THE JEWISH NEWS

The Old Attic Stuff

Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1951

Member American Association of English—Jewisb Newspapers, Michigan Press Associations, 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

Advertising Manager

Business Manager

City Editor

Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the eighteenth day of Adar II, the following Scriptural selections will be read

in our

synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Zaw, Leviticus 6:1-8:36. Prophetical portion, Ezekiel 36:16-38.

Licht Benchen, Friday, March 23, 6:29 p.m.

Vol. XLI, No. 4

Page Four

March 23, 1962

The New Eichmann Hearings in Israel

Once again, the arch criminal Adolf
Eichmann is in the limelight. Hearings
on the appeal began before the Israel
Supreme Court yesterday, and while it is
inconcievable that new evidence should
emerge, the new brief session may serve
once again to draw the world's attention
to the horrors of the Nazi crimes.
In sentencing Eichmann to death "for
his guilt in performing crimes against the
Jewish people and against humanity, and
war crimes," on Dec. 15, Justice Moshe
Landau, who presided over the three-man
court of law in the historic case, stated:

the penalty.
"But we found that the accused
completely identified himself with the
orders he received and that he was
motivated by an acute desire to achieve
their criminal purpose. It makes no
difference to us, in handing down sen-
tence for these heinous crimes, how this
identification or desire was born, if
they were the outcome of the ideolog-
ical education he received from the
system which increased his importance,
as his defense lawyer pleaded."

"With a deep sense of the responsi-
bility resting upon us, we have consid-
ered what is the proper penalty to be
meted out to the accused, and have
arrived at the conclusion that for the
punishment of the accused and the de-
terrence of others, the maximum pen-
alty laid down by the Law has to be
imposed in this case.
"In our judgment we have described
the crimes in which the accused partici-
pated—crimes of unparalleled enormity
in their nature and their extent. The
aim of the crimes against the Jewish
people of which the accused has been
convicted was to blot out an entire peo-
ple from the face of the earth, and that
is what distinguishes them from crimes
against persons as individuals. It may
be said that such wholesale crimes, as
well as crimes against humanity, which
are directed against a group of people
as such, are even graver than the sum-
total of the criminal acts against indi-
viduals of which they are composed.
"But at this stage, when the sen-
tence is to be considered, we have to
take into account also—and perhaps
first and foremost—the injury to the
victims as individuals which was in-
volved in these crimes, and the untold
suffering which they and their families
have undergone, and continue to under-
go to this day, as the result of these
crimes. Every despatch by the accused
of a train carrying a thousand souls to
Auschwitz or to any of the other places
of extermination amounted to direct
participation by the accused in one
thousand acts of premeditated murder,
and his legal and moral responsibility
for those murders is in no way less than
the liability of him who thrust those
persons with his own hands into the gas
chambers.
"Even had we found that the ac-
cused acted out of blind obedience, as
he contends, we would still have said
that a man who took part in crimes
of such dimensions for years on end
must suffer the greatest penalty known
to the Law, and no order given to him
could be a' ground even for mitigating

As during the - long trial during which
the tragedies that were imposed upon
Jewry and mankind by the Nazis were
unfolded in all their brutal forms, by
witnesses who either personally suffered
or witnessed the sufferings imposed by
the Eichmanns, we may again hear details
of brutalities. But the major concern at
this time will be whether Eichmann is to
be hung or whether another sentence is
to be imposed upon him as punishment
for his identification with the Nazi crime.
In the meantime, the conscience of
the world again is being challenged.
While awaiting the Israel high court's
decision, which may not be made for
some weeks, those who even remotely
were associated with Nazism should be
made to feel that they, too, had some
share in the mass murders and the in-
humane treatment of men, women and
children. In truth, all who failed to raise
a voice against the events that transpired
during the Hitler era may now be in some
measure invisibly hoisted on the witness
stand in the trial of Hitlerism.

YIVO Publishes History of
U. S. Jewish Labor Movement

In' a translation and revision from the Yiddish, "The Early
Jewish Labor Movement in the United States," published by
YIVO, presents an important analysis of Jews as labor leaders,
as workers, as participants in the trade union movement.
This analytical work originally was compiled by the late
Elias Tcherikover, - a founder of YIVO, the Yiddish Institute
for Jewish Research, 1048 5th Ave., New York. The first original
volume was published in 1943 and the second was readied for
the press when the compiler died on Aug. 28, 1943. The trans-
lation and revision, by Aaron Antonovsky, incorporated the basic
facts in the two Yiddish volumes.
Sociologists and students of labor problems will find this
work of immense importance in evaluating aspects of immi-
grants' absorption into labor ranks. Devoting itself to a study
of immigrant as well as labor problems, this volume goes back
to the shtetl—to the way of life in the small European Jewish
community—to gain an understanding of the transformations
experienced by newcomers to this country who sought changes
in a new environment.

