Thousands of Jews Pray for Millions
of Dead at Auschwitz Dedication Rites
1968 to mark the 25th anniver-
AL'SCHWITZ (JTA)—Thousands
of Jews from all over the world,t sary of the Warsaw rebellion.
including delegations from Israel
and the United States, revisited
this former Nazi death camp Mon-
day, holding Jewish religious serv-
ices and otherwise paying homage
to the 3,000,000 Jews who made
up the majority of the 4,000,000 per-
sons put to death here by the Nazis
during World War II.
Monday's visits and services fol-
lowed Sunday's dedication of the
monument that was formally con-
ducted with great pomp by the
Polish government and the Inter-1
national Auschwitz Committee. An
estimated 130,000 persons attended
t he dedication. But J ews here
pointed out that "it was a dedica-
tion, not a consecration."
Only one of the official speakers,
Robert Weitz, a French Jew and
president of t h e International
Auschwitz Committee, mentioned
the Jewish martyrdom here, not-
ing that most of the victims at
Auschwitz were Jews.
No reference to Jews was
made in a long address deliver-
ed during the ceremonies by the
principal speaker, Polish Prime
Minister Josef Cyrankiewicz,
himself a survivor of Auschwitz.
Most of his 40-minute oration
was devoted to the resurgence
of neo-Nazism in West Germany.
The speech by Weitz, who did
mention the Jews, was delivered
in French, and was not trans-
lated into Polish.
It was only after the official
dedication ceremonies were con-
cluded that Jewish services were
conducted here .In front of one of
the 18 plaques on the monument,
all in different languages, El
Moleh Rahamim and the Kadish
were recited by Jews gathered
here, including Israel's minister
of social welfare, Yosef Burg, and
Ambassador Dov Sattah, Israel's
envoy to the Warsaw government.
The plaque in front of which
these services were held is in
Hebrew. It reads: "This is the
place where 4,000,000 men, women
and children suffered horrible tor-
ture and death at the hands of the
Nazi murderers between the years
1940 and 1945." The inscription on
another plaque, in Yiddish, is al-
most identical to the one in Hebrew
as well as to markers in 16 other
tongues, including Polish.
Jews had asked the organizers
of the dedication—the Polish gov-
ernment and the Polish Veterans
Organization—to include the Ka-
dish in Sunday's ceremonies. They
were told that no religious rites
could be included in the official
schedule.
Polish authorities explained
that such ceremonies could be
held when the Jewish Memorial
at Auschwitz is unveiled here.
That ceremony is scheduled for
Among the many foreign dele-
gations here, attending Sunday's
events and returning here Monday
were 70 Israelis, representing the
Union of Partisans and Ghetto
Fighters and the Association of
Polish Jews in Israel; a 53-mem-
ber American delegation, repre-
senting the Federation of Polish
Jews and other groups; a World
Jewish Congress group; 26 Italian
Jews, led by Italy's Chief Rabbi
Elio Toaff and Judge Sergio
Piperno, president of the Union of
Jewish Communities in Italy; and
a group of Greek Jews, some of
them survivors of the annihilated
Jewish community of Salonika, led
by Moise Halegous.
Many of the Jewish delegations
conducted separate religious serv-
ices at various sites in the camp,
among them the ruins of some of
the crematories at the Auschwitz
death factory at adjoining Birke-
nau, where the gas ovens were
located. A number of non-Jewish
Poles, who had survived Ausch-
witz, joined some of the Jewish
services.
Many of the Jews who had come
here wore, symbolically, the
coarse striped "pajamas" which
constituted the uniform of all
Auschwitz inmates.
In commemoration of Sunday's
event, the Polish Post Office is-
sued several special postage
stamps, one of them showing a
photograph of the memorial.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
14 Friday, April 21, 1967
—
Jewish Hospitals Treat 500,000 Patients a Year
an attack aimed at annihilating the
Jewish population of the ghetto.
The Jews resisted and held out
for five weeks against determined
attempts by Nazi troops and armor,
to crush the enclave.
In the ceremonies here Wednes-
day the delegations from various
countries were joined by thou-1
sands of local Jews and non-Jews
who made their annual pilgrimage
to the memorial site of the ghetto
and laid wreaths at the memorial.
Tuesday night, the traditional
solemn concert was presented at
the Yiddish State Theater with the
f or e i g n delegations invited as
guests of honor. The program con-
sisted of one act of "The Hour of
Reckoning, a play by the Polish
dramatist Jerry Liutowski; the sec-
ond act of Sholem - Alichem's
"Tevye the Milkman"; and a reci-
tal of ghetto poems.
(In New York, meanwhile. 12
simultaneous memorial rallies were
held in various parts of the city
under the sponsorship of major
Jewish religious and communal
organizatons. Similar rallies were
scheduled for other major cities
in the United States.)
Jewish hospitals throughout the most of -the remaining research
United States and Canada treat grants received f r o m private
more than 500,000 patients a year, foundations.
it is reported in the Yearbook of
People hate as they love, unrea-
Jewish Social Services, recently
published by the Council of Jew- sonably.—Thackeray
ish Federations and Welfare
Funds.
There are 19,000 beds in the 54
Jewish hospitals reporting to the
council. These hospitals serve an
average of more than 16,000 adult
REPAIR AND
and pediatric patients and 1,000
INSTALLATION
infants daily. The median stay in
Jewish general hospitals is 10
Quality Work at
days, an increase of 2.3 days
Reasonable Prices!
from 1960.
Twenty-eight Jewish hospitals
report they are spending more
than $18,000,000 in research. Ap-
proximately $15,000,000 was ob-
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The monument, designed by
Polish and Italian artists, is
made of granite. White blocks
of rock, hewn in the shape of
coffins, are spread over a quar-
ter of an acre in the site, sym-
bolizing the millions killed at
Auschwitz - Birkenau. In t h e
center rises a structure of
granite cubes suggesting the
chimneys of the crematoria. 1
An eternal flame will mark the
end of the railway line which car-
ried the victims of Nazism to their
deaths in the camp.
The total cost of the monument
is 3,500,000 marks, nearly $1,000,-
0000. The inscription on the monu-
ment reads: "We must live with
the knowledge that Auschwitz
existed and we must live with the
will that Auschwitz will never be
repeated."
(A spokesman for the commit-
tee collecting monument funds
said in Frankfurt that the West
German government had con-
tributed 200,000 marks ($50,000)
toward the cost.)
A number of the delegations
who came to Poland for the un-
veiling went to Warsaw Wednes-
day to participate in ceremonies
marking the 24th anniversary of
the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
It was on April 19, 1943, that
vastly superior Nazi forces opened
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RICHARD H. LOVE
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