THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS -- Friday, June 9, 196 1
Purely Commentary
William L. Shirer, one of America's most distinguished
newspapermen, who was a correspondent for American news-
papers in Germany during the crucial years of Hitler's rise to
power and_his launching of the tragic war .on several countries
and especially on Jewry, has earned the everlasting gratitude
- of world public opinion for his -
documented exposes of the Nazi
crime and its perpeiratdrs.
Shirer's "The Rise and Fall
of the Third Reich," published
last year and still on top • of the
best seller list, is now supplement-
ed with another very important
book, "The Rise and Fall of Adolf
Hitler," published by Random
House. The latter is of even
greater importance than the large
documentary because it was writ-
ten for young readers and because
it states in the simplest possible
terms, understandable by people
of all ages, how Hitler came to
power, the extent of his atrocities
and the manner in which the Ger-
man people aided and abetted the
Wm. L. Shirer
crime. -
Expose of Hitler's Crimes
by Shirer: Great Service
to Couse of Truth
By Philip
Slomovitz
Localites Granted
MD Degrees at
WSU Exercises
who was asked by the judge whether the order to exterminate
the Jews included the:children and whether all the Jewish chil-
dren Were murdered; End the reply was "yes." Shirer states at
Doctor of Medicine degrees
will be conferred on 71 Wayne
State University College of Medi-
cine seniors at commencement
exercises June 22 at Cobo Hall.
Degree candidates include
Norman Ratter, 18077 Schaefer;
Joel Silberg, 19321 Votrobeck
Dr.; Marvin Silver, 26511 Cool-
idge, Oak Park; Leonard Shlain,
25241 Gardner, Oak Park; Sidney
Seltzer, '15847 Woodingham; Mar-
tin Nosan, 18771 Shaftsbury; Ir-
win Finkelstein, 18309 Washburn;
Allen Stone, 14130 Wales, Oak
Park; Howard Lazarson, 843 Whit-
more Rd.
Also, Louis Silverman, 8432 E.
Jefferson; Larry Beck, 2927 Bu-
ena Vista; Richard Ruzumna,
18309 Littlefield; Richard Schiff,
18419 Hartwell; Kenneth Wein-
berger, 20208 Hartwell; and Stan-
ley Wolfe, 17550 Schaefer.
Graduates who will intern in
Detroit are Silberg 'and *Silver,
Sinai Hospital; Seltzer, Harper
Hospital; Finkelstein, Women's
Hospital; Stone, Receiving. Rotter
will intern at Ford Hospital,
Dearborn.
Interns to serve outside Michi-
gan are Shlain, Mt. ZiOn Hospi-
tal, San Francisco, Calif.;"Nosan,
Madigan Army Hospital, Tacoma,
Wash.; Silverman, Philadelphia
General Hospital, Pa.; _ and Beck
Lazarson, Ruziimna, Schiff, Wein-
berger and Wolfe, Los Angeles
County General HoSpital, Calif.
•
this point:
.
"The slaughter of More than five million human beings
Jews
was the macabre consequence and
be
who happened to
the shattering cost of the anti-Semitic madness which came
over Adolf Hitler in his youthful days as a tramp in Vienna.
It was a disease he imparted to — or shared with — many . of
his German followers."
.
Hitler, Shirer ,points out, "having blamed the Jews for start-
ing the war, placed on them 'sole responsibility' not only for all
the millions of deathS on the battlefields and in the bombed
towns but for his own massacre of millions of Jews!" And
throughout the record of Hitler's insanities there is evidence of
his constant demand that his people wage wars.
Several times, Hitler's generals made attempts on his life.
They paid dearly for it. The attempt of July 20, 1944, when 'a
bomb was planted where Hitler was sitting at 'a generals' meet-
ing, also failed because Colonel Brandt unknoWingly brushed
aside the briefcase that contained the bomb. (In his report from
Germany, this Commentator erroneously stated that it was the
half-Jew General Mulch, who headed the Gernian air force, who
had brushed aside the briefcase). Colonel Brandt and not Hitler
lost his life. Then came a wholesale massacre of army officers.
July 20, 1944, is constantly referred to by- Germans as proof
that not all of the German people had backed Hitler. It only
proved that not all in the army had backed him.
Shirer concludes his account of the rise and fall Of Hitler
with the statement:
- The failure of the people of Germany to rebel against the
sadistic tyrant represents the saddest part of the years of
horror under Nazism. After describing how Hitler'S lieutenants
destroyed the city of Lidice in Czechoslovakia—even non-Jews,
as in Lidice, were not secure once Hitler decided •upon his
inhuman policy of annihilating those he aimed to subdue —
Shirer states: "Fortunately for mankind the New Order was
destroyed in its infancy — but not until the captive peoples of
Europe had lived through the nightmare of . its first horrors.
