THE JEWISH NEWS Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1951 Member American Association of English—Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association, National Editorial Association. Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17100 West Seven Mile Road, Detroit 35, Mich., VE 8-9364. Subscription $6 a year. Foreign $7. Second Class Postage Paid At Detroit,. Michigan PHILIP SLOMOVITZ CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ SIDNEY SHMARAK Editor and Publisher Business Manager Advertising Manager CHARLOTTE HYAMS City Editor Sabbath Scriptural Selections This Sabbath, the eighth day of Adar, the following Scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues. Pentateuchal portion: Levit. 6:18-8:36. Prophetical portion: Malachi 3:4-24. Licht Benshen, Friday, March 20, 6:26 p.m. VOL. XLV—NO. 4 March 20, 1964 Page Four Resistance: the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt Did Jews resist sufficiently against the persecutions they suffered under the Nazis? Was there such a complete yield- ing to bestiality that our people are to be described as cowards who failed to strike back when they were attacked? We hear such accusations so often, and there is such an unfortunate echo of such sentiments in Israel where the youth labor under the impact of an heroic struggle for independence, that there is need for clarification of the facts. What is being forgotten is that Jews throughout the ages had been condi- tioned to a state of affairs under which they were helpless against brutality, un- armed to meet the attacks of unfriendly neighbors, unprepared for physical resistance. But during the most tragic periods when Jews were so helpless, they never- theless resisted in their way—by refusing to resort to apostasy to acquire freedom, by rejecting offers to abandon their faith or to repudiate their heritage, by holding firmly to their traditions. The fact is that during the Czarist days preceding the Bolshevik revolution Jews in Russia already had begun to de- fend themselves and to resist attacks. In other lands Jews took up arms to pro- tect themselves and their families. Under the Nazis, when not the Jews alone but all of Europe found itself in a vise and unable to resist the destructive threats of the Hitlerites, Jews held firmly to their faith, refused to abandon their heritage and often fought back. There were numerous revolts in the ghettos into which they were herded by the Nazis, and the best known of the revolts took place in the Warsaw Ghetto. It is for the sake of historical ac- curacy that the observances of the anni- versary of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt throughout the world are so vital in establishing the truth about Jewish cour- age in facing the Nazi beasts. So - that all of the facts should be known we present here a chronological record of the Warsaw Ghetto battle which led to the destruction of the Jewish area of Warsaw, as compiled by the VIVO Institute for Jewish Research: 1939 • September 1: Beginning of World War II. September 2: Founding of the Coordinating Committee of all Jewish welfare institutions. September 7-28: Siege of Warsaw. German planes bomb intensely the Jewish section on the eve of Rosh Hashana and on Rosh Hashana. September 29: Warsaw surrenders. October 4: The "Aeltestenrat" (later "Ju- denrat") of the Jewish community established. October 26: Introduction of compulsory labor for Jews aged 12 to 60. November 22: Beginning of the large-scale terror. Fifty-three Jews from the house on 9 Nalewki Street shot. 1940 January: Some hundred Jewish physicians, engineers and lawyers arrested and shot. January 24: Decree governing confiscation of so-called abandoned property. In reality this meant general confiscation of Jewish posses- sions. By the middle of July, 1940, 75 per cent of all commercial and industrial estab- lishments and a large number of houses had been confiscated. End of March: Collective resistance offered by Jewish workers and others to the pogrom in the Jewish section carried out by Polish hoodlums and incited by the Germans. This resistance was organized by the Jewish Labor Bund. October 2: Order concerning the establish- ment of the Ghetto. November 15: The Jews of Warsaw forced into the Ghetto, which is closed up. 1941 January March: Nearly 70,000 Jews of the Western part of the Warsaw District driven into the Ghetto. February 20: Means of public transportation prohibited to the Jews. February 22: The sale of goods to Jews out- side the Ghetto forbidden. May 15: The German administration estab- lishes the office of Commissar of the Ghetto. November 10: Introduction of death penalty for leaving the Ghetto. 1942 March: Anti-Fascist Bloc established in the Ghetto; issues the first call to resistance. April 17: Fifty-two people active in the un- derground, printers of the clandestine press From Biblical Times to Rosenzweig and the like, shot in the street in the middle of the night. Hence night executions are fre- quent.. July 22: Beginning of the mass deportations In an introduction to Julius (Yitzhak) Guttman's "Philoso- of Warsaw Jews to Treblinka. phies of Judaism," Prof. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky of the Hebrew July 23: Suicide of Adam Czerniakow, chair- University, Jerusalem, says the volume "stands out not only as a man of the Judenrat. reliable study which condenses sound and subtle scholarship, and a July 28: Creation of the combat unit of the unique survey of the history of Jewish philosophy; it also repre- Halutz organizations. sents the fruit and the summing up of an important period in the September 6 - 12: The inhabitants of the history of Jewish scholarship. As such, it will remain as a lasting Ghetto that have survived the deportations are monument of a significant phase in the history of Jewish philosophy compressed into five streets, the so-called Cal- and its attempt to elucidate not only Judaism, but also itself." dron. As a result of a new selection some So outstanding is this work, which was translated from the additional 60,000 Jews are deported to Treb- Hebrew by David W. Silverman, that two major publishing firms, linka. the .Jewish Publication Society of America (222 N. 15th, Phila- September 21: End of the summer deporta- N.Y.) tions; isolated work blocks are set aside in delphia) and Holt, Rinehart and Winston (383 Madison, joined in publishing it. the Ghetto. The work originally was published in Germany but the December 2: The statute of the Jewish com- present translation is from a revised and enlarged Hebrew bat organization embracing all Zionist parties edition. (except the Zionist-Revisionists) and the Jewish Offering a history of Jewish philosophy from Biblical Labor Bund, is adopted. times to Franz Rosenzweig, Dr. Guttman, (1880-1950), who 1943 at the time of his death was on the faculty of the Hebrew January 18-22: First armed challenge by the University, dealt with the fundamentals and first influences Jewish combat organization to a new deporta- of Jewish philosophy in Biblical and Talmudic times and in tion from the Ghetto. The resistance compels the era of Jewish Hellenistic influences, and gave thorough the Germans to stop the action after having accounts of the religious philosophy in the Middle Ages and deported some 6,500 Jews. the scholarship of modern times. February 16: Himmler's order to destroy Explaining the basic Biblical religious ideas, Dr. Guttman the Ghetto and to replace it with a concentra- declared, "Even where Biblical religion seems to verge most on tion camp later to be removed to Lublin. an irrational conception of an essential meaningfulness, the mono- March: Second armed action of the Jewish theism of the prophets, the belief in the moral quality and pur- combat organization. posive nature of the divine will was an absolute certainty which April 19: Beginning of the Uprising on the informed all aspects of religious life. It was the basis of their Eve of Passover. understanding of history." April 21 -28: Simultaneous resistance in di- In his study of the Hellenistic influences on Judaism, Prof. verse places in the Ghetto. Guttmann dealt at length with the works of Philo and he made April 28: Beginning of the attacks of small this important observation in reference to Judaeo-Hellenism: armed groups of the combat organization. "It has often been remarked that at least one scriptural May 8: The Germans destroy the bunker on book, the Book of Kohelet, clearly shows the influence of Mila 18. Suicide of several leaders of the Up- Greek philosophy. If this is the case, Greek philosophy must rising. have made an influence felt in Palestine at the beginning of May 16: The Germans destroy the large the second century B.C.E., for Kohelet can not have been com- synagogue on Tlomackie. General Stroop re- posed later than this date. All efforts to find specific Greek ports: "There is no longer a Jewish residential doctrines in the Book of Kohelet, however, have yielded only district in Warsaw." vague analogies, from which the characteristic Greek flavor has 1944 been lost . . . The actual parallels between Greek and Jewish August: When the Soviet army reaches the thought in the Book of Kohelet are no proof of necessary con- right bank of the Vistula and stops on the nection with any definite philosophic school. They merely show other side of Warsaw, an uprising against the contact of Judaism with contemporary popular Greek the Germans breaks out in the city. The former thought." Ghetto fighters participate in the uprising as Great scholarship is evinced in the sections that follow, in a separate combat group. The uprising is the reviews of the philosophic works of Saadia, in the rise of quelled. Jewish philosophy in the Islamic world and the historic factors of 1945 Karaite Judaism. January 17: The Soviet army occupies War- A chapter on Neoplatonism and Neoplatonists includes saw. Jews in hiding begin to gather in the evaluative essays on Juda Halevi, Ibn Gabirol, Pan Pakuda and suburbs of Praga. others of that era. There is also a section dealing with the Aristotelian period, These facts and figures show how a great community collapsed, how a people with Maimonides, the influences of Maimonides and Averroes and that was rich in culture and from whom the* struggle against philosophy after Maimonides; with Crescas, period and Spinozaism. had sprung many noted spiritual guides the Spanish The modern era, Moses Mendelssohn, post-Kantian philo- was led to its doom. sophy, renewal of Jewish religious philosophy at the end of the •Into the ghetto that was established last century, are the matters to which is devoted the final in that community were sent hundreds of section of Dr. Guttmann's historic work. thousands of Jews who perished at the Here he deals with Samuel Hirsch, Krochmal, Moritz Lazarus hands of the Nazis. But among them Hermann Cohen and finally with Rosenzweig. Rosenzweig's influence is analyzed in the striking new aspects arose great heroes. They faced the enemy at great odds. Every year, at Passover- which reached a renewed nadir in the 19th Century. Rosenzweig is time, we honor their memory. We do it described as being "far removed from the tendency of con- again this year with a recognition of temporary Judaism . . . in his doctrine of Israel as an eternal emphasizing the popular character of the community of the basic truth that there was resistance, people, Israel but denying any political connotation to this term." that while millions were murdered, there Dr. Guttmann emphasized "a unique type of continuity" were many who did not submit too read- maintained by philosophy through crises and polemics, comment- ily. May their deeds live as examples to ing that the striking testimony to the development of Jewish the generations to come that proud men philosophy "maintains its linkage with the past despite the abyss and women will not submit to tyranny. which divides the Middle Ages from modern times? - 'Philosophies of Judaism'