to
Purely Commentary Attack on Jews as 'God Killers
By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
A Weekly Newspaper Loses in the Rhythm of Time
Many readers must have been puzzled by the fact that on the
morning on which they received last week's issue of The Jewish
5
News they were deprived of news in our columns of the final
word on Adolf Eichmann's fate from the three-judge lower
Israeli court. But they did find them in the morning newspaper
>7;
vs on the day our paper was delivered.
•-
The reason for it is, of course, obvious. This is a weekly news-
paper that goes into the mails on Thursday evening, for Friday
morning delivery, and the sentence was not pronounced until Fri-
day morning. That was Jerusalem time, allowing the Free Press
leeway to publish the latest cabled reports on Friday -morning.
are the disadvantages of a weekly newspaper. Only once
z was Such
a confrere of ours- taken into consideration by a government
in a matter involving great international news. When the Balfour
c/)
Declaration was to be issued in October of 1917, the announcement
was deferred for a week to conform with the Nov. 2 ; 1917, publi-
0-4
cation date".of the London Jewish Chronicle. It was a great tribute
by the British Empire to the only Jewish weekly periodical then
0
published in English for British Jewry.
Would that even the- routine organizational activities of Ameri-
W
can Jewry could be timed accordingly as a matter of respect to
the most important of our people's organs for the dissemination of
news and for the cementing of kinship among the Jewries of the
E-1 world—the community's English-Jewish newspaper! It'll probably
take time for community leadership to recognize this obligation to
the - only instrument that keeps their causes and movements alive
—their weekly newspaper.
- _ In the instance of the sentencing of Eichmann; it was unavoid-
able that we should have been "scooped." _A court does not wait
for anyone: it acts in appropriate time.
Yet, the nature of time lends itself to some moralizing. The
poet Delmore Schwartz once wrote:
"Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn."
But in Apocrypha II 'Baruch, in Jewish evaluation of time,
we read:
"With the Most High account is not taken of much time or of
a few years. What did it profit Adam that he lived 930 years,
and transgressed? Or wherein did Moses lose by living only
120 years, and lit a lamp for the nation of Israel?"
Therefore Simeon Frug, the Russian Hebrew-Yiddish poet
(1860-1916) could state:
"A day passes creeping,
A year, as on wings,"
and the Psalmist (90:4) admonished us:,"A thousand years in Thy
sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in
the night."
The Sentence: "Like Unto All the Nations . .. "
The sentence for Adolf Eichmann pronounced by the three-
judge court in Jerusalem is: death by hanging. For this we forgive
the nations of the world as little as we do even for the Nazi crimes.
We have been the victims of persecutions, but through the ages
we were sustained by great spiritual strength. We held aloft • the
banners of faith. We abhorred murder. We did not approve of death
penalties even for the severest cruelties.
Now we are like all the nations! Now, Jews even pronounce
a death sentence!
Dear reader, do not interpret this as - cowardice or as submis-
sion to defeatism. It is a reaffirmation of a basic principle that
because a ,person takes another person's life—or even the lives of
many people—that no one has the right to deprive another man
of life.
No punishment is severe enough for Eichmann. Death would
be the quickest punishment for Eichmann. Surely there can be
another punishment.
Now we have it on our conscience that Jews pronounced a
death sentence in this civilized age!
And so we are now like all the nations!
It was only two decades ago that we differed with the late
Dr. Judah L. -Magnes who issued a special pamphlet against the
aspiration of Zionists to be "like all the nations." This commentator
debated with him by claiming: why not like all the nations?
wherein do we differ that we should not have the same rightS,
' that we should be convicted to second class citizenship, that we
should be deprived of privileges that are due to all men? This
commentator will -continue to argue along such lines: Jews must
be the equals of all the nations and must acquire all the rights
of franchise and citizenship and social and economic benefits.
Indeed, Jews must have political rights and the right to self-
defense.
But we have now acquired another right: to be like the other
nations also in pronouncing death, in lowering our spiritual values,
in yielding to the basest instincts of man.
On this score we are like the late Dr. Magnes in rejecting
equality with other nations. In this respect we'd rather be different.
In the realm of the spirit we choose to mete out justice without
pronouncing death upon a person who was created equally with
us. We would punish him for having betrayed his human qualities,
but not by sinking to the lowest depths of bestiality.
We are opposed to capital punishment, no matter who is
being judged.
We would have preferred to look to the judges and the
prosecutors in Israel as men who had the courage to defy the
demands of anyone who demands death for a living being.
Because we believe as we do, the day on which a Jewish
court of law pronounced a death sentence will .be recorded for
us as on of the blackest on the Jewish calendar.
