Hilsenrath's Night.'--Tale of Terror
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Man Parley on Meaning
Friday, October 14, 1966-27
of Nuremberg Judgment
Key participant at the confer-
under the stairway were also
The principles and meaning of
arettes on the black market to
joining in the laughter. She the Nuremberg Judgment will be ence will be Constantin Stavro-
find sustenance for them, their
walked in a daze across the discussed by leading lawyers and poulos, legal counsel and under.
parents having been murdered by
the Nazis—Misha having witnessed empty yard; she felt as if she
scholars at the first such confer- secretary of the United Nations,
were dreaming a nightmare with ence of its kind in America, in who will speak on "The Nuremberg
the tragedy but having kept the
open eyes . . ."
horror from his little sister's
Washington, Nov. 5. The confer- Principles and the United Nations."
knowledge; there is Ranek's sister-
This is an appropriate approach ence, sponsored by the National
in-law who forgives him his mis- to the novel's conclusion—as an Lawyers' Guild, will commemorate
deeds with deep understanding, expression of disgust for what had the 20th anniversary of the Nurem-
who takes a child born in the been experienced by the author berg Tribunal Judgment.
Leave Everything to Us
sanctuary where the group pri- and passed on to the reader who
marily under description lives will be left with a sense of nausea
under the most depressing condi- at the cruelties that were imposed
tions and retains the youngster to upon people, turning them into
care for him in spite of the un- beasts.
certainty of her own existence;
Born in Germany, Edgar Hil-
the prostitute who feeds Ranek be- senrath was 13 when he was sent
fore she herself is deported.
with his family to the ghetto of
But in the main there is the Mogilev in the Ukraine. Liberated
unending practice of stealing, of by the Russians in 1944. He was
pulling all available salable articles sentenced to a Russian labor camp
BALLROOM
from dead bodies, of resisting in Dombassa, escaped, reached
human impulses in the struggle Palestine with a refugee group
BY
for survival.
and in 1947 was reunited with
It all takes place in the sanctu- his family in France. He now lives
ary of a dilapidated structure in the United States.
COOLIDGE AT 9 MI.
where Ranek and his sister-in-law
It is clear that what he writes
WYN and HAROLD LANDIS
LI 7-4470
are cramped in to avert being is from experience. It is the ghetto
rounded up for forced labor. inmates' story that he tells in
Even to find a spot to sleep there, "Night" and while there is little
MUSIC! ENTERTAINMENT!
under the stove, whenever there about the Nazis there it is evident
is a bit of breathing room, is that the collaborating Romanians
Phone
considered a godsend. That's were equally guilty. "Night" is
STYLE
•
where Ranek is able to place a powerful. It is distressing, but
• ELEGANCE
woman and her child in return it reveals the agonies that result
AND HIS ORCHESTRA
• BEAUTY
for acquiring her wedding ring. from the struggle for survival when
UN 3-6501
That's where an abortion is per- people had turned into beasts.
WYN-HAROLD CATERING
If No Answer Call DI 1-6847
—P.S. AsIsiostrsImm
formed and then the doctor who
is forced to perform his chore
is held up for 10 marks by a
blackmailer who threatens to ex-
pose him. That's where the tooth
is pulled by the dead man's
brother — all in the interest of
means to acquire a bean or a
potato or a crumb of bread.
The most cruel of all, towards
the end, when Ranek succumbs
to typhus, is when one of the in-
mates, having survived the
others, ravishes an old lady
within public sight. It is Red
the brute who knows that he will
get Ranek's teeth, there now is
High Court Divided Again
no one to resist him, and
nn Liberal, Conservative
although the old woman is will-
ing to submit to him he gloats
Lines, AJCongress Says
in his indecency. It is at this
NEW YORK—The U. S. Supreme point that Ranek's sister-in-law -
Court during its last term showed Dorothy, having rejected the
a renewed tendency to divide along suggestion that she leave the ac-
liberal and conservative lines, the quired baby to perish, walks out
American Jewish Congress report- past Red as "the couple was roll-
ed in its 10th annual summary ing convulsively on the ground":
and analysis of the high court's
"Her threat was parched,
civil rights and civil liberties deci-
her whole body ached as though
sions.
it were • a single large open
The AJCongress also reported a
wound. How low man had sunk!
rise in the number of 5-to-4 rulings,
How low he had been brought.
noting that these too "adhered
How he had been debased. She
closely to liberal - conservative
wanted to look back to see
lines."
