• 41111W- --911.11•1111111 ARM 011111.11111111111111111P 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 .ssociation. Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17100 West Seven Mile Road, Detroit, Mich. 48235. VIL 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 Advertising Manager Business Manager CHARLOTTE HYAMS City Editor Sabbath Scriptural Selections This Sabbath, the twenty-second day of Adar I, the following Scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues: Pentateuchal portion, Ex. 35:1-38:20. Prophetical portion, I Kings 7:40-50. Candle lighting, Friday, March 3, 6:06 p.m. VOL. L. Page Four No. 28 March 3, 196'7 Jewish Telegraphic Agency's 50th Birthday February marked a very important anni- versary in Jewish life. Fifty years ago last month, the foundation was laid for the great news-gathering agency, the Jewish Tele- graphic Agency, and now, half a century later, world Jewry has cause to be deeply grateful for that foundation laid for the system of communications binding the Jewries of the world. Without the JTA we would be living in a vacuum, our communities would be without links assuring the unity of the Jewish people through proper information about events affecting all of us, and both the cultural and philanthropic aspects of Jewish life would be like dead cells in a sick body. Now, because of the vision of the then young journalist, Jacob Landau, an employe of the Amsterdam Telegraaf, we have the proper agency that gathers and distributes the news about Jews everywhere and assures for our people a press agency that inspires an interest in Jewish life and a knowledge of what is transpiring in even the strangest and most remote Jewish communities in the world. Jacob Landau's first Jewish news bulle- tin, issued on Feb. 6, 1917, developed gradual- ly, soon becoming the organ of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and before long gather- ing enough strength to emerge as the news gatherer of the Jewish people. With the aid of four Antwerp Zionists, Sylvain Birnbaum, Jacques Buchenholz, Elias Chanania and Sylvain Ross, Mr. Landau first issued the Joodsche Correspondentie Bureau dispatches to many newspapers, and soon their service became worldwide. Their operations were intended at the outset to fill a need dur- ing World War I, and after the world con- flict the JCB was closed, the five young journalists having felt that their task was ac- complished. But the late Dr. Thomas G. Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslova- kia, convinced Mr. Landau that the project he had undertaken was a very vital one, and the news agency received a new lease on life in December of 1919. Then, in a hall bedroom in the High Hol- born section of London, Mr. Landau, together with the late Meir Grossman, who later be- came one of the outstanding Revisionist lead- ers and an associate of Vladimir Jabotinsky, started anew the Jewish Correspondence Bu- reau and Telegraphic Agency. It struggled, but it grew. It served the Yiddish press of the United States and Poland and before long it commenced a Hebrew service for the Je- rusalem and Tel Aviv newspapers. Men like Louis Marshall, Felix Warburg, N.Y. Times Publisher Adolph Ochs, Herbert Bayard Swope of the New York World and others took an interest in the JTA. It now functions from central offices in New York, London and Jerusalem, with subsidiary of- fices in the United Nations, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, Lima and Sao Paulo. Thus, the small bulletin out of Amster- dam has grown into one of the most valuable instruments for the perpetuation of the high- est values in Jewish life, JTA now assuming the role of the most important medium of communications between the Jewries of the world. JTA's role is established. There is much to be done to expand the services, to add to its merits, to assure uninterrupted links be- tween Jewish communities everywhere. The basis for expanded action is here and the ele- vation of the agency's aims toward higher goals have, fortunately for world Jewry, be- come the accepted obligations of the major Jewish communities throughout the world SCHOOL BOARD LECTION How the Jews Fought Nazism: Record Vast Jewish Resistance How extensive was Jewish resistance to Nazism? Did the Jews strike back when they were faced with humiliation and eventual death? Much has been written about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was the supreme act of vengeance against a mighty power. It ended in the nearly total elimination of the Jewish population that was herded into the small confines of the Nazi-made ghetto. But the end was marked by heroism. Were there other similar acts of resistance, of retaliation, - of refusal to bow down to the murderous Nazi hordes. "They Fought Back—The Story of the Jewish Resistance in Nazi Europe" by Yuri Suhl, published by Crown (419 Park, S., NY16) ; reveals the extent of the heroism that is on the record in many areas, 'in ghettoes, in concentration camps, when Jews were able to meet Nazis in battle. Even in Berlin, there was a Jewish group that fought the Nazis and conducted underground activities. It was known as the "Baum-Gruppe," and a comprehensive account of its hitherto little known functions appears in a chapter written by Prof. Ber Mark, the Warsaw Jewish historian, who has compiled the impressive record of this group's underground actions to overcome the Nazi terrorists. Suhl's book almost in its entirety contains essays dealing with various phases of resistance. and a wide field is covered, the author having drawn wion the most authoritative sources—Emmanuel Ringel- blum, Reuben Ainszstein, Alexander Pechersky, Jacob Gutfreind, Ber and Esther Mark, Masimo Adolfo Vitale and many others who had described various experiences and whose writings were edited and patch on "The Piratical Attack of American translated by Suhl for inclusion in this impressive book. War Planes on Soviet Merchant Ships in Hai- phong Harbor," a