THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS — Friday, June 16,
PI
Worldwide Interest Retained
in Nazi's Trial; Defense Set
(Continued from Page 1)
Belsen camp, there were 42,000
been attending cross-examina- "living skeletons," but within
tion of Nazi witnesses in West a few weeks 27,000 died despite
German courts, returned to Is- the efforts of Allied doctors.
rael Tuesday for a brief visit,
He told of Jewish refugees
with a report that he had re- flocking to DP camps. In one
ceived "full, honest and help- instance, in a country he did
ful cooperation" in West Ger- not name, he said that four of
many.
15 Jews who returned to a town
He also disclosed that Nazis were murdered by local inhabi-
scheduled to testify under the tants who suspected they would
cooperative arrangement in- have to return property previ-
cluded some who were unco- ously stolen from the survivors.
operative, claiming fear of self-
(In Vienna, the Austrian
incrimination. Others, he said, authorities announced the ar-
talked freely, including Max rest of Franz Slavik, iden-.
Merten. Nazi administrator of. tified in testimony at the
Salonika, and Edmund Weesen- Adolf Eichmann trial in Jeru-
mayer, the wartime German salem as a Nazi who had
minister in Budapest. Shimron helped Eichmann kill a Jew-
said that after Merten finished ish boy at Budapest in 1944.
his testimony for the Eichmann According to the Ministry of
trial, West German authorities Justice, an investigation into
charged him with making false Slavik's war crimes activities
statements.
had begun some years ago,
Attorney G e n e r al Gideon but was dropped when insuf-
Hausner submitted to the court ficient - evidence had been un-
a Nazi directive, marked "sec- covered. Now, the Ministry
ret," which instructed German stated, he will be tried for
authorities to regard Jewish complicity in committing a
property as "stolen goods." One war crime on the basis of the
report, by a Nazi district com- evidence given in the Eich-
monde r, Odilo Globotchnik, mann trial.)
mentioned the figure of 100,-
In weekend testimony, Gesta-
000,000 reichsmarks as the esti- po Chief Heinrich Himmler was
mate of the valuables taken by
quoted as saying that the Nazi
him from the Jewish victims in SS had been given the assign-
Poland. Hausner told the court ment of carrying out Hitler's
that the figure was "nominal." decision to solve "the Jewish
Hausner told the court that, problem." That statement was
when Heinrich Himmler, head made by Himmler to Rudolf
of the Gestapo, visited War- Hoess, the Auschwitz camp com-
saw, he was asked about how mandant- who was later hanged
to dispose of 33,000 women's at the camp by the Allies. The
watches taken from Jewish deposition cited Hoess being
victims. During that visit,
told by Himmler "you will get
Mustier said, Globotchnik the details from Eichmann who
boasted that about 100,000 will report to me." Hoess said
men's watches taken from the that Eichmann told him that six
Jews had been distributed to to seven million persons would
Nazi . . fighting units and con- arrive at Auschwitz from all
centration camp personnel.
parts of Europe for destruction
The prosecution showed that by gas and that "we need a gas
millions of items of Jewish suitable for mass destruction
wearing apparel had been dis- without bottle-necks."
tributed by the Germans who , (A question asked in Israel
had received 823 train loads of now is: will Eichmann be per-
"assorted effects" taken from mitted to take an oath on the
Jews. He said the eyeglasses Bible? Sephardic Chief Rabbi
were given to the German army ; Yitzhak_ Nissim said that to per-
medical corps, w h e foreign mit that would be "a desecra-
currency was given to the Gov- tion of the holy book, and that
eminent Bank. must not be permitted.")
Shocking pictorial records of
how Eichmann proceeded to im-
The Eichmann case will be plement the grand design for
discussed in two televised mass murder were shown in the
Programs, over Station darkened courtroom which had
WJBK-TV, at 9:15 a.m. on been cleared of spectators for
Sundays, June 18 and 25, by security reasons. Most of the
Philip Slomovitz, editor of films were taken by Nazi cam-
The Jewish News who was a eramen. There were also films
correspondent at the Jeru- taken by photographers of the
salem trial. The telecasts, ar- Allied armies who were among
ranged by the culture com- the first on the spot when the
mission of the Jewish Com- camps were liberated.
munity.Council, will be on the -
Brutally slain men, women
topics, "Justice in a Jerusa- and children came to life brief-
lem Courtroom" and "Tat- ly as their faces—contorted in
tooed Warning: An End to horror or in the last agonies of
Genocide."
dying—passed the screens. The
first film showed the Einsatz-
gruppen in action. Thousands of
Hausner put on the witness victims of all ages, some - naked,
stand Shalom Cholawsky, a some in tattered clothes, were
leader of Jewish partisans who shown running before the ma-
for years roamed the forests chine guns mowing them down
in White Russia; and Attorney before mass graves.
