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Pope John's Diary Detailed 'Rescue Dilemma'

LONDON (JTA)—The late Pope John XXIII kept a secret diary in which,
among other matters, he detailed the dilemma that faced Pope Pius XII in regard
to raising his voice against Hitler's persecution of Jews, according to a Rome
report published in the Sunday Express here.
Pope John was Archbishop Roncalli, in 1943, when, according to the Rome
report, he acted as intermediary for the Palestine Chief Rabbi, the late Isaac
Halevi Herzog. The latter had appealed, through Archbishop Roncalli, to Pope
Pius, seeking the pontiff's intervention against Hitler's anti-Semitism. Pope Pius,
the diary indicates, regretfully decided not to receive Rabbi Herzog at the Vatican

BlunCIering

and not to intervene.
Archbishop Roncalli then met Rabbi Herzog secretly in Cairo and, subse-
quently, sent letters to Roman Catholic leaders all over Europe, urging them to
hide Jews in monasteries and homes, In this manner, many thousands of Jewish
lives were saved.
The diary of the late Pope John XXIII is in the possession of Msgr. Loris
Capovilla, a Vatican dignitary who is executor of Pope John's will, the Rome
report said. According to the Sunday Express, Msgr. Capovilla has said the late
Pope's diary "will not be published in my lifetime."

E JEWISH NEWS

Civil Rights

Issues

c=) -T-1=2 c) -r

A Candidate's

Crude Joke

Rrel

A Weekly Review

Commentary
Page 2

Michigan's

1-11 G 1•4

of Jewish Events

Only English-Jewish Newspaper—Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle

Purim Lesson:

Its Jollity

Israel Water
Project Badly
Misrepresented

Editorials
Page 4

VOLUME xuv— No. 26 mor Unio nSt p 174100 W. 7 Mile Rd.—VE 8-9364—Detroit 35, February 21, 1964—$6.00 Per Year: This Issue 20c

Famous Philosophers, Scientists
Appeal to K rushchev to Grant
USSR Jewry Full Cultural Rights

Direct JTA Teletype Wire to The Jewish News

LONDON—A joint appeal by world famous personalities in many fields calling on the Soviet
government to allow Russia's Jews "full cultural lives, religious freedom and the rights of a national
group," has been sent to Premier Nikita Khrushchev, it was disclosed Monday.
The appeal, which was forwarded to the Soviet preMier last December, was signed by the
British philosopher Bertrand Russell, Queen Elizabeth of Belgium, nuclear physicist Max Born,
Israeli philosopher Martin Buber, Ricardo Lombardri, Francois Mauriac, Otto Nathan, the trustee of
the Albert Einstein estate, Lord Boyd Orr, Prof. Linus Pauling, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Norman
Thomas and Prof. Giuseppe Ungaretti.
Stressing that "we speak as friends, but as friends whose friendship requires honesty," the
appeal declares:
"Although aware and appreciative of the improvement in the lives of Jews in the Soviet Union
through the abolition of legal disabilities of the Czarist days, we are gravely concerned by the evident
difficulties experienced by Jews as a Soviet nationality."
Pointing out that the Jews had been subjected to long and continuous persecution throughout
the history of Europe, the appeal declares that the "culmination of this cruelty was the wholesale
extermination of Jews during our lifetime, one of the most barbaric crimes in all human history, and
the tragic fragmentation of the families of survivors in the chaotic aftermath of this holocaust. If
ever a people were deserving of understanding and sympathetic treatment after harsh suffering, it is
the Jews of Europe."
"We greatly hope, therefore," the appeal continued, "that the Jews will be permitted full
(Continued on Page 8)

Commons Kills Bill
to Outlaw Race Bias

LONDON, (JTA) — A draft bill that
would outlaw racial discrimination in this
country was bypassed without debate in
the House of Commons, and a stiff protest
against using procedural technicalities to
kill the bill was voiced by the sponsor of
the measure, Laborite Fenner Brockway.
Brockway complained to the House that
the identical bill, which he has introduced
1-0 times in the last nine years, has always
been pigeonholed without vote, although,
in each case, the bill had passed on first
reading. The bill, he said, has sometimes
reached debate; but, by procedural meth-
ods, no vote has been possible on the prin-
ciples involved.

Purim: New Look at an Old Theme

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Illuminated Purim Megillah

By NATHAN ZIPRIN
Editor, Seven Arts Feature Syndicate
The Purim narrative is a piece of perfection—a well told story with depth of detail yet
with a remarkable paucity of words.
The tale has many compelling virtues—rhythm, tempo, precision, mystery and pure
drama. Each incident is told in minor chords, but when the curtain falls there is a vision
whose echo rolls on and on. It is a measured story, with words used sparingly as if they were
of true treasure.
A lesser artist would have fallen into a trap in the striving to delineate a Mordecai at
the gate, but the sculptor who etched this perfect piece was too mindful of the purity in art to
blur the picture with extraneous touch.
A Mordecai sitting at the king's gate is an overpowering theme. But in the hands of the
scribe who parchmented the Esther tale, Mordecai waiting at the gate attains a stature beyond
the meaning of the moment, developing into a prophetic projection of a tale that was to
repeat itself tragically and endlessly over the Jewish generations.
When Haman braves a repulsive gesture in the king's chamber, there is no Wagnerian
thunder, no heroics, no raucous scene. Creatures of that mold are too pigmy to have treasured
words wasted on them. It is always best then, the artist must have felt, to leave them naked
and exposed.
If brevity is one of the true marks of artistry, the restraint employed in the handling of
that scene reveals a storyteller of unique quality. Yet, the virtue of terseness in telling of
a story is perhaps even better illustrated in the scene that is the Fall of Haman.
Haman had come to collect the honor the king promised to bestow upon him for the good
job he was to do on the Jews. He is serious, watchful, astute, alert but not without a trace of
buffoonery. He shows no signs of sensing the impending collapse. He shows no fear.
When the hammer falls finally it strikes him into complete silence. There is no wailing
or remonstrating. He now seems to know that the word of king and fate is final, irrevocable.
The narrative becomes somewhat expansive when it gets down to limning Jewish
elation over Haman's fall. But that is how it should be. Brevity here, the author must have
sensed, would have shorn the incident of its simplicity.
In rejoicing, restraint is not always a virtue.
The king's dismissal of Queen Vashti for the younger and more beautiful Esther is
hardly a tale for the strait-laced and the virtue-minded. But so skillfully is this romantic
element woven into the major theme that it becomes palatable even to the purists. We forget
on reading it that it challenges conjugal proprieties or even that Esther stepped out of her
fold. There is even no recoiling at the hanging of all of Haman's sons—so perfect a tale is the
Purim chronicle.