The New Order was not brought down by any revolt of the
German people against such barbarism but by the. defeat of
German arms, the consequent overrunning of Germany by the
victorious Allies, and the fall of Adolf Hitler."
"The remembrance of the grisly world nightmare he pro-
voked, of the millions of innocent beings he slaughtered, of
the hurt he did to the human spirit, lingers on. The memory
fades but slowly as the years pass and mankind resumes its
age-old effort to make the world a more decent place in
which to live."
With his expose of Hitler and Hitlerism, in this and in his
earlier books, William L. Shirer has made a great contribution
Elsewhere in his book on Hitler's _rise and fall he blames towards the task of preventing the 'recurrence of Hitlerism. For
having done that, we are greatly indebted to him. As journalist
'the German people. And he does not spare some of Europe's and historian, he thus has made his greatest contribution to
statesmen. "He fooled the statesmen of Europe as easily as he
,
-
-
mankind. -
had hoodwinked his fellow Germans," he declares.
Shirer blames those who ruled the democratic German
Republic before Hitler came to power for not having read the
book he had written while in prison—"Mein Kampf"—and for
not having taken it seriously. He declares: "No one can say that
British• Pro-Nazis Reported to Have
Plotted to Kidnap Israel Ambassador
Lourie as Hostage for Adolf Eiehinann
Adolf Hitler did not give full warning' of the barbarian world
he intended to make."
As in his larger book, "The Rise and Fall of the. Third
Reich," (published by Simon and Schuster), Shirer admits
that Hitler "was undoubtedly a genius," and he adds: "But it
must be added at once that he was an evil genius, one of the
cruelest, most bloodthirsty and barbarous tyrants who ever lived.
. . . Before he died. at the age of 56 he had massacred millions
of innocent persons, including some five million Jews. And he
had plunged the world into the bloodiest and most destructive,
war in history."
A new type of evil men has. arisen now, 16 years after
(Direct JTA Teletype Wire to
The Jewish News)
,
the collapse of the Hitler regime,- to claim that the story of the
xnurder of six million Jews has been fabricated by Jews.
Eichmann's son is being permitted to ridicule the victims of
his father and of Hitler while enjoying the freedom of a visit
in this country, and it is therefore a bit puzzling that Shirer
should speak of "some five million Jews" having been mur-
dered. If it is possible for honest men to reduce the number
of Jewish dead by a million, why can't a Nazi a Rockwell; or
a Nicholas Eichmann and their ilk—bargain down another few
million? The Nuremberg trial records • speak of six million
Jewish dead—and some have testified that there was an even
larger number of Hitler victims—and for the sake of historical
truth there must be no bargaining on any of the points in
volved in the total expose of the -Nazis.
—
It is only on the figure", as quoted' 'by Shirer, that. we can
possibly differ with him in his book in which he interprets the
Hitler menace with such accuracy.
Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler"- offers a mass
of data to show how Hitler demanded of his generals that they
--proceed to wage war against Germany's neighbors, in order to
Nazify all of Europe. Only England •escaped—miractiously—from
the Hitler crusade against humanity. -Yet, in his final days, Hitler
embarked upon a new type' of propaganda campaign — claiming
that the Jews started the war. One must wonder how many
• ' Germans, who 'did not raise a finger against Naziim, who failed
to rebel against the mass murder of millions of innocent people,
believing everything their sainted fuehrer told them, also, be-
- lieved that charge of the already-defeated master?
Insofar as the German people are concerned, their sub-
mission to the . most perverted mind of Hitler representt a sad
chapter in human history!
Shirer'• story shows how the big Hitler - lies worked, how
he succeeded in enlisting the .Ludendorffs and others, how his
"half-baked ideas" fell on ready ears and his. "Mein Kampf," in
which he incorporated the prejudices he acquired "during his
vagabond days in Vienna,", "became one of the most influential
books of a demented age, and eventually it outsold all other
books in Germany except the Bible." Shirer writes that by 1933
the royalties from "Mein Kampf" "had made Adolf Hitler a
millionaire."
,
Hitler is frequently referred to as • the former Viennese
tramp. He thrived on Germany's economic ills in the _1920s
and early 1930s and the demigod soon became the god.
