Senate Urged to Ratify Genocide Convention
(Direct JTA Teletype Wire to The Jewish News)
WASHINGTON—Republican Congressman Seymour Halpern of New York
called Tuesday for Senate ratification of the Genocide Convention in a speech
before the House of Representatives.
Halpern, noting that the Convention had been closeted with the Senate
Foreign Relations committee for 12 years, urged "that the United States commit
itself internationally to what has long been principle and law in this country."
Addressing himself mainly to the Convention's adversaries, he claimed that
"fear and ignorance" lay at the root of opposition.
Unjustified
Panic Over
'The Deputy'
HE JEWISH NEWS
Centuries of
Hatred
Preceded
Holocaust
Editorials
Page 4
He further declared: "This covenant has nothing to do with racial or minority
discrimination. It does not aim at the denial of human rights to individuals. It
relates exclusively to mass extermination, the intent to destroy thousands of
people precisely because of their race, creed, or national origin."
Halpern condemned those unwilling to accept the treaty's implementation
articles, saying: "History teaches us that most agreements are but scraps of
paper unless there is established, by mutual consent, adequate machinery for
implementation.
-
T- Fecw-r
A Weekly Review
NII 1--IIGA.NI
of Jewish Events
Michigan's Only English-Jewish Newspaper—Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle
VOLUME XLV — No. 2
100P%ribitrieidoninShop
Hias
at 80
Smolar's
Column, Page 2
Extortionists
in Nazi Era
Commentary
Page 2
17100 W. 7 Mile Rd., Detroit 35—VE 8-9364—March 6, 1964 — $6.00 Per Year: This Issue 20c
Victims of Nazis Demand West
Germany Correct Shortcomings
in Compensation Legislation
(Direct JTA Teletype Wire to The Jewish News)
Protests Against The Deputy'
Echo at Vatican, in New York:
Spellman Calls It 'Slanderous'
(Direct JTA Teletype Wire to The Jewish News)
NEW YORK—Francis Cardinal Spellman Monday called "The
Deputy" a "slanderous and outrageous desecration" of the late Pope
Pius XII and expressed the hope that the play would not be allowed "to
drive a wedge between Catholics and Jews" in this country.
The Cardinal did not mention the play, which accuses the late
pontiff of failing to speak out publicly against the Nazi wartime
slaughter of European Jewry, by name in a prepared statement. He
conceded he had not seen nor read the play "but, like most people,
I feel I know its tack—so much has been written and said about it."
He said that when Pope Pius died in the fall of 1958, he was mourned
by people of all faiths, "especially the Jewish people to whom he had
been a loyal friend in the tragic hours of Nazi persecution." He declared
that the play "in effect holds Pope Pius XII guilty of the Nazi crimes.
Only six years after his death, our Holy Father is being tried and
condemned on the stage."
"I pray that the people of New York will not allow it to drive a
wedge between Christians and Jews, with whom we have suffered
together, for whom we have the greatest respect and the friendliest
feelings and for whom also we have deep and hartfelt sympathy in the
terrible and tragic sorrow which they have known."
Catholic Educator Regrets Pius' Silence on Jews
A leading Catholic educator asserted here that, while Rolf Hoch-
huth's controversial drama, "The Deputy," cannot be accepted as history,
"many of us would rest easier if the Pope (Pius XII) had spoken" out
publicly on Hitler's annihilation of European Jewry." The statement was
made by Dr. George N. Shuster, assistant to the president of Fordham
University here, one of the leading Catholic institutions of higher learn-
ing in this country.
Dr. Shuster discussed the book version of "The Deputy" in the
New York Times Book Review. His review was coupled with another
by Dr. Robert Gorham Davis, professor of English at Columbia Uni-
versity, a non-Catholic. Both reviewers saw deficiencies in the Hochhuth
play as a drama. Dr. Davis referred to its plot as "rather old-fashioned,
operatic, Schillerian." He stated that "however brash and cumbersome
it may be, 'The Deputy' has evoked throughout the West a passionate,
moral and religious response that is intensely needed at this time."