Undue Attacks Upon Jewish Leadership
• Re-evaluations of efforts that were made 20 years ago to
prevent Nazi atrocities and to make possible the rescue of the
Jewish victims of Hitlerism are being accompanied by excoriations
of Jewish leaders and accusations that a generation of Jews had
failed to come to the rescue of those who were condemned to death.
Generalizations are never in order, and they certainly do not
apply to the Nazi era.
There is no doubt that heads of governments were calloused,
and just as Germans today offer poor defense when they claim
that they did not know about the concentration camps and the gas
Start Court Procedures in Italy
(Direct JTA Teletype Wire
to The Jewish News)
_
ROME—The Council of the
Union of Italian Jewish Com-
munities instructed its presi-
dent Tuesday to seek a meeting
with the Italian Justice Minister
concerning an - unprecedented
criminal court ruling which ac-
quitted an Italian magistrate of
charges of militant anti-Semit-
ism.
The case involved Giovanni
Durando, a Turin magistrate
who is editor of the Voice of
Justice. The periodical, in its
May 6. 1961, issue published
an article fiercely attacking the
trial in Jerusalem of Adolf
Eichmann, declaring that "Cath-
olics cannot and must not forget
that Jews are god killers" and
that as such "up to our days"
Jews "should be deprived of
the possibility of being judges
of anybody not belonging to
their progeny." -
The article. also declared
that, "having crucified Christ,"
Jews were "totally deprived ,of
any sense of morality."
Judge Durando was promptly
denounced to Italian judicial
authorities by several Italian
Jews for "vilification of the
Jewish religion 'and defamation
of Jewish citizens." Before a
jammed Genoa courtroom, Ugo
Levi, president of the Turin
Jewish Community, and more
than 50 other Italian Jews ap-
peared with their attorneys as
suing parties against. the magis-
trate.
Judge Durando appeared
without a lawyer. He contended
that the subject of the charge
against him should be consid-
ered "an ideological matter." He
said that while he- had not
written the article he assumed
full responsibility for it since
he had read it and approved it
before publication. He said the
article had been' written by "a
deeply religious person" whose
name he would not disclose.
In his defense the magistrate
said that the article "stresses
the historical and theological
principles of my religion." He
cited historical theological de-
finitions of Jews as "god
killers" and insisted he had
nothing against Jews personal-
ly, "for I consider them my
brothers." He said that during
World War II he fought with
the partisans "and saved many
Jews." The article, he declared,
simply repeated "what the
Apostles Paul and Luke already
stated."
The attorneys for the com-
plainants declared that the
defendants' arguments were
similar to those used by
Hitler in 1931 and rejected
the contention that the article
had -been written to empha-
size some religious principles.
They declared that they con-
tested the magistrate's "right
to state that his faith is better
than that of others and that
therefore those professing a
different religion are to be
considered immoral."
The lawyers also reminded
the court that Pope John XXIII
had personally ordered the de-
letion of the phrase "perfidi-
ous Jews" from the Good Fri-
day liturgy. They asked for
damages of 500,000, lire ($800)
to be turned over to the Associ-
chambers and the crematoria, so also are the apologetics of states-
men indefensible.
There were some Jews who could not conceive the immensity
of the Nazi crimes, and they were undoubtedly blind to realities
when they procrastinated in uttering protests and in providing
relief. But such a charge can not be leveled at all Jewish leaders
and at the entire Jewish people. There- were many -who spoke up,
who protested, who begged to help, who demanded action. Dr.
Stephen S. Wise was among them. There were others, and among
the activists were many British Jews.
_That is why an attack like Elie Wiesel's in Commentary that
there Were not many demonstrations against Nazism in Madison
Square Garden is unjustified. Viesel makes a. justified accusation
that the British Foreign Office had rejected Dr. Chaim Weizmann's
proposal that the Royal Air Force should bomb the railway tracks
to- Auschwitz, and that President Roosevelt failed to act on a similar
request made to him by American Jewish leaders. There is no doubt
that proper and timely action by the world's democratic powers
could have prevented the holocaust, and the statesmen who were
in power- during the Hitler years must share the guilt for what
had happened to millions of our kinsmen. But it is unjust to say
that all of Christendom and the entire Jewish leadership was
silent. All of us were in travail during those years and we were
not silent. We were helpless!
That is why accusations like Ben Hecht's sound so outrage-
ously unjust.
The Ben Hecht 'Sensation'
Ben Hecht was known for many years for his filthy novel,
"A Jew in Love." He now claims to have had Zionist leanings.
One wonders, what claim he has to truly practical contributions to-
wards resettlement of Jews and the establishment of a strong center
in what once was Palestine, leading up, through Zionist travails, to
what is now Israel.