The tramp who suffered hunger in Vienna soon mastered
,
over the generals, and when the generals several times 'sought to"
dispose of him, they were subdued. FirSt it was Chamberlain,
whose readiness to deal with Hitler gave the Nazi leader - status;'
then came the pact with Stalin, and in every instance Hitler
tricked and betrayed the men he dealt with.- The generals who
saw the fallacies of waging a senseless war were helpless.
Hitler became the absolute master of the army. Generals
who pleaded with him not to undertake some of his moves, not
to risk the lives of his soldiers, were sidetracked or s eliminated.
But the real sufferers were the Jews. Shirer quotes from an
interrogatiori of one • of 'the "S. S. thugs," Otto Ohlendorf,
LONDON—A fantastic plot of
Nazi sympathizers to kidnap
Israel Ambassad or. Arthur
Lourie and hold him as hostage
for "Adolf Eichmann was de-
scribed Tuesday by four Lon-
don daily newspapers. Both
Scotland Yard and the Israel
Embassy said they had no
'knowledge of the purported
plot.
The news
papers as-;
serted that
special branch
detectives
were tipped
off to the al-
leged plot by
three right
wing extrem-
ists who were
invited to
take part in
the plan and
considered it
insane.
Lourie -
According to .
the report, the kidnapping was
planned several months ago in
a LOndon flat by a group of
British facists who reportedly
planed to create small groups
of strong-arm men throughout
Britain for anti - Semitic and
anti-Negro activities.
The envoy was to have been
seized as he was leaving the
Embassy for an official func-
tion. The detectives were told
by the three who -refused to
take part in the plan that at-
tempts had been made to re-
cruit them into a 12-man team
of commandoes to carry out
the plot, according to the re-
ports.
, One of the' three was quoted
as telling the detectives that
"we were let into the prelim-
inaries of the plot at the first
of a series of parties to which
we were invited last October.
A man who descrifked himself
as "Director General" was in
charge. He was wearing a green
Nazi - style uniform and the
'
walls of the room were dec-
orated with swastikas." He
said the "Director General" told
them that prospective recruits
would have to prove their "re-
liability" by defiling a syna-
gogue. The informant also was
quoted as saying that a number
of pro-Nazi Germans and pro-
fascist. Hungarians living in
London attended the meetings.
According to the account,
Lourie was to have been taken
to a remote marsh on the
Welsh border and held there as
hostage for Eichmann's re-
lease. The Daily Mail said the
"Director General" was an
extremist who met Eichmann in
195 9 when the former Gestapo
colonel left his Argentine hide-
out to visit Linz, Austria, where
his brother -and- family live. •
Itzhak Unna, the press at-
tache at the Israel -Embassy,
said that Lourie was "highly
amused" by the report. .
,
Fisher and Zivian, Sign for. Local
$3,000,000 USA Debt Liqui,cicition
Reuther Testimonial
Committee Enlarged
Thirty-two more names of
Prominent leaders have been
added tothe roster of the Mich-
igan host committee, which is
planning the "Labor Man of the
Decade" testimonial dinner to
Walter P. Reuther, June 21, at
the Masonic Temple. The new
members are:
.
Judge Victor J. Baum, Judge Theo-
dore R. Bohm, Judge George E.
Bowles, Irving Br o n s o n, David
Chaney, Harold C. Crotty, Edward H.
Cushman vice president, American
Motors; ' Paul Dimeny, Dr. Norinan
"Drachler, Dr. Robert H. Rrehse, head
of the Round Table of Catholics,- Jews
and Prbtestants; • Judge Horace W.
Gilmore, Lawrence Gubow, U.S. dis-.
trict attorney; William Hordes, Anton
Jakobs, international representative of
the-Meat Cutters and Butchers Uriion;
Leonard Kasle, member Detroit Board
of Education; Probate Judge Ira G.
Kaufman, Morris Lieberman, Bernard
Linderman, Norman Mackay, Judge
Wade McCree, Stanley J. Michaels,
Irving Pokempner, Dr. Remus Robin-
son, member of the board of educa-
tion, Morris L. Schaver, • Harry Sebu-
m-0'Y Shevitz, A. Z. Zwerd-
'lint, "Philip StolIman, Les O'Bryant,
Alvin H. Ruthenberg, Prof. Robert
Haughton, Dr. Shmarya Klein-
man and Dr. Leonard S. Rosenfeld.
Max M. Fisher, president of the Jewish Welfare Federation
(left) and Max Zivian, president of the United Jewish Char-
ities, are shown here signing the agreement for Petroit's
participation in the $65,000,000 national. United Jewish Appeal
debt liquidation program. The' Detroit Jewish community is
participating in the debt liquidation to the extent of $3,000,000,
loaned by the National Bank.