Hotter-Ishai, former military
The camera focused on heaps
prosecutor serving under Mar- of passports and identity cards,
shal Montgomery in the latter's
with faces smiling on photo-
Eighth (British) Army.
graphs taken long before the
Cholawsky had escaped to Nazi barbarians seized the own-
White Russia from the Niewcz ers. There were scenes from
ghetto in Poland. He estimated the liberation followed by those
15,000 Jewish partisans lived of Jews herded into deportation
and fought the Germans in the trains, smiling SS' men, followed
forests extending from Lithua- by a shot of Gen. Eisenhower
nia eastward to Galicia. In ad- visiting a liberated camp. The
dition, he said, there were thou- haphazardness seemed to fit
sands of Jewish refugees con- the total absence of any human
sisting of aged women and of order in the Nazi-created
children living in "family inferno.
camps" in the woods under the
The camera then moved from
protection of partisans.
cell to cell inside the gas cham-
Hotter-Ishai told of the lib- bers, occasionally fixing on the
eration of Jewish victims who dark openings from which the
had survived in concentration lethal -cyanide gas poured down
camps when trucks driven by on millions of victims. Other
members of the Jewish Brigade pictures portrayed the burning
entered the camps. He said that, of bodies in the open when the
when they entered the Bergen- t jammed crematoria could not
accommodate the flow of gassed
bodies,
There was a powerful
scene, taken by Allied photo-
graphers, of half-dead sur-
vivors slowly moving in a
stupor in which they hardly
seemed to know that their
previously unending agony
was over. This' was followed
by a scene showing a trans-
port of tiny children, some
of them barely reaching to
the top of the polished boots
of the SS men herding them
into the gas chambers.
One of the films showed
heaps of glasses, gold teeth, a
mound of babies' shoes, heaps
of hair shorn from women vic-
tims before the gassing and
then huge reams of cloth woven
from their hair. In another,
thousands of naked men and
women marched in the deep
snow before SS guards There
was a shot of headless bodies
laid out in neat rows like sar-
dines and next to them barrels
of heads. This scene was filmed
at the Institute for Racial Re-
search at Strasbourg which had
asked Eichmann for 100 skele-
tons but was supplied instead
with 100 living victims 'for dis-
posal."
There were scenes of Ger-
mans brought hack to a camp,
following their capture after
liberation, so that they might
look on what they had done.
They walked gingerly among
the dead, taking care not to soil
their shoes, holding handker-
chiefs to their delicate noses to
avoid the unpleasant smell of
the charnelhouses they had
created and operated.
•
Nobody . moved when the
lights were turned on again in
the courtroom. The three judges
sat on the bench, faces -buried
in their hands. Judge Raveh
was weeping silently. The grey-
faced ‘Eichmann, at his second
viewing of the films, watched
them with alinost hypnotic in-
tensity. He showed no emotion
as he was led from the pris-
oner's dock while the audience
of newspapermen solemnly left
the courtroom.
(The 111th and final witness,
Abraham Hagag, a police hand-
writing expert, deciphering the
diary of the former Grand
Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin
el-Husseini, which was captured
in Austria by the Allied forces,
quoted the Arab collaborator
with Hitler as having written
that Eichmann is "a rare gem,
he greatest savior of the
Arabs.") •
(On Monday, former Israel
Prime Minister Moshe • Sharett
denied that he had been in-
formed that Eichmann promised
to blow up the Auschwitz camp
if he received the 10,000 trucks
in exchange for a million Jews.
Joel Brand said he thought he
had given that information to
Sharett. The latter denied that
the Jewish Agency did not take
a serious interest in the report-
ed negotiations to rescue Jews
in Hungary. Testimony quoting
him and Dr. Chaim Weizmann
had been submitted to prove
his contention.)
Aground the World...
A Digest of World Jewish Happenings
from Dispatches of the Jewish Telegraphic
Agency and Other News-Gathering Media.
Europe
LONDON—Sir Simon Marks, 72-year-old chain store magnate
and Jewish philanthropist, has been named "for public and
charitable services" as a baron to the birthday honors list of
Queen Elizabeth II . . . United States President John F.
Kennedy has proposed to the Arab rulers that 25 per cent of
the Arab refugees from Palestine be permitted to return to
Israel, while some of them be -integrated in Arab countries,
according to an article in the Cairo newspaper Al Masaa, it
was reported here.
