`Out of the Whirlwind,' Header of Holocaust Literature,
Emphasizes the Survivors' Admonition Never to Forget
A question, often posed, asks a ssurances of resettlement when he was afraid of running into
why there is the constant reminder ; t hey really were taken to their German patrol boats, all he had
done throughout the long night
about the Holocaust, why we can't d eath, and his essay deplores "the
was to circle about and finally
forget and stop reminding our- I t ragic truth," also the fault of the
bring them back to the Danish
urvivors,
"that
20
years
after
it
selves and our children of what s
shore at a point not far from
had happened during the Nazi era.lo ccurred, the catastrophe of Euro-
the German border. Melchior
The answer is provided in an pean Jewry and the epic of the
immense work, a terrifying but Warsaw Ghetto uprising is little angrily knocked down the young
impressive collection of material known and is even less under- fisherman, and, although he had
never before steered a boat,
written about the Holocaust, com- s tood."
grabbed the rudder and manag-
piled in a volume under the title
In spite of it, Donat asserts,
ed to turn the boat around in
"Out of the Whirlwind" by Rabbi
the Jewish record of resistance
the direction of Sweden. He held
Albert H. Friedlander and pub- , "stands the toughest scrutiny"
the
boat on course for six hours
lished by Doubleday.
when compared with the actions
until they were safe in Swedish
Harrowing tales of occurrences of the French in 1940, Czecho-
waters."
slovakia in 1938, the massacred
incited by Adolf Hilter are taken
The aftermath, too, is exposed
Armenians, the French Hugue-
from the writings of witnesses to
and
most significant is the article
the tragedies, many of whom had nots, Andersonville, Eupen-Mal-
medy, the Soviet prisoners-of-war. from the New York Times by A.
risen to eminence.
M.
Rosenthal,
who was expelled
His powerful plea is: "The one
The significance of the com-
thing that those of us who have as his newspaper's correspondent
pilation becomes evident at once
from
Poland.
He
described even
survived can do is to keep clean
in the prologue, the text of "an
the present state of horror, the
the memory of the victims."
Evening Guest" by Elie Wiesel
continuing anti-Semitism and he
This is one of the appeals for declared that "my thoughts and
from whose stirring "The Town
Beyond the Wall" there is an retention of the memory of the memories at the 25th anniversary
excerpt commencing a fourth great tragedy. It is among the em- of the beginning of the Warsaw
section of the book entitled "The phatic admonitions that what had Ghetto . . . are not such as to lift
Great Silence." Why, indeed, occurred is not to be forgotten.
men's hearts." After listing epi-
silence? A portion from Wiesel's
Donat's "The Holocaust King- sodes of shame during which Jews
"Night," also in this section; ex- dom" mentions the heroism of the were humiliated, Rosenthal wrote:
cerpts from Rolf Hochhuth's famed physician and educator, Dr.
"Why speak of these things?
"The Deputy," Zvi Kolitz's "Yos- Janusz Korczak, who could have Only because 25 years later I
sel Rakover's Appeal to God," saved his own life but he went to simply cannot tell myself nor my
Piotr Rawics's "Blood From the his death leading the procession sons that it cannot happen again.
Sky" and other revelatory ma- children from the orphanage he I can only tell them that there
terial raised questions, beckon. had organized and directed. It was was a time of madness and that
ing for the answers.
one of the most moving of the vast some of the Jews of the ghetto
The author, now rabbi of Wem- score of incidents of martyrdom. fought the mad beast and died like
The illustrations in "Out of the men. And if it does happen again,
bley Liberal Synagogue, Harrow,
England, was born in Berlin in Whirlwind" by Jacob Landau even if there are faint dark signs
1927, is a graduate of the Univer- caught the spirit of the tragedies that it might happen again, that
sity of Chicago, was ordained at depicted and among the very mov- most terrible of all prayers will
Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, ing portions of the book are the rise, from myself, my sons and
earned his PhD from Columbia selections from the poems and il- from men in all parts of the earth:
University where he served as lustrations of the children at the 'Forgive them not, Father, for they
counselor to Jewish students for Terezin camp, in the section "Songs knew what they did.' "
five years. Dr. Friedlander has in the Night." These art and poetic
Dr. Friedlander had a conver-
written introductory notes to the excerpts are accompanied by the
sation with Prof. Paul Tillich in
six sections in his book and in his musical selections made famous
1965, before the death of the
eminent Christian theologian,
general introduction in which he by the concentration camp inmates
tells how "darkness pervaded —"Zog Nit Keinmol," "Es Brent,"
and Dr. Tillich said to him:
every street of every town, city "Eins, Tzvei Drei," "Ani Maamin."
