in 1955 at the age of 66, had distinguished
himself first as an engineer and then in the rabbinate.
It is as "a fighting rabbi and a most uncommon man"
that Mrs. Cohen writes about her husband. He is described as
a man of "extraordinary versatility and wide range of in-
terests" who "was able to fuse the gifts and experience of a
brilliant public health engineer with those of a liberal rabbi
and spiritual leader."
The successful efforts in defense of civil rights for people
of all creeds and races is ascribed to men like him, and the late
Rabbi Cohen is given credit for pioneering work in activities
that led to the Supreme Court decision against racial segre-
gation.
Mrs.. Cohen speaks of her late husband as the "slide rule
rabbi" who was fearless in his advocacy of just rights in the
synogogue and through other media. His work as head of the
New York Board of Rabbis, which had honored him signally,
on social ethics committees, and in movements are reviewed in
great detail. His works in European and . Mexican seminars, his
mission to South America, his battle against Nazism, and many
other of his activities are part of this interesting story.
It is as "The Man Within," and as he emerges "in his own
words" that he is seen as a noble figure who benefited Jewry
and America. Mrs. Cohen has paid a worthy tribute to Rabbi
J. X, Cohen in "Engineer of the Soul."
Ancient Jewish Historical
Notes in 'First 3000 Years
Cyrus the Great's permission to captive Jews to return to
Jerusalem, when he established the Persian Empire in the year
538, is included among the incidents told in the very interesting
book for young people. "The First 3000 Years," by C. B. Falls,
just published by Viking Press (625 Madison, N. Y. 22).
It is a beautifully illustrated volume, with many color maps,
describing "ancient civilizations of the Tigris, Euphrates and
Nile River valleys and the Mediterranean Sea."
The author is a distinguished artist whose enthusiasm:
acquired in his study of ancient civilizations has led him to this
work.
In his reference to the Persian Empire, Falls writes:
"Among the first decrees issued by Cyrus the Great as
King of Babylon was the one liberating the JeWs. He also
ordered the sacred vessels of the temple to be returned. And
in 538 B.C.E., after 50 years of captivity, 40,000 Hebrews left
Babylon to return to their homeland. Difficulties beset them,
but the Persian officials were ,helpful, and after 22 years of
hard work the temple was restored. But captivity had changed
the Hebrews. Now they were a theocratic rather than a military
nation: they had begun that intense religious and intellectual .
activity that would produce the world's greatest book, the
Bible."
The stories of the Prophet Samuel, Kings Saul, David and:
Solomon, the subsequent rule of "petty kings of Judah" and the•
fall of the kingdom are told in Falls' story.
Many other incidents in ancient Hebrew history are told:
here.' The account of the Maccabean revolt is given in "The First
3000 Years", and ancient history is admirably reconstructed here.
C. B. Falls has written a splended book for young readers.'
His illustrations add to its value and the maps are most in
formative.
Viking Press' children's book continue to be among the
leaders in their field. Many- new titles that have just appeared
provide fascinating reading. A typical example is Ruiner God-:
den's "Miss Happiness and Miss Flower," a Japanese story about:
dolls and their home. It is ably .illustrated by Jean Primrose. The
annotations and the plans for a home, at the back of the. book,,'
add to the book's charm and provide :constructive interest for
youth. :