The reader learns the historical developments not only in
the labor movement but also in the new environment of free-
dom amidst which the immigrant struggled for a livelihood and
. for an expression of his ideals. The Russian revolutionaries
who brought with them a heritage of struggle against Czarism
had to acquire new escapes here. They found them in the labor
movement, within the context of American freedom.

Thus, we learn anew in this historical analysis the story
of the Jewish. peddler who came to this country to find a new
way of existence, the sweatshop worker, those who labor in the
garment industry and the emergence of a powerful Jewish labor
movement that came to the rescue of the economically subdued
elements.
In a foreword to "The Eichmann
This is a study of the immigrant and his difficulties in the
Kommandos." by Justice Michael A. Mus- New World as well as the emergence of an effective Jewish labor
manno, General Lucius D. Clay wrote:
movement. In the era when socialism exerted a strong influence
upon the Jewish workers, there were periods when opposition
"I do not believe that the German to
religion was rampant. The Tcherikover story contains many
people should be held forever responsi- revelations
of the activities of the anti-religionists of that time.
ble for the Hitler regime, but it is
There were conflicts between socialists and anarchists,

important to re-examine the record
now and then, particularly as the
passage of time permits us to consider
it with reasonable objectivity and while
the story can be told by living partici-
pants in, or witnesses to, the history
of the time."

While awaiting justice from the Jeru-
salem courtroom, we also await continu-
ous and unending admissions of guilt by
complacent mankind of a share in a great
crime against the Jewish people and those
who suffered with them in the era of
the Nazi terror, during the years of the
holocaust and the unspeakable crimes
that were not the creations of one man
alone, or of one party alone, but of an
entire nation whose iniquities were de-
cried by_,only a comparative handful of
protesting people.

and there was an element that did not approve of the anti-

religious campaigns. "Though the storms that gathered around

the religious issue generated intense animosities at the time,
the whole episode had lasted for only some ten years," we
read in this valuable history. "It had helped set back the
anarchist cause. But it was soon overshadowed by the more
vital concerns of trade unionism."

In the last 15 years of the last century, Jewish immigrants
undertook to establish a variety of unions—bookbinders, painters,
tinsmiths, furriers, seltzer workers and even of peddlers, and
there was an appeal to patronize only onion peddlers, who,
though not wage-earners, were recognized as proletarians.

Jewish unions arose at the same time as those of the
American labor unions. They were organized by the
Jewish socialists and the Jewish labor movement became "one
of the major sources of strength for the general socialist
movement in this country."

general

The author observes that "as a consequence of their histori-
cal minority position universally, Jews have tended to be more
sensitive and responsive to oppression than other people. Social
justice, equality, political and religious freedom—the essentials
of liberal, humanitarian and radical values—have been for them
a necessary way of life. The being and character of the American
Jewish labor movement, no doubt, had its roots in this factor as
well."
There is a wealth of information in this most instructive
book. "The Early Jewish Labor Movement in the U.S." is a most
Children's Service, an agency of the Jew- valuable sociological account of a vital development in labor

Mo'os Hitim Fu nil Gets Communal Cooperation

An existing tradition fort aid to the
needy on Passover has been perpetuated
under the name Mo'os Hitim. It is the
fund for food, to provide the Passover
necessities for the impoverished, to make
certain that the festival's proclamation, at
the Seder ceremony that all who are in
need may come and partake of the Pass-
over meal shall be a reality.
Because of its traditional emphasis,
the Mo'os Hitim idea has been retained
as a separate fund, distributed by an inde-
pendent committee. In our community,
we are fortunate that the fund also has
the cooperation of the Jewish Family and

ish Welfare Federation, which is in a ranks.

position to gather the names of those to
be assisted on Passover.
Although the great campaign of the
year—the Allied Jewish Campaign—now
is in progress, the Mo'os Hitim fund is
among the special fund-raising efforts, on
its very small scale, to receive the atten-
tion of the generous men and women in
our community. There is no doubt that
through its efforts the impoverished will
not be deprived of their basic necessities
for Passover.

'Medieval Hebrew Literature '

A Review by BORIS SMOLAR

More and more books bringing to the American reader the
treasures of our Jewish cultural heritage are now being published
in this country . . . The latest is "An Anthology of Medieval
Hebrew Literature," edited by Abraham E. Milligram, published
by Abelard-Schumann . . . This anthology is a valuable contribution
to the Judaica literature which is attracting increasingly the
attention of serious-minded, American-born Jews . .. The volume
includes not only literature written in Hebrew, but also transla-
tions from Jewish literature written in Arabic, German and early
Yiddish, between the 8th and the 18th centuries.