"Shoa—a fascinating word. I
in
this
special
significance
Of
and country occupied by Nazi Ger-
did not realize that there is al-
many," he defines the title of his volume also is the selection from ready a technical vocabulary
Harold Flender's "Rescue in Den-
about what happened in those
book:
"A whirlwind cannot be taught; mark" which includes this impor- days: Holocaust and Shoa. It is
a biblical word, of course: 'a de-
it must be experienced, and we tant incident:
vastating storm.' But you know,
cannot know what happened dur-
"Among those who attempted
ing the Shoa — that whirlwind of
it is only one storm in the whole
the flight to Sweden during the
destruction in which Hitler's Ger-
history of Jewish life. You must
first week of October (1943)
teach it as part of the other
many killed 6,000.000 Jews—solely
were Rabbi Melchior (Chief Rab-
persecutions: the Inquisition, the
by learning historical facts and bi Dr. Phil Marcus Melchior)
figures and scholarly explanations.
Middle
Ages—they are all part of
and his family. The son of Rev.
Facts, figures and explanations
the story." Dr. Tillich viewed the
Hans Kildeby, pastor of the
Holocaust as a challenge to all
are necessary. But we must also church of Orslev, made arrange-
humanity.
touch and feel and taste the dark ments with a young fisherman to
Dr. Friedlander states in his re-
days and the burning nights. Our
take Rabbi Melchior and his
hearts must constrict in terror and
family to Sweden. By 7 p.m., collections of that interview that
grief. Our minds must expand to
when the Melchiors started out, "Tillich talked about Israel, about
his conviction that Martin Buber's
make room for the incredible. And the night was pitch-black. They
approach to Zionism held the
our love for the goodness of life left from the island of Falster,
must grow strong enough to reach
south of Zealand, and the trip greatest promise for the Jewish
into the darkness and to discover
in the small boat was to take future. Tillich was still concerned
the heart of the darkness, the ex-
six hours. Twelve hours later that Judaism should not be cap-
perience itself."
they were still at sea. As dawn tured by space, but should con-
The facts and the figures are
broke, land appeared ahead of tinue to fight the battle of time
given. A chart in the introduc-
them. Melchior recognized the against space, against nationalist
tion lists by countries the num-
town of Gedser, a Danish town limitations."
Dr. Leo Baeck's "This People
ber of killed-5,978,000--out of
not far from the German fron-
a total Jewish population of 8,-
tier. The young fisherman, who Israel" is among the essays that
301,000 in the given countries:
had been behaving strangely all are part of "Out of the Whirlwind."
72 per cent of the total having
evening, confessed that because Noteworthy among the volume's ar-
been murdered by the Nazis.
And the literary output thus
compiled at the same time pro-
vides the touch and the feel and
the taste of what had occurred!
Dr. Friedlander states bluntly
about the "inferno of the Holo-
caust" that: it is a journey we
cannot avoid." Paraphrasing Dante
he adds that after such a journey
"we will look for the stars when
we emerge."
His compilation culls excerpts
from writings of Alexander Donat,
a survivor from the Nazi terror,
two portions from his "The Holo-
caust Kingdom" and an effective
portion from his "Jewish Resist-
ance."
Donat's latter piece follows a
selection from Anne Frank's Diary
and an essay by Dr. Bruno Bettel-
heim, "The Informed Heart," in
which the Franks are condemned
for bickering and lack of prompt
action and Jews are charged with
failure to resist. Donat disproves
Bettelheim's charges, gives evi-
dence of resistance, shows how
Jews took at face value German
is Robert Weltsch's "Wear
the Yellow Badge With Pride."
Other participants in the volume
include Primo Levi, Chaim A.
Kaplan, Leon W. Wells, Josef Bor,
Andre Schwarz-Bart, Ilse Aichin-
ger, Salo W. Baron, Hans Jonas,
Hans Habe, Anna Langfus, Tuviah
Friedman, Jack Bemporad, Abra-
tides
1
ham J. Heschel, Emil L. Facken-
heim—all of whose writings, those
who survived and those who per-
ished, have part of a history that
must remain inerasable from the
memory of man. "Out of the Whirl-
wind" is a masterful work that
emphasizes the admonition: never
forget!
Boris Smolar's
'Between You
. . and Me'
(Copyright 1968, IPA Inc.)
COMMUNAL TRENDS: Organized Jewish community life in this
country is undergoing a change following the growing list of retire-
ments of leading professional veterans in Jewish communal work .. .
The change is unnoticed as yet, but it will inevitably be noticed as
time marches on . . . In tribute to the "old guard" it must be
emphasized that each of them played a tremendous role in deepening
the interest of the American-born generation of Jews in Jewish commu-
nal activities and in bringing these activities to an unprecedented height
. . . Whether it was Sam Goldsmith in Chicago, or Dr. Maurice
He :ter and Joseph Willen in New York—they served as examples and
inspiration to the younger generation of Jewish social workers in the
communities throughout the country . . . Whether it was Harry Lurie
in the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds—who was the
first of the outstanding executives to retire several yars ago—or Dr.
