Historical Incidents, Notable Personalities
From Ehrenburg's Panoramic Autobiography
Russian troops. He died in 1957. Jews and their role in Russian
There are many more incidents affairs, a new Ehrenburg may
of literary and historic interest emerge—one vastly different from
that make Ehrenburg's autobio- the one who had been judged as
a relief to read the qualifying graphical work especially signifi- a tool of Stalin and of the Rus-
statement that this impression was cant. When his entire life's work sian anti-Jewish hierarchy.
is studies, especially in relation to
left "at the time ... "
—P. S.
There is confirmation of an in- •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• •
herited prejudice in Ehrenburg's •
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comment on an experience he •
SAVE MORE MONEY
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had when he was asked to write •
a message to American Jews :WITH JOHNNY THE
about Nazi atrocities and the •
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necessity to defeat the Third •
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Furys
-
Belvederes
-
Valiants
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Barracudas
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Reich as speedily as possible: •
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"One of Shcherbakov's assist- •
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Get A Better Deal
ants, Kondakov, rejected my •
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draft on the grounds that there •
JOHNNY
MOTOR
SALES,
Inc.
:
was no need to mention the ex- •
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1 1 620 Jos. Campau, Hamtramck
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ploits of the Jews in Red Army: •
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1 Mile S. of Davison
`It's bragging.' I asked for an •
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interview with Shcherbakov ... to
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Our conversation was long and •••eo
f o••oomoso••••es•sea•••eeeseeeilse••etbm•
unpleasant. Shcherbakov admit-
ted that Kondakov has been
`over-zealous' but added that, all
the same, t h e r e were some
things in my article that ought
to be cut. I objected. Shcherba-
kov grew angry and switched to
another subject, praising my ar-
ticles but also voicing some cri-
ticisms: 'The soldiers want to
hear about Suvorov while you
quote Heine."'
Ilya Ehrenburg refers to the
Stalin era when he states in the
final installment of his memoirs:
"Even now I meet people who
have not been able to free them-
selves of the fear that is the herit-
age of former years . . . But a new
generation is growing n o w that
never knew the
stormy applause
and t h e nights
when we listened
for noises on the
stairs ... We
have to than k
once more those
people who had
enough strength
and who under-
stand that, by
denouncing arbit-
rary rule, they
consolidated the
ideas of the Oc-
tober Revolution.
.1 didn't love Ehrenburg
Stalin, but I believed in him too
long and was afraid of him. I felt
no pity for the god who died of a
hemorrhage at the age of 73 — as
if he was not a god but an ordin-
ary mortal."
Apparently Ehrenburg, one of
the leading Russian writers, the
Jew whose attitudes at times were
questioned in relation to Jewry,
has fewer fears to speak up on
Russian conditions than is gener-
ally believed.
In "The War: 1941-1945," (pub-
lished by World, 2231 W. 110th,
Cleveland 2), in which the eminent
Soviet writer deals with the war
years, recording his experiences in
Paris and later in Moscow, Ehren-
burg records many incidents that
have relevance to him as a factor
in Russian politics, to Soviet lead-
ers, to the Allies, the French, the
Jews.
He tells of inquiries he had
made about German atrocities,
the replies he always received
from Germans, "we are not re-
sponsible"; the album he saw
in a German communist's home
showing Russians being hanged,
"Jewish women with stars on
their breast s, in a railway
coach, waiting to be shot." He
states: "No doubt among the
hundreds of people to whom I
talked there were some who
were sincere, but it was impos-
sible to distinguish these from
the others — they all said the
same things ... Those I talked
to at first said that they knew
nothing about Auschwitz, about
the 'torch-bearers', the village
set on fire, the mass murder
of the Jews; late r, however,
when they realized that they
were not immediately
There are reminiscences of
threatened, they went so far as
to admit that men coming home of Edouard Herriot and a tribute
on leave had told them quite a to the great French statesman.
lot, and they laid the blame on It was at the end of April
Hitler, the SS and the Gestapo." 1945. Herriot had just been
liberated. Ehrenburg reports that
Some of the recollections re- a movie was being shown, here
corded by Ehrenburg are puzzling was sequence of tanks moving
and amazing. Russia was already
along German
in the war against Germany and
roads, of corpses,
at the end of 1 9 4 3 Ehrenburg
t h e Auschwitz
writes that "Mikhoels, who had
incinerators and
been to America with the poet
the
bales of
Feffer, gave an account of his im-
women's hair
pressions ... According to him the
ready f o r dis-
Americans were infected with
• Better Service
patch to Ge r-
racialism, made a cult of machin-
m a n y. Ehren-
• Better Deals
ery and were not very far re-
burg continues:
moved from Hitlerite ideas. Like
"DEXTER CHEVROLET
"I was translat-
Maisky he said that the Allies
IS THE BEST PLACE
ing: 'Six tons of
were none too pleased by the Red
women's h a i r,'
TO GET YOUR CAR."
Army's victories."
when I suddenly
Ehrenburg thereupon relates a
MORE REPEAT
noticed that Her-
personal
experience
that
is
equally
riot's eyes were
CUSTOMERS SAY:
puzzling: "In December I received
closed and tears
an invitation from the American
were running
ambassador, Averell Harriman. At
down his cheeks.
the time American manners and
Herriot 'I knew nothing
customs were still unknown to me about all that,' he said to me when
and I was surprised by the un- we had left the hall. 'I feel that
palatable food, by the free and it's time for me to don't
easy ways that bordered on understand the world any more.
20811 W. 8 Mile Road
familiarity and by the ambassa- Do you know why I took up poli-
KE 4-1400
dor's daughter who put her feet tics? Because of the Dreyfus af-
on the small coffee-table. "What fair. I was a teacher, with literary
ambitions. Then suddenly the "af-
fair" cropped up. A man had been
unjustly condemned for the simple
reason that he was a Jew, and the
whole of France was split into two
camps. I was 26 at the time, I
shouted myself hoarse. Zola, Jau-
res, Anatole France — telegrams
: .7q1 11111 1111!Ifir
from L e o Tolstoy, Verhaeren,
Mark Twain: everybody protested.
Because one innocent man had
been sent to Devil's Island. Tell
me, do you understand what the
111111111119011111"'
human race has come to? It
t,!!)r- 0'
doesn't make sense. Six tons of
women's hair! I know it's those
Nazis, those Germans, but they're
our contemporaries, our neighbors.
They produced Beethoven."'
Some of Herriot's .activities are
considered inconsistent by Ehren-
burg. But an excellent resume is
offered of the French statesman's
Reservations now being taken for
literary works, which included
books on Russia, on Philo Judaeus;
his friendships which included
Gorky and Einstein. Herriot was
21630 HESSEL Near 8 MILE and LAHSER ROADS
attacked by rightists and leftists,
Featuring these facilities for patient comfort and wellbeing:
and Ehrenburg judges him as hav-
ing been "inconsistent in his poli-
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tics and steadfast in his loyalties."
Supervised by the Council of
on the premises
Orthodox Rabbis of Detroit
Deported by the Nazis to Germany
in 1944, he was liberated by the
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Spinal Disorders Curer
Albert Abrams, an American-
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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Friday, September 3, 1965-11
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