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 48235 Mich.,
VE 8-9364. Subscription $6 a year. Foreign $7.
Second Class Postage Paid at Detroit, Michigan

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Editor and Publisher

SIDNEY SHMARAK

CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ

Business Manager

Advertising Manager

THE ARK OF HOPE

- (ro the Opening of 4tie 2044, Pegt,lar"
Session o f U.N. Gneral AgSw1141 Y).

CHARLOTTE HYAMS
City Editor

Sabbath Scriptural Selections

This Sabbath, the 14th day of Elul, 5725, the following scriptural selections
will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion: Deut. 21:10-25:19; prophetical portion: Isa. 54:1-10 or Isa.
54:1-55:5.

Licht benshen, Friday. Sept. 10, 6:32 p.m.

VOL. XLVIII, NO 3

Page 4

September 10, 1965

Will Auschwitz 'Remain Forever a Warning'?

One of the acquitted defendants in the
Auschwitz trial, Dr. Willi Schatz, warned
after his release that the trials are stirring
latent anti-Semitism. As he sped aboard a
train from Frankfurt to his home in Hanno-
ver, according to the report in the New York
Herald Tribune, he said that 90 per cent of
the Germans voted for Hitler and they, too,
feel guilty. He added: "These Germans
are being hit over the head day after day
about Nazi crimes, and anti-Semitic reaction
is setting in. There is hate again in the land.
Go out and talk with the people. You'll see."
Could this possibly be viewed as the actual
state of affairs in the land of the worst crimes
in the world's history, and is it to be inferred
that we should forget, that we should aban-
don the trials, that we should stop prosecut-
ing the criminals who would have their fel-
low-Germans believe they were being perse-
cuted?
The freed German said he had gone to
Auschwitz as an army dentist because he was
ordered to go, and his comment was: "Think
of American pilots who dropped bombs —
orders are orders. I applied for a transfer.
But you know how it is in the military. A
soldier can't say: 'I don't like it here. I want
to go elsewhere.' "
Once again, we have the odious compari 7
son of orders to soldiers under war conditions
and commands to commit murders, to be cruel
to fellow-men, to subject innocent people to
sufferings.
Thus, we would be compelled to accept
the most inhuman acts, as long as they are on
orders from above! And if such a credo were
to be permitted to rule, we would all be
doomed.
But these, fortunately, are not the views
of all Germans. The German newspaper Han-
noversche Allgemeine, in an editorial entitled
"Auschwitz Will Remain Forever a Warning,"
stated:

When the sentences were read out at the Ausch-
witz trial in Frankfurt recently, 20 months of legal
proceedings came to an end. But this is not the
end of the whole Auschwitz "complex" by any
means.
Apart from the fact that another, "smaller"
Auschwitz trial is still pending, there can be no
possible end in the eyes of God and the world to
the deeds that took place in this annihilation camp,
deeds that still cry aloud to heaven. As Herr
Erler, Chairman of the SPD (Socialist) parliamen-
tary party says, it will remain forever as a warn-
ing to those living today and to the generations
that come after them.
But what else has happened? "The court was
not convened to overcome the past," emphasised
Herr Hofmeyer, president of the court. Its task
was solely to assess the guilt of the individuals
accused. In this respect he was agreeing with the
prosecutor who called on the court to—"give your
just verdict, judges and jury, on the murderers of
yesterday, but once again according to the regain-
ed principles of the constitutionalism of today."
"According to the regained principles of the
constitutionalism of today"—it is clear that the
voices heard from the unconstitutional state be-
yond the Zone border are unable to grasp this
basic premise, a premise that is not only obvious
here in the West, but the only one that is not un-
thinkable.
But this court did not allow itself to be led by
emotions or by political considerations, nor by the
argument of one of the counsel for the defense—
that no just decision could be possible after 20
years.
This court reached its verdict on what could be
proved—proved even after 20 years. It refused to
consider anything that was in the least. doubtful.
This explains what seems to be the moderation of
certain of the sentences—a moderation which even
some people in the West fail to understand. The
court has drawn a line, as it were, below the in-
dividually proved guilt of each of the accused.
This was not a "political trial, not a show trial".
It was, as Robert Kempner, the U.S. prosecutor at
the Nuremberg trials, and therefore certainly
above suspicion, also says — the best and most

balanced decision ever taken in proceedings
against National-Socialist criminals.
Yet the monstrous disproportion between the
crimes and what for want of a more accurate word I
is called atonement remains. It is a burden all of
us must bear.

The quoted freed Auschwitz dentist hails
from Hannover. Let us hope that he has read
this editorial and that it will be an admonition
to him and to all who fall back on the defense
of "taking orders."
But there are other aspects to the Ausch-
witz trial at Frankfurt that demand attention.
In a letter addressed to the New York Times
from Bayside, L:I., N.Y.. commenting on Selections from Folklore
the Auschwitz sentences, Frederick Wallach
wrote:

There is one aspect of the Aug. 19 decision of
the German court in Frankfurt in the Auschwitz
death camp case which should not be overlooked.
Robert Mulka, former assistant commandant
of Auschwitz, was sentenced to 14 years in prison
—the longest of the non-life terms. As the Times
had reported previously, Mulka had been acquitted
(exonerated) in the German "denazification" pro-
ceedings.
Nothing underlines so much the fiasco and
tragic farce of German denazification as the fact
that an assistant commandant of the death factory
could have been acquitted by a German denazifi-
cation tribunal.
The full disaster of German denazification was
never grasped by the American people. They do
not know that the "major Nazi offenders" were
never tried by denazification tribunals but re-
classified into "lesser offender" categories by the
Americans and "amnestied" as such. Americans
are unaware that Congress enforced this by
threatening to cut the Army budget. Or that the
Bonn Constitution has a provision (Article 131)
granting, as implemented by numerous laws and
regulations, priority for employment in the public
sector to former Nazis.
Americans do not not know that the judges and
prosecutors of the Nazi special (or hangmen)
courts did not lose their jobs except for a few who
were retired with full pensions; Ribbentrop diplo-
mats still fill the Foreign Office; Nazi police and
Gestapo officers are still in public office; the
Bundeswehr swarms with Hitler generals and
colonels, and even has a few SS lieutenant colo-
nels. Or that the swivel-chair murderers of the
Nazi civil service and courts, who delivered de-
fenseless minorities to the tender mercies of the
Eichmanns, Mulkas and Frau Kochs, are exempt-
ed from German war crimes trials. And so on ad
nauseam.
The question now is whether the Robert Mulka
case will arouse the American people sufficiently
to use their native intelligence to insist on getting
the true facts about German "denazification."
They also will have to ponder the question whether
a Germany not yet denazified twenty years after
Hitler's downfall can be a reliable ally of these
United States or whether only a truly democratic
Germany can be relied upon, as this writer de-
voutly believes.

Indeed, there is more exoneration than
retribution, more forgiving than condemning.
A time comes when we must again work
with the Germans, but that can be only on
the condition of the Germans acknowledging
the crime, of their reassertion of readiness to
do penance, to reject every semblance of
Nazism or neo-Nazism.
* * *
The furor that resulted from the assign-
ment of diplomats who had held posts under
the Nazis to positions of German envoys in
Israel had only temporarily added to existing
tensions. But the cordiality of the Israeli
officials, the wisdom with which the situation
was handled by Israel's President Zalman
Shazar, contributed toward the good feelings
that undoubtedly will be re-established be-
tween Israel and Germany.
But the tensions are not so easily erased.
That can be achieved only by a total assur-
ance of complete repudiation of Nazism and
what it stood and stands for. That's Ger-
many's obligation.

'The Bas Mitzvah Treasury':
Good Anthology for Youth

Dr. Azriel Eisenberg and Leah Ain Globe have combined theii
efforts to produce an impressive work, "The Bas Mitzvah Treasury,1
just published by Twayne (31 Union Sq. W., NY 3).
Making excellent selections from Jewish folk tales. short stories
poetry, humor, the two authors are offering for Bas Mitzvah youth-,
the best in Jewish literature and much to guide them towards a whole
some Jewish life.
The sub-titles to the seven parts of this book at once indicate
the wise divisions and the proper selections. They are: In Praise ()
Woman's Virtues, Parents and Children, Love and Marriage, 1-101*
and the Women, Love Thy Neighbor, The Jewish Way of Life, Tht
Good Life.
The Love and Marriage portion commences with this prayel
from the marriage service: "Blessed art Thou, 0 Lord Our GodJ
King of the universe, who hast created joy and gladness, bride
groom and bride." It continues with Hayim Naham Bialik's poem •
"Two Sets From My Garden Rail," translated by Maurice Samuel;
Irving Fineman's "Boaz Makes Up His Mind; Bialik's "The Wa)
of a Man With a Maid"; a legend,. "Of Love and Faith," by Leo WJ
Schwarz; Sholom Aleichem's "A Page From the Song of Songs" ,-,1
Miriam Shomer Zunser's "The Wedding"; and Solomon Reichen
stein's "The Wedding on the Hill."
-c-'
These are descriptive of the other sections which contain approl
priate selections, many by very famous Jewish writers or from tradi-
tional Jewish sources.
In The Jewish Way of Life are included Emma Lazarus' poem
"Gifts," selections from the works of Moses Gaster, Stefan Zweig
Sholom Aleichem, Miriam Zunser and others, as well as a selection
from the French convert to Judaism, Aime Palliere.
Among others whose works are drawn upon for this anthology.
are Sholem Asch, Marie Syrkin, Samuel Joseph Agnon, Ephraim
Kishon, Milton Steinberg, Bella Chagall, Yitzhak Leib Peretz, Abby
Aldrick Rockefeller, Bachya Ibn Pakudah and many others.
The glossary, the biographical notes, the folk tales and
legends combine to make this a noteworthy compilation.
This is an excellent gift book for the girls in the Bas Mitzvah
age, but it will serve an important purpose as informative
in the home, as a guide for parents. It is a highly commends and
most recommendable volume.

Book With Special Current Value

Roth's 'Jews in the Renaissance/
Reissued as Harper Paperbaci

"The Jews in the Renaissance" by Dr. Cecil Roth, the wide'
acclaimed "experimental study of the interaction of two societic
and of the two cultures at one of the seminal periods of the work!'
history," originally published by the Jewish Publication Society as
hard-cover book, has been issued as a paperback by Harper as
Harper Torchbook-Temple Library volume.
This work has special current value by virtue of its coverage
part of the over-all matters relating to the Renaissance in an evaluatli
essay, "In the Steps of Dante." The works of Dante's contemporaril
Immanuel d'Roma, are reviewed here and the powerful influence
Dante's "Divine Comedy" and other works are described. Notabil
Jews. a Marrano who reverted to Judaism and other personalities a?'
included in this study.
Commencing with an evaluation of the background of RenaissanC
Jewish life, Dr. Roth's essays include outlines of the works of Christia
Hebraists, activities of translators, the printing industry, art ant
artists, physicians and quacks, music and the dance, and numerou
other subjects related to that era.
The reissuing of "The Jews in the Renaissance" as a paperbae
makes available to a larger audience one of the contemporary classicl
and one of Dr. Roth's -most noteworthy works.

