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THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing 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
Sabbath Hazon Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the ninth day of Ab, 5721, the following Scriptural selections will be read in our
synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Devari•, Deut. 1:1-3:22. Prophetical portion, Isaiah 1:1-27.
Tisha b'Ab occurs on Sunday, July 23.
Licht Benshen, Friday, July 21, 7:44 p.m.
VOL. XXXIX. No. 21
Page Four
July 21, 1961
When a Platform Is Granted to a Nazi
Under the most ideal democratic rules
of conduct, how far should a newspaper
or a newspaperman go in granting a plat-
form to a criminal who advocates hatred
towards his fellow men?
This question -must be posed upon
reading the signed article by Jack Ander-
son, reporting on his interviews with
Nicolas Eichmann, the son of Adolf Karl
Eichmann who, in spite of his having
posed as a "kindly soul" who was merely
a cog in the Nazi wheel that had crushed
more than six million lives, is emerging
as one of the major architects in the Nazi
record- of crimes imposed on mankind.
The national commander of the Jew-
ish War Veterans, in his protest against
the granting of a visa to Nicolas Eich-
mann to come to this country, charged
that Jack Anderson, who is employed by
Drew Pearson, was compensating Adolf
Eichmann's son for writing a book. Pear-
son denied any connection with the Eich-
mann book deal but admitted that Ander-
son had made arrangements for young
Eichmann to come to this country. Upon
his arrival here, Eichmann uttered
violently anti-Semitic sentiments.
In an article in Parade, the weekly
Sunday magazine section that is distribu-
ted by many newspapers in this country,
Anderson gave Nicolas Eichmann a plat-
form to utter his most vicious sentiments
against the Jews. Aside from the fact
that Anderson hiMself had bargained
clown on the number of Jews murdered,
mainly at the direction of Adolf Eichmann,
in the gas chambers and extermination
camps, from six million to five Million,
Anderson's article served to glorify the
young Eichmann who apparently has not
learned the lesson now being taught all
all young Germans—that the immorality
and the inhumanity of the German people
during the 12 years of Hitler's rule was
the most cruel in world history.
On the contrary, young Eichmann
doesn't believe anything charged against
the Nazis — not even the admission by
his father that six million Jews had
perished under the Nazi rule.,
And the newspapers of this country
gave a platform to Nicolas Eichmann, in
the article signed by Jack Anderson, to
declare: "There were not 5 million dead.
Besides, I have heard that these execu-
tions were ordered by top Jews them-
selves, because they believe Jews should
be martyrs."
It is true that criminality has been
given top billing in the past. This is part
of the unfortunate sensationalism in our
newspapers. But in an issue involving the
worst crime in history, greater caution
should have been exercised in giving a
platform to a Nazi. Would Hitler himself
have been given as much cordiality as
was given to Nicolas Eichmann?
For much milder attacks on Jews,
Germans are being jailed in West Ger-
many and are being tried for the crime
of Nazism. But the spread of such hatred
is being made very easy by Jack Ander-
son and the newspapers that are distribu-
ting the rot uttered by a Nazi.
How far can one be permitted to. go,
in print, in the name of democracy?
Young Eichmann now is openly clam-
oring for an opportunity to come to the
United States. He certainly is being
helped in his aspirations by the glorifi-
cation of Jack Anderson who introduces
him to us as "a perfectly normal young
man." Is a man "normal" when he fol-
lows the Nazi line? No matter how much
Anderson tries to say that his protege
"is defiant, defensive, full of bitter wise-
cracks," or by attempting to say that
Adolf Eichmann destroyed his own fam-
ily, his interview with Nicholas Eichmann
gave a platform to - a young Nazi.
* *
Will Anderson help this "n o r m al
young man" to acquire a visa to settle in
this country, thereby fulfilling his wishes
—and incidentally thereby possibly also
giving Rockwell a staunch Nazi associate
—or will he concur with his boss, Drew
Pearson, who objected to Nicolas Eich-
mann's being admitted to the U. S.
The first man to be tested is Anderson,
who, to quote Pearson, arranged to facili-
tate the admission of young Eichmann to
this country several weeks ago. Germany
would no doubt bar him. Is he to be a bur-
den upon us instead?
Jack Anderson has an excellent record
for reporting the news and for exposing
many illiberal acts, in this country and
abroad. He has served as the right hand
man for Drew Person, one of our nation's
ablest proponents of just causes. It is to
be hoped that the good Anderson record
will not be marred by his becoming the
sponsor of a Nazi who happens to lend
himself as a good byliner for a book.
Anderson has acted within his rights
in the democratic system under which we
are fortunate to live and breathe. But .. .
How far will democracy go in grant-
ing special privileges to young Nazis like
Nicolas Eichmann?