His advertisements in behalf of the Irgun were powerful. We
considered him an obstructionist for a time, but his sharp. attacks
on Great Britain and the Palestine Mandatory's interference with
the progress aimed at by Jews helped to open many eyeS to the
truth of the situation that existed in the days when Jews clamored
to get to the Jewish Homeland. But those few good deeds do not
justify his present accusations, in "Perfidy" (published by Julian
Messner, 8 W. 40th, N. Y. 18), against Zionist leaders whose life
and blood were dedicated to the re-creation of Jewish Statehood.
Perhaps the one brief reference to the recognition given him
by Ferenc Molnar explains the Ben Hecht attitude. He has entitled
that page "My One Medal." He tells in it how he was shunned
by Jews and Molnar, who said to him: "I find it difficult to be a
Jew—it makes me feel unfaithful to something", was the only one
to greet him at a social gathering attended mostly by Jews—at the
home of columnist Leonard Lyons. Is it possible that the failure
of Jews to give him a medal - has now led him to do so much
condemning?
In "Perfidy", Hecht give's an account of the Kastner-Greenwald
case which later led to the assassination of Rudolf Kastner. Hecht
lists a few heroes and • he surrounds Kastner, whom he condemns
as having betrayed Jews while negotiating with the Nazis, with a
group of villains. He does not spare any of the Zionist and Israeli
leaders. While there are many truths in his book, the bitterness
with which he treats people-who were among the creators of the
Jewish State hardly gains for him any right to claim objectivity.
This man, who does not possess any Jewish-awarded medals,
has resorted to so much hate in this book that the question must
arise whether he himself is so faithful that he has the right to
speak of perfidy. -
ation of Deportees to Nazi con-
centration camps.
The public prosecutor de-
clared in his summation that
Judge Durando had trespassed
the limits of honest criticism
and also had constructed his
thesis on false religious princi-
ples. He asked an 11-month jail
term and a penalty of 50,000
lire ($80) for the defendant.
In his closing statement,
Judge Durando asserted again
that he did rot mean to offend
Jews and that he had been in-
spired entirely by a profound
religious faith. He asked for
acquittal.
After two hours' deliberation,
the court acquitted the defend-
ant of the charge of vilification
of the Jewish religion "because
the fact does not constitute an
offense," and of the charge of
defamation of Jewish citizens
"because of lack of evidence."
The defendant said he would
appeal to a higher court because
he felt he deserved an uncondi-
tional acquittal rather than one
based on lack of evidence. The
next day the public prosecutor
also filed an appeal against the
acquittal with a higher court.
Jewish officials said the grav-
ity of the verdict was unques-
tionable. Aside from the calum-
nies of Jews and Judaism. They
pointed out the acquittal ver-
dict, questioned the right of
Jews to judge .non-Jews and by
inference could mean that
Italian Jews did not have the
right to become judges in Ital-
ian courts. It was noted that
Dr. Serge Piperno, the presi-
dent of the Union of Italian
Jewish Communities, is a magis-
trate.
The union's official weekly,
Israel, declared editorially
that the verdict constituted
"the most evident and gravest
of offenses against our honor
and our dignity. We could not
imagine a greater one than
that we are totally deprived
of morality," the weekly also
stressed. "The author of the
article is not in tune with
the spirit which is animating
the Catholic church of our
day under the guidance of
Pope John XXIII." It asked,
"What guarantees of impart-
ial and democratic judgment
can a magistrate supply when
his mind if still conditioned
by a medieval religious fanat-
icism?"
Chief Rabbi Elio Toaff also
asserted that Judge Durand()
"has taken the ancient fathers
of the Church into considera-
tion but has forgotten the mod-
ern ones first above all the
present Pope who tends to elim-
inate all forms' of anti-semitism
in Catholic teachings."
He also noted that draft bills
for punishment of genocide and
anti-Semitism "have been await-
ing parliamentary approval for
years."
The Union of Italian Jewish -
Communities Council meeting
issued a communique after the
extraordinary session which
deplored the inadequate legisla-
tion "against genocide incite-
ment of hatred toward citizens,"
and recalled that Italy's ap-
proval of the United Nations
1948 draft against genocide was
still awaiting parliamentary ac-
tion.
In instructing Dr. Piperno to
seek a meeting with the Justice
Ministry, the Council also in-
structed him to firmly request
the -formalization and imple-
mentation of legislation ade-
quate to deal with such situa-
tions as the Durando case.
Only Jew Voted Mayor
GRACEVILLE, Fla., (JTA)-
Morris Rabinowitz, a popular—
and the only—Jewish merchant
in this community of 2,500 has
been elected mayor on his first
try for public office.