THE JEWISH NEWS
incorporating the Detrcnt Jewish Chronicle commencing with
iSttif
of July 20, 1951
Member American Association of English—Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Associations, National
Editorial Association.
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co.. 17100 West Seven Mile Roan, Detroit 35,
Mich., VE 8-9364. Subscription $6 a year. Foreign $7.
Second Class Postage Paid At Detroit, Michigan
SIDNEY SHMARAK
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
Advertising Manager
Business Manager
HARVEY ZUCKERBERG
City Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the sixteenth day of Silvan, the following Scriptural selections will be read
in our synagogues:
Pentateucha/ portion, Num. 8:1 12:16. Prophetical portion, Zechariah 2:14-4:7.
-
Licht benshen, Friday, June 7, 7:47 p.m.
VOL. XLIII. No. 15
Page Four
June '7, 1963
A Record of 50,000,000 Nazi Crimes
A cabled report to the New York
Times from Berlin by Gerd Wilcke con-
tains such a mass of information about
the availability of data relating to the
Nazis and their crimes that it calls for
wider dissemination so that it should gen-
erally be known both how extensive the
crimes were and how well some of the
facts about them have been preserved.
Wilcke reported on an incident, 20
years ago — "still spine-chilling to read"
— how the then 20-year-old Helmut
Guenther Huebner was executed for lis-
tening to foreign radio broadcasts; how
three of his friends, to whom he imparted
. what he had heard, were given long
prison terms by the notoriously cruel
People's Court for '!undermining Ger-
many's military strength"; how, in ac-
cordance with Nazi • policies then pursued,
Huebner's family was billed 800 marks
after the youth's execution in Berlin —
300 of the marks as a charge for the
execution, 30 marks as a "bonus" to the
guillotinist and the balance for court
costs. It was pointed out that the guillo-
tinist's services were required more than
2,000 times that year.
There is a thin folder on the Huebner
case in the Berlin documentary center of
the United States Mission in Berlin, and
Wilcke states in his report that the Hueb-
ner report is one of 50,000,000 records of
Nazi crimes kept in the Berlin U. S.
Mission:
*
The New 'York Times correspondent
reports as follows on the U.S.-supervised
document center:
The papers, most of them in the original,
are stored in the offices of a former S. S.
(Elite Guard) communications center that
lies hidden behind nine trees in one of this
city's suburbs.
Supervised by the State Department since
1953, the center has remained to be the mast
important research facility for German and
foreign authorities trying to uncover the
atrocities of the Nazi era.
Alexander Yaney Jr., the acting director
of the center. said today that he received
more than 17,000 queries in the first quarter
of this year. More than 80 per cent came
from German authorities.
Mr. Yaney, who heads a staff of 70 Ger-
man experts, explained that each request
for information is channeled through the
center's 15 major departments before an-
swers go out.
Last year the center received 74,000
requests. Roughly 50 per cent of the names
mentioned in the requests were listed in the
center.
Among the most important documentary
evidence the center has is a master list of
the National Socialist party that gives the
names and personal data of roughly 8,500,-
000 Germans.
The list, discovered by elements of the
United States Seventh Army outside Munich
after the war, is considered the most com-
plete of its kind and constitutes the back-
bone of the center.
Other major . sections of the collection
are lists of more than 6'0,000 S. S. officers
and racial records of more than 200,000
married S. S. members and "marriage ap-
plicants." Each of the dossiers contains a
racial-genealogical chart at times dating
back to the eighteenth century.
In this section a visitor was shown a
marriage application by a Margarethe use
Kohler, who proved her "Aryan stock" with
documentary evidence dating back to 1725.
Her future husband, Karl Otto Koch, did
the same back to 1787.
use Koch later became notorious as the
"bitch of Buchenwald" who used the skin
of concentration camp inmates for lamp-
shades.
Other lists containing hundreds of thou-
sands of names of members of various
branches of the Nazi party and verdicts by
.
Nazi courts are rounded out by original
orders of the infamous Reich Security Office,
whose job it was to look after the "final
solution of the Jewish question."
Its chief, Heinrich Himmler, the docu-
ments show, was as meticulous in his per-
sonal records as he was in working out exact
details on how an "enemy of the people"
should be shot, how much time he should
be given before his execution and how many
cigarettes he was allowed before his life
was extinguished.
The U. S. documentary record serves
many purposes — to provide information
in trials of Nazis, to expose the records
of those seeking to hide their identity —
if only there would be a serious move to
expose their many former Nazi villains
who are now in high positions! — and,
what is truly significant, to keep alive the
knowledge about the horrors that turned
men into beasts.
Let it never be said that the facts are
not available! And let it not be said that
we should forgive so soon and forget
quickly! How is it possible to forget when
there is a record of 50,000,000 Nazi
crimes in the hands of our officials who
are stationed in Berlin?
Famous Letter to Gandhi' in
• t .
D r. B b
the W
Another volume of the collected essays of Dr. Martin Buber,
published as a paperback by Harper under the title "Pointing the
Way," greatly enriches the voluminous library of Buber's writings.