The Protest Against Russian Anti-Semitism
In a resolution submitted to the 12th
international conference of the World
Union for Progressive Judaism, in Lon-
don, Rabbi Richard C. Hertz, of Detroit's
Temple Beth El, warned that "nothing
less than the complete extinction of Jew-
ishness and the liquidation of all Jewish
culture is the aim of the Soviet govern-
ment," and that the USSR's "calculated
program of spiritual starvation for Soviet
Jewry through silence by fear has re-
sulted in the withering of Jewish life and
spiritual genocide for Jews and Judaism."
The resolution therefore proposed
that the World Union "express profound
concern over the religious and spiritual
life of our fellow Jews in the USSR where
they are denied the privileges granted to
other minority groups of having their
own newspapers, cultural groups or their
own artistic life," thereby voicing sym-
pathy "for Jews who live in dread of
derision . . as well as those who deny
Jewish identification for fear of harrass-
inent." The resolution therefore calls
upon the United Nations to expose the
trying conditions under which Jews live
in the USSR and expresses opposition to
the Biro-Bidjan plan "which would force
mass settlement of Jews in a primitive
and underdeveloped area as an extremely
inhuman and unjust act."
Dr. Hertz's proposal calls attention
anew to the tragedy of Russian Jewry.
Up to now, every effort similar to that
taken by the World Union for Progres-
sive Judaism has failed, and appeals in
behalf of USSR Jewry have fallen on
deaf ears. It is to be hoped that the World
Union's appeal will bring better results
than were attained until now. But Soviet
adherence to a policy of perpetuating an
inherited anti-Semitism, while denying
guilt in the prejudiced acts against Jews,
seems to prevail. The added protests
against USSR's guilt may eventually effect
a change in Russian anti-Jewish policies.
Wiesel's Novel, 'Dawn,' Traces
Irgunist Underworld Actions
"Dawn," a short, 90-page novel by Elie Wiesel, published
by Hill and Wang (141 5th, N.Y. 10), takes the reader back
to the days of the underground movement against the British
in pre-Israel Palestine.
It is a tale of retribution and the agonies undergone by
the narrator who was assigned the task of killing a British
officer in retaliation for the condenination to death by the
British of a young Irgunist.
The story is told in the first person by Elisha, a survivor
from the Auschwitz and Buchenwald Concentration camps, who
was brought to • Palestine as a youth and who, at 18, was
recruited for the underground movement by a man he met in
Paris after the war.
The Biitish were warned in posters and radio broadcasts
not to hang David ben Moshe. An innocent British army captain,
John Dawson, was captured and held as hostage. He was to
be shot by Elisha.
Gad, who recruited Elisha for the Movement, told him for
the first time "about Palestine and the age-old Jewish dream
of recreating an independent homeland, one where every human
act would be free." He told him about the desperate struggle
with the English.
He fulfilled the assignment given him—but in the interim
Elisha suffered the agonies that go with the task of murdering
a. man he had never met before—an innocent man who was a
pawn in a battle for a people's freedom.
The British captain keeps telling Elisha: "I'm sorry for
you." He writes a letter to his son in England, and Elisha
promises to mail it the very day on which he commits his
gruesome act. The tragedy of the brutal assignment is described
in the novel's concluding paragraph:
"The night lifted, leaving behind it a grayish light the
color of stagnant water. Soon there was only a tattered frag-
ment of darkness, hanging in midair, the other side of the
window. Fear caught my throat. The tattered fragment of
darkness had a face. Looking at it, I understood the reason
for my fear. The face was my own."
That's how Elisha expresses his horror at the deed he
performed in behalf of the Movement. The story as related by
Wiesel, representative of an Israeli newspaper at the UN, is
intense, powerful, impressive. The description of the night
preceding the hanging of the Jewish underground leader and
the act of retaliation against the Britisher is the highlight of
the story. The suspense that hangs over Elisha, who becomes
an executioner, leaves a strong impression With the reader.
"Dawn" was translated from the French by Frances
Frenaye. The author, Elie Wiesel, dedicated his novel to the
French novelist-philosopher Francois Mauriac, who wrote a
deeply moving introduction to Wiesel's earlier book, "Night,"
in which he described his experiences upon his survival from
the Nazi holocaust. Another novel by Wiesel, "Le Jour," already
appeared in France in FOruary.
Noteworthy Buber Paperbacks
Great classics, about Hasidism, by one of the most noted
authorities on the Hasidic movement, are now available in
paperbacks.
Schocken Books, Inc. (67 Park, N.Y. 16) has just issued
the two-volume edition of "Tales of the Hasidim—Early Masters,"
by Dr. Martin Buber, in two paperbacks.
Schocken, world famous as a book publishing house, whose
activities began in Germany and now extend to this country
and to Israel, thus is pursuing its new activities in the paperback
field.
Prof. Buber's "Tales of the Hasidim" is among the major
collections of Hasidic stories. Richly annotated, with glossaries,
bibliographies, a genealogy of the early Hasidic masters and
an alphabetical index to the genealogy, these two volumes are
among the treasures in the accumulating library on Hasidism.