Ranek for the last time, but
In addition, the court's near- she was unable to. Red's laugh-
unanimity in civil rights cases ter resounded hoarsely through
the hallway and it suddenly
since 1954 was broken last term
when five out of 11 decisions af- seemed to her as if the corpses
fecting racial segregation were de-
cided by divided courts.
Agency Executive OKs
Despite the reappearance of the
liberal-conservative division and Cut in Departments
the increasing frequency of split
(Direct JTA Teletype Wire
to The Jewish News)
isions, however, the court ruled
JERUSALEM — The Jewish
favor of individuals asserting
-ir constitutional freedoms in the Agency Executive gave final ap-
proval Monday to a reorganization
rwhelming majority of cases.
Of 45 civil rights and civil lib- plan to reduce the number of
erties decisions handed down (lur- agency departments to eight or
ing the 1965-66 term, the justices nine. The executive ordered that
issued 36' rulings favorable to the work to implement the plan be
individual invoking his constitu- begun at the earliest possible time.
An agency spokesman said re-
tional rights.
This 80 per cent figure was al- unification of departments would
most exactly the same proportion be both institutional and adminis-
as the favorable rulings during the trative and that the new depart-
ments each will have a single di-
two preceding terms.
The Congress study noted that rector responsible for all opera-
the presence of Justice Abe Fortas tions of his department.
The executive suggested that
+n the high court had contributed
materially to its liberal comple- the next World Zionist Congress
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"Night" is full of terror. It is
a first novel by Edgar Hilsenrath
' (translated from the German by
Michael Roloff) and has just been
issued by Doubleday. It is a power-
ful work describing the plight of
the ghetto of Prokow, in the
Ukraine, the struggle to survive,
the inhumanity of the search for
a club, for a potato peeling, for
means to sustain life — even if it
is at the cost of another human
being's existence
It is not a pleasant panorama
that has been portrayed by one
"ho is himself a survivor from
horrible days when the quest
life was uppermost in man's
[ aims and nothing was too briital
in the process of acquiring the
minutest media to overcome hun-
ger. This is a novel filled with
corpses, and the inhumanity to
which Jews in the ghetto were
subjected emerges as an inhuman-
ity to oneself, to one's own kin.
So cruel is the condition under
which these people live that
it had become normal to search
for dead bodies in order to
strip them of clothing, to be
able to put any available item
of wearing apparel—underwear,
pants, shoes, scarfs—on the
black market, and if available
to pry open a mouth to pull a
gold tooth from a dead man's
body. Even the brother of the
main character in this novel,
Ranek's closest kin, was not
spared that horrible fate of the
use of a hammer to pry open
the jaw and a plumber's pliers
to pull a bit of gold from a
rotted tooth.
There are some elements of
compassion in this notable work.
There are the prostitutes who pre-
vent drunken sailors from ravish-
ing 8-year-old Ljuba; there is
Ljuba's 12-year-old brother, Misha,
who cares for her, selling cig-
I ! WHY WORRY !
DANCING
JACK BARNES
HOME CATERING
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EL 6-8411
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ing him "clearly in the liberal wing
of the court—and among the most
liberal of the justices in that
wing."
According to the study, the re-
placement of Justice Arthur Gold-
berg by Justice Fortas has not
brought any significant change in
the alignment of the court in civil
rights and civil liberties cases.
Until then, the executive pro-
posed two solutions. One would be
that executive members deprived
of their departments by the re-
organization should either remain
on the executive without portfolios
and do committee work outside of
Israel. The other would be that
departments should be headed by
more than one member. •
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UNION OF ORTHODOX JEWISH
CONGREGATIONS OF AMERICA iS on