Edited by one of the best informed men on Hasidism and on
Buber's works, Dr. Maurice S. Friedman, these essays are preceded
by an illuminating introduction by the editor whOse evaluation of
the eminent philosopher's works will be most helpful to all stu-
dents of Buberism. As a comment on the newly-selected essays
Prof. Friedman states:
"At the core of the social _problems of our time lies the
need for that resumption of genuine dialogue between indi-
The newest revelations about the ex- viduals
and between peoples to which Martin Buber, as no
tent of neo-Nazism and the attitude of
other man of our age, has pointed. Nowhere in Buber's writ-
the West German government officials on
ings is this need given fuller and more effective expression
the status of the former criminals causes
than in 'Pointing the Way.' " _
special interest to be attached to a report
Dr: Friedman calls attention to the task that was undertaken
just issued by the World Jewish Congress, by the late Dag Hammarskjold to Translate Buber's work from
indicating that membership in . anti-Semi- German into Swedish and the late UN Secretary General's having
tic and Nazi groups in West Germany has nominated Buber for a Nobel Prize in Literature. He states that
dropped from 56,000 in 1959 to 27,600 in "it was the Politics, - Community- and Peace' section of 'Pointing
that attracted that interest, and _Dag Hammarskjold
1962. However, the number of neo-Nazi the Way'
many occasions to point to the significance of the essays
groups has increased from 86 i n 1961 to found
in this part of the book."
112 in 1962.
In this noteworthy collection of essays, which contains sev-
It is encouraging to point to the eral very important statements in a section entitled "Dimen-
WJCongress report which shows that the sions of Dialogue," are included Buber's "Three Theses of a Re-
number of anti-Semitic incidents dropped ligious Socialism, discussions on Gandhi's political views, on
and other concepts.
from 1 ; 206 in 1960 to 389 in 1961 and to prophecy
There are essays on Bergson's views on intuition, a tribute to
an even lower figure of 205 in 1962. But Franz
Rosenzweig, comments on Goethe's concepts of humanity
there is a disturbing factor in the survey and many
other subjects.
which shows that the number of anti-
Particular interest rests in the reproduction in this book
Semites and Nazi publications has in-
of the text of Buber's "Letter to Gandhi" for whom he had
creased.
great admiration. But Gandhi in 1938 criticized Jews for
Based on a report by West Germany's
aspirations in Palestine, and Buber wrote to him to evaluate
for him the historic and Biblical claims Jews had to Palestine.
Minister of Interior Hermann Hoecherl,
Buber wrote that he recognized the validity of Arab claims to
the WJCongress survey shows that there
is practically no rightist-radical movement Palestine, but he pointed to his own hopes for a bi-national exis-
in the Federal Republic; the significance tence of Jews and Arabs. He was one of the leaders of the Yihud
together with Dr. Judah L. Magnes, Henrietta Szold
of the few existing small groups of ex- movement,
and
others,
and
he pointed to it in - writing to Gandhi, but he em-
tremists is dwindling; rightist radicalism phasized that Jews can not abandon their own historical claims to
in Germany does not represent a threat to the Holy Land. It is an historic letter and its inclusion in the new
the substance of the democratic order of book enriches "Pointing the Way."
society.
Of added interest is the fact reported
by Hoecherl that there was a drop of 50
per cent in Nazi youth organization mem-
berships:
While the report from West Germany
is more encouraging than those of previ-
ous years, there is an added factor to take
into consideration—the spread of the Nazi
ideas in other lands and the havens which
have been provided to Nazi collaborators
in many lands, including our own.
The charge has just been made that 15
Nazi criminals now live in this country. If
criminals can find their way into the se-
curity of democratic countries and thus
escape punishment, what hope is there
that the criminals will be held responsible
for their atrocities and that the punish-
ments to be meted out to them will serve
as warnings to others not to repeat the
crimes of Hitler?
The surveys of existing conditions,
while they show that there is concern over
the possible emergence of neo-Nazism,
serve as warnings to all never to cease
watching out for symptoms of Nazism. Re-
curring incidents in many lands—even in
Yorkville again—prove the point.
Great Art Collection
`Epstein's Drawings'
Sir Jacob Epstein, who gained world fame as an artist and
a sculptor, was American born. He settled in England and the
recognition he received was worldwide.
Many of his objects were on Old Testament subjects. His
themes, however, embraced every conceivable topic. New-born
babes, personalities, representatiVes of many races are included
in his creations.
World Publishing Co. (119 W. 57th, N.Y. 19, 2231 W. 110th,
Cleveland 2) has issued a volume depicting his works. Entitled
"Epstein's Drawings," this volume contains 64 of his most notable
works.
With notes by Lady Epstein and an introduction by Richard
Buckle, this collection will be valued by all art lovers as one of
the most impressive and most representative works of one of the
world's most distinguished artists.
The introduction makes much of Epstein's great Jewish art
products. Buckle calls it "unfortunate" that "Lady Epstein's col-
lection contains none of his remarkable studios of Ghetto types."
Perhaps this comment will induce the artist's widow to produce
another work with reproductions of the types alluded to
Meanwhile it is valuable to note Buckle's assertion that "it
is to Epstein's sculpture we must turn to take his true measure;
and a comprehensive survey of it is in preparation. This book is
really a footnote which the hazards of publishing have promoted
to the rank of an overture."