John Slawson in the American Jewish Committee, each of them were
figures to look up to in the work of building and cementing Jewish
communal life in this country . . . It was Lurie who made it his
mission to develop the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare
Funds into a force in American Jewish life—a mission which is now
being carried out very ably by his successor Philip Bernstein . . .
There is no doubt that just as Philip Bernstein, in taking over the
mantle of executive leadership from Harry Lurie, has been doing an
excellent job for the benefit of organized American Jewish communal
life, so will the others who have come in to succeed the Slawsons, the
Hexters and the Goldsmiths . . . However, there is also no doubt that
each of them—whether it is Bertram Gold in the AJCommittee or Dr.
David Salten in the New York Federation, or Sam Haber in the Joint
Distribution Committee—will develop his own initiative and will bring
in his own philosophies and approaches into his work.
COMMUNAL ARCHITECT: The latest in the roster of top execu-
tives in Jewish communal work to leave his position is Isidore
Sobeloff who came more than three years ago to Los Angeles as
profesional head of the Federation-Council there after having served as
executive of the Detroit Jewish Federation for 27 years . . . Sobeloff,
who is affectionately called "Soby" by most of the Jewish lay and
professional leaders throughout the country, was a_central figure not
only in the communities of Detroit and Los Angeles, but in the entire
field of American Jewish communal work . . . Extremely popular as
one of the top architects of organized communal life in !his country, he
established quite a record for himself during his 45 years of his
activities in Jewish social work which started with a positon he held
in the New York Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, under the late
Solomon Lowenstein . . . His reputation reached a high point during
his years in Detroit where he served with distinction as executive vice-
president of the Jewish Welfare Federation ... His years of service in
Detroit were history-making on the American Jewish scene . . . Corn-
munities had to rise to the needs of the victims of the Nazi regime
during the war years ... They had to alleviate the plight of thousands
and thousands of Jewish displaced persons after the fall of the Nazi
regime as well as to rebuild the Jewish life destroyed by the Nazis in
Europe ... They were calld upon to meet the costs of mass emigration
of hundreds of thousands of Jews to Israel as well as to meet the
emergencies arising out of the establishment of Israel . . . These were
also years of dynamic work in strengthening local Jewish community
organizations in the United States . . . Sobeloff proved himself in those
years one of the best community organizers, social 'planners, fund-
raisers, coordinators and administrators . . . He put the Detroit Jewish
community on the map as one of the best organized and most respon-
sive communities in the country . . . He built up a communal leader-
ship there which provided active leaders not only for local institutions
but also for national organizations . . . He also built up a spirit of
Jewish communal responsibility that served as an example to many
other Jewish communities . . . It took him little time in his new
position in Los Angeles to develop a deeper understanding of • Jewish
El Al Gives Governors a Lift Home
community obligations and a higher standard of Jewish commitments
. . . "We know that we are a better community as a result of your
having been in our midst," the board of Los Angeles Federation-
Council stressed in a resolution on his retirement • . . It is obvious that
a person with Sobeloff's ability and experience has still much to con-
tribute; his services will now be sought after for various . Jewish
communal projects—organizational and philanthropic.
COMMUNAL COMPETITION: The growing number of retirements
among top Jewish community workers raises a very serious problem of
finding the proper persons to take their places . . . As matters stand
today, there is a general shortage in experienced social workers in the
United States and even a greater shortage in experienced social
workers in Jewish organizations - .. This is because there are so many
vacancies open now for good social workers in federal, state and
municipal institutions . . . In the Jewish field it is even more difficult
to find the proper men for the higher positions, because a good
executive in Jewish communal work must not only be a good
"professional but must also have a solid amount of Jewish knowledge
. . Not to speak of the fact that he must have a deep interest in
National Governors' Conference representatives returned from matters Jewish . . . Such people are not easy to find now among the
younger generation of social workers, the result being that one Jewish
an intensive tour of Israel recently on El Al Israel Airlines. They
"acquires" the executive of another by paying him more
included (from left) John Volpe of Massachusetts, who headed the organization
delgation, Charles Terry of Delaware, Hulett Smith of West Virginia, and offering him other inducements . . . How long this system will
exist
is
difficult
to foretell, but the fact remains that no new candidates
Ralph Paiewonsky of the Virgin Islands, Warren Knowles of Wisconsin
for higher positions in the field of Jewish communal work are seen on
and Robert McNair of South Carolina,
the horizon while Jewish communal institutions continue to grow and to
THE DETROIT JEWISH . NEWS expand.
48—Friday, February 16, 1968