BELGRADE—Twenty years after the Nazis occupying,Yugo-
slavia destroyed the Belgrade synagogue, the Jewish house of
worship was reopened here this week with solemn ,ceremonies,
rebuilt with the aid of the American Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee and the Yugoslav Government. -
BONN — Special atonement services tied to the Adolf
Eichmann trial in Israel were conducted in Roman Catholic
churches throughout West Germany -last Sunday after more
than 21,000,000 German Catholics were asked by their bishops
to attend these services and to pray for forgiveness "for the -
sins committed by members of our nation" . The Bonn Prose-
cution Office announced that an investigation against Dr. Hans
Globke, State Secretary to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, has
been closed after it failed to verify charges by Dr. Max Merten,
Nazi wartime administrator of Salonika. Greece, accusing Globke
of dealings with Adolf Eichmann.
Israel
TEL AVIV—Armored units of the Israel defense forces
churned through the Negev sands last week in large-scale.exer-
cises with artillery, mobile infantry and air force units taking
part in the mock battle . . . Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion
termed his efforts as "worthwhile" in a three-hour cabinet session
upon return from a three-Week tour of four countries with the
purpose of clarifying positions and needs, but the -government
enacted a complete black-out on his report.
JERUSALEM—Walworth Barbour, new United States am-
bassador to Israel, Monday presented his credentials to Presi-
dent Izhak Ben-Zvi . . Sharp charges and counter-charges ex-
changed recently between the United Arab Republic and the
Soviet Union seem more intense than similar disputes in the past,
but do not necessarily denote a serious rupture of Moscow-Cairo
relations, according to political observers who feel that UAR
President Gamal Abdel Nasser is permitting his controlled press
to publicize those exchanges in the hope that he would make the
United States believe there is a chance of wooing Egypt from
the Soviet orbit by giving the UAR greater political and economic
support.
Latin America
MEXICO CITY—Dr. Marcos Moshinsky, world-famous nu-
clear scientist and professor of physics at the University of
Mexico since 1949, this week was awarded one of the govern-
ment's three annual prizes for scientific research.
BUENOS AIRES—A new translation by Prof. Leon Dujovne
Manases and Moses Konstantinovsky of the Old Testament, in
modern Spanish, has been issued here.
SANTIAGO, Chile—A mock Eichmann trial sponsored by
the law faculty of the Catholic University here was attended by
hundreds of students.
Middle East
MOROCCO—Permission for the election of a new chief Rabbi
of Turkey (the post has been vacant since the death, last Novem-
ber, of Chief Rabbi Raphael Saban) was granted to the Turkish
Jewish community this week.
United States
WASHINGTON—Leading United States government officials,
foreign diplomats, representatives of the press, radio and tele-
vision attended a farewell reception tendered by Israel Ambas-
sador Abraham -Harman in honor of Michael Arnon, head of
the Israel Government Information Services in the United States,
who is returning to Israel to assume duties as new director of the
Israel Foreign Ministry's Information Department . . . The
research and training branch of the United States Social Security
Administration will spend $120,000 during the next two years
in Israel on research into Israeli achievements in combating
juvenile delinquency.
NEW YORK—More than 500 leaders of national Jewish or-
ganizations and other persons attended a dinner Monday marking
the 50th anniversary of the Jewish Folk Schools of the United
States and Canada . . . A firm stand against the granting of
Federal aid or loans to private and religious elementary and
high schools was taken by the United Synagogue Of America
at a meeting of its executive council . . . Fairbanks Morse, an
`Britain Wasn't Indifferent
affiliate of Fairbanks Whitney, announced this week it has built
to Jews' Fate'—Macmillan
and is testing a Zarchin de-salting unit (invented by Israeli
(Direct JTA Teletype Wire to
scientist Alexander Zarchin) at Beloit, Wisconsin, with plans to
The Jewish News)
LONDON—Prime Minister install such a unit in Eilat to produce fresh water at the edge
Harold Macmillan told the of the Negev Desert.
House of Commons Tuesday
BOSTON—The Rabb family of Boston has donated $1,000,000
that lie was glad of the oppor- to the Beth Israel Hospital development campaign, it was an-
tunity to confirm that this coun- nounced by Rudolph H. Weiner, hospital president.
try and its government were not
EVANSTON, Ill.—A decision adopted by the Interfrater-
indifferent to the fate of the
nity Council of Northwestern University here, setting Nov: 1,
Jews.
Macmillan made his statement 1963, as a deadline for removal of discriminatory clauses from
while replying to Laborite national fraternity constitutions, was unanimously approved this
Arthur Henderson, who request- past weekend by the Council on Undergraduate Life, represent-
ed. last week that the govern- ing the administration and faculty of the university.
ment issue a White Paper on
PHILADELPHIA—Several all-day schools were diclosed
its actions in connection with this week to be among Jewish schools in this city" which have
plans to evacuate European been voted a record $364,955 by the Federation of Jewish
Jews during the war years, 1939 Agencies, which amounts to some $10,000 over the previous
to 1945.
allocation for Jewish education, which also was a record.