man-on-the-street outcry Prof. Mark's essay on "The Herbert Baum Group — Jewish against "American aggression in Vietnam," im- Resistance in Germany in the Years 1937-1942," explaining the provement of the cooperative organization in the ideological background, of this organized factor in the underground region, an official obituary for Alexander Petro- movement composed of Zionists of various shades of opinion, makes vich Rudakov, and a bucolic lyric (in prose) this interesting comment: headlined "For the Harvest Are We Ready."1 "The Jewish population in Germany, in contrast to Jewish A section headed "There, Where Capitalism communities in other occupied countries, was for a number of Reigns" reports a murder from London and a reasons not a very fertile soil for slogans and active resistance suicide in Sicily. Another section called "Events , against the Hitler regime. The Baum Group had to overcome diffi- Abroad" contains five brief Tass dispatches: the culties which no other Jewish community in occupied Europe faced. celebration of the 45th anniversary of the Mon- The Baum Group knew very little about the struggles of Jewish golian Revolution in Ulan-Bator, the departure ' resistance fighters in the occupied countries. They had no knowledge of a Soviet delegation from Japan after a visit of the song of Vilna partisans, `zog nit keinmol as du geyst dem - to "atom-bomb shattered Nagasaki," a defeat at letzten veg—Oh, never say that you have reached the very end.' the polls for the Christian Democratic party in But their own healthy revolutionary instincts told them that even West Germany; a Hanoi report on the downing under the most horrible conditions there is always the path of--- of the 1,885th American warplane, and word from struggle—a struggle to overcome evil and its origins." London on the final round of the world champion- A number of aspects of the Warsaw Ghetto resistance are covered ship soccer games. in the Suhl volume, which contains so many translations of important Not a single quantum of light on Jewish re- essays by survivors and victims whose writings were saved to expose ligion, Jewish culture, Jewish life radiates from the Nazi crimes. The value of this book, however, lies in the vast field the dim Birobidzhan Star. it covers, in the reviews of resistance activities in many lands, in It is well that these facts should be made various concentration camps. Russian Jewry's Cultural Status Soviet Russia's oft-repeated claims that Jewish cultural programs are not curtailed, the contentions that Jewish journalism has not been stifled, remain puzzling. The very recent statement regarding the expansion of the Birobidzhan Star added to the confusion. There are only two Yiddish language periodi- cals published in Russia — Sovietishe Heim- land, most of whose 25,000 printed copies are sold outside of Russia, and the Birobidzhan newspaper. It was in behalf of the latter that a recent report announced expansion of cir- culation from 1,000 to 12,000 copies and that the newspaper — if that sheet could be called that — would have nationwide distribution. This claim was challenged by Dr. Ely E. Pilchik of South Orange, N.J., who, in a letter to the New York Times, asserted that the Russian announcement "provides cold com- fort for those anxious about Russian Jewry," and he analyzed the Birobidzhan newspaper's contents as follows; Before me is the issue of July 13, 1966, which I purchased there last summer for two kopecks. The Birobidzhaner Shtern states that it is "the organ of the Regional Committee of the Com- munist party of the U.S.S.R. and of District Soviet Deputies of the workers of the Jewish Autonomous Region."' The two-page sheet is graced with four photo- graphs: A Tass photo of Lenin Prospect in the new city of Volgagrad; a snapshot of Vladimir Potapenko smiling from the cab of his tractor upon being congratulated for gathering a 500- day supply of hay in the plains of the Amur River area; five burly workers who fulfilled their work quota in the machine-shops of Birobidzhan, and another Tass shot—of a student demonstra- tion in Costa Rica against the land grab of the Somoza family. The news consists of a report, in most gen- eneral terms, of the Warsaw Pact powers, a dis- - known and that the analyses of the contents of a newspaper posed as an important Yiddish organ should be exposed for what it is worth. The well established facts are that there has been an absolute curtailment of Jewish liter- ary publications, that there are no Yiddish newspapers in the entire country, that na- tional groups with less than 5 per cent the number of Jews have been granted cultural and journalistic freedom while the Jewish community of the USSR remains impover- ished culturally and spiritually. One wonders whether there is a way in which Russia can be induced to alter its discriminatory policies so that the 3,000,000 Jews will have the freedoms due them to establish proper com- munications 'among thOMSONes, and' With' .the Jewish communities throughout the world. There are the stories of the revolt in Sobibor, of escapes from and underground assignments in Auschwitz, revolts in Minsk, Lachwa, Vilna, Bialistok and numerous other ghettoes. There are descriptions of resistance in Italy, Bulgaria, Belgium and other countries, and a Parisian Jewish partisan's diary describes life in the French capital under Nazism. Individual acts of heroism are described in a number of stories about the courageous fighters against Hitlerism—"Little Wanda (Niuta Teitelboim) With the Braids," "The Amazing Oswald (Shmuel) Rufeisen" and others. Surprisingly, the story of resistance in Italy does not mention the massacre in the Ardeatine Caves. It was left to Robert Katz to expose that crime in his "Death in Rome" (Macmillan). Suhl's "They Fought Back" is not a complete story. But its contents are vital to an understanding of what really happened and to an appreciation of the fact that there really was a widespread Jewish resistance against Nazism.