The first performance in the United States of the controversial
play "The Deputy" was greeted with reserve by critics and with picket-
ing by small groups, including members of the American Nazi Party,
and members of the Ad Hoc Committee to Protest "The Deputy," most
of whom said they were Catholics. No disorders were registered by the
police and no arrests were made.
The critics of the New York Times, Herald-Tribune and other
metropolitan newspapers agreed that, as a play, "The Deputy" was
uneven but they also agreed the play carried an important message and
that the issues it raised concerning Nazi annihilation of European Jewry
needed to be debated and taken to heart. "The Deputy," which has
created disorders in every European city where it has been performed,
presents the late Pope Pius XII as having failed to speak out publicly
against mass murders of Jews.
The 1,890-seat theater where the play opened Feb. 26 was filled to
capacity. The curtain went up on schedule and the pickets outside the
playhouse dispersed before the performance was over. Hochhuth, a Ger-
man Protestant, arrived in New York to witness the opening of his drama
in New York.
Dr. Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress,
issued a statement lauding the courage of the producers in putting on
Continued on Page 8
LONDON.—Sir Barnett Janner, member of Parliament and president
of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, -led a delegation of Jewish refugee
groups to the West German Embassy Tuesday to protest shortcomings of
legislation now before the Bonn Parliament for compensation of Nazi
victims.
The protest was in the form of a resolution approved at a meeting
of the groups of victims of Nazi held here Monday night. The resolution
called the proposals in the pending legislation "grossly inadequate." The
resolution was presented to Dr. Rudolf Theirselder, the West German
minister.
Sir Barnett told the meeting Monday night that while the substantial
efforts of West Germany to eradicate the shame of Nazism were appreci-
ated and that Jews "cannot be unremindful of the fact that compensation
and restitution by West Germany has helped to restore many broken homes
and repair shattered lives," there were "still tens of thousands of help-
less victims of the Nazi terror who continue to be deprived of remedies
for their sufferings because of omissions in existing laws."
He said that the pending West German legislation "fails to correct
this" and he added that he hoped the "appeal which goes out from this
meeting will strengthen and encourage those who sincerely wish to make
amends and diminish the power of those who are anxious to put their
miserable past into the background and out of the conscience of mankind."
Groups represented at the meeting were the Association of Baltic
Jews, the Association of Polish Jews, the Council of Jews from Czechoslo-
vakia, the Association of Jewish Refugees, the Council of Jews from
Austria, the Federation of Hungarian Jews and the Polish Jewish Ex-Serv-
icemen's Association.
Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires Police Step in to Check
Anti-Semitic Acts: Murder and Bombing of School
(Direct JTA
SAO PAULO —
Teletpye Wire to The Jewish News)
Security police ordered Wednesday full protection .
for all Jewish buildings in Sao Paulo, including the Israel Consulate,
in the wake of a series of anti-Semitic attacks during the past weekend.
Officials also promised to take all possible measures to prevent any
repetition of the attacks and to find the perpetrators. The governor of
Sao Paulo, Adhemar De Barros, expressed his support of the Jewish
community and said that the attacks had "violated the anti-racist senti-
ments of the Brazilian people."
The incidents included the planting of a bomb in the Beth Jacob
School in a Sao Paulo suburb, which caused considerable damage to the
school in a pre-dawn explosion last Saturday, the firing of eight to ten
rounds into a Jewish-owned plant and smearing of anti-Semitic slogans
and swastikas on the plant and Jewish schools.
(JTA reports from Buenos Aires that police are investigating the
death of a Jewish businessman who was shot there on Monday by a mem-
ber of the anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi Tacuara organization. The killer, who
was wearing a mailman's uniform, left a note signed in the name of the
Tacuara group).
USSR Asked to Confer on Jewish Issue
LONDON, (JTA)—A resolution calling on the government of the USSR to grant
to Soviet Jews "the same rights and facilities for the peaceful pursuit of their national
and religious life as is enjoyed by other national, ethnic and religious groups" in
the USSR was adopted by the British section of the World Jewish Congress. It was
passed unanimously at the closing session of a two-day conference.
The session adopted the resolution after a review of the situation of Soviet Jewry
had been presented by A. L. Easterman, director of the WJC'c international affairs
department. He appealed for talks on the plight of Russian Jewry between Jewish
Continued on Page 9