Purely Commentary
When People Laugh at Tragedies . . . von Schirach's
Nazi Songs as Amusements for German Youth Audiences
Often, at public performances, and during speeches in which
human tragedies are described or referred to, there are some who
laugh. It happens in theaters, during the showing of films, at public
gathrings. And when that happens one is compelled to marvel: how
do humans evaluate the experiences?
There was an interesting occurrence last week in Gottingen,
West Germany. In that community's Deutsche Theater, there was
an experimental performance dedicated to the poetry that was aimed,
in the 1930s, at rallying the German people to the swastika and to
Hitler; and the tape-recorded songs included Hitler's favorite, "We
Will Continue to March Until Everything Ends in Shambles."
According to a Reuters report, the theater's director, Guenther
Fleckenstein, explained that the performance was arranged "to give
the young generation a chance to judge Nazi propaganda for itself."
The Reuters report stated:
"Nazi songs and poems that once made the hearts of millions
of Germans beat faster rang out again today, but a young theater
audience here greeted them with laughter . . . .
"One of the poems that brought occasional ripples of laughter
was written by the Nazi youth leader Baldur von Schirach. It opens,
" 'Here we stand, the brown hordes of us, we want to murder the
enemies of the Reich—people to the guns.' "
And the youth laughed!—perhaps as the Hitler Youth also
laughed when the Schirach songs called for "blood to flow from the
knife," in the appeals his poetic muse formulated in the area of
mass murders and of genocide!
Psychiatrists may have an explanation for this attitude and for
such reactions. But not only Hitler Youth but their elders as well
laughed when they were witnesses to the Nazi gangsters' tactics of
murder, pillage,—giving examples of man's inhumanity to man. And
after the war there were so few who knew anything about it! Those
who returned from Germany immediately after the war, members
of the Allied armed forces, had one report: they had seen the
massed corpses of the victims of Hitlerism, and they had only one
reaction from the Germans themselves: no one knew anything!
Tragically, this is what Russia and Poland are experiencing:
when they witness the sufferings of human beings at the hands of
their own peoples, they laugh! They find scapegoats: mostly they
are the Zionists!
The horror of it is that while the youth laughs, and the neo-Nazis
are scoring triumphs, we are told that it can not happen again. Can't
it—if laughter is the greeting to poems and songs that call for
brutality?
When a hockey player can sink so low mentally as to taunt
an opponent with a proposal that he be sent to the "gas ovens,"
what can we expect from dictators for whom the end always
justifies the means?
On the ice rink of the Toronto hockey arena the fires of hate
were fanned, in Gottingen youth laughed at the sound of a hate-in-
spired song, in Poland a scapegoat was found in Zionism, in Russia
they do not hesitate to renew the atrocious ritual murder libel. What
a challenge—everywhere—to those who seek to inspire faith in man
and to preachers who seek confidence in man!
A Ghost Resurrected in Scores of
Anti-Zionist Manifestations Cor-
roding Communist-Arab Actions
By Philip
Slomovitz
Blaiberg's Victory
Sign at His Home
years—but especially in relation to the Jews who are spokesmen for
the remaining Jewish communities in the land where anti-Semitism
has been rampant and where, during World War II, the Jewish
heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt were unable to get help from the
Polish underground.
The fact that Jewish members of the Communist Party have
been ousted from office is one aspect of this tragedy. There is a
single Jewish newspaper in Poland. Its editors have not been coopera-
tive in worldwide Jewish and in pro-Israel efforts. Back in 1959, at
the World Jewish Congress sessions in Stockholm, there was deep
resentment against the attitudes of editors of Folkshtimme and their
associates who attended those sessions. Now the families of these
collaborators with the Polish anti-S'emites who are pinning blame for
the student riots on "Zionism" are among the victims in the purges.
What a lesson this is for those who seek escape from Jewish responsi-
bilities in hopes for an international panacea!
By compelling the Folkshtimme to publish the anti-Zionist attacks,
the Polish anti-Semitic government has renewed the old practice of
forcing a Mah Yofis self-humilation upon the Jews of Poland. How
vainglorious is fate for our unfortunate kinsmen!
Dr. Leo Pinsker's Explanation of 'the Ghost'
In the 1880s, a great Jewish scholar, a noted physician who also
was a brilliant writer and a practical thinker—Dr. Leo Pinker—
described the manner in which the world envisioned an apparition in
its judgment of the Jew. In his historic brochure, "Auto-Emancipa-
tion," one of the great documents advocating Jewish statehood as a
solution to the Jewish tragedies (the monograph was written after
Heart transplant patient Dr.
the tragic pogroms in Russia in 1880-81), Dr. Pinsker declared that Philip Blaiberg gives the victory
the causes of "our being hated and despised more than any other sign at his apartment in Cape
human beings . . . lie deep in human psychology." He then stated:
Town, South Africa. He is con-
"We cannot know whether that great day will ever arrive when valescing at home, now, from
all mankind will live in brotherhood and concord, and national barriers the historic operation performed
will no longer exist, but even at the best, thousands of years must Jan. 2.
elapse before that Messianic age. Meanwhile nations live side by side
in a state of relative peace, which is based chiefly on the fundamental
equality between them. . . . But it is different with the people of
Israel. This people is not counted among the nations, because since
it was exiled from its land it has lacked the essential attributes of
nationality, by which one nation is distinguished from another. . . .
True, we have not ceased even in the lands of our exile to be spiritually
a distinct nation; but this spiritual nationality, so far from giving us
the status of a nation in the eyes of the other nations, is the very
President Johnson's popularity
cause of their hatred for us as a people. Men are always terrified by has risen to an all-time high in
a disembodied spirit, a soul wandering about with no physical cover- Israel, National Commander Samu-
ing; and terror breeds hatred. This is a form of psychic disease el Samuels of the Jewish War Vet..
which we are powerless to cure. In all ages men have feared all erans of the U.S.A. anticipates re-
kinds of ghosts which their imaginations have seen; and Israel ap- porting to the White House on his
pears to them as a ghost—but a ghost which they see with their very return to Washington from a meet-
eyes, not merely in fancy. Thus the hatred • of the nations for Jewish ing of the JWV national executive
nationality is a psychic disease of the kind known as `demonopathy' committee in Israel.
and having been transmitted from generation to generation for some
In a statement released on his
2,000 years, it has by now become so deep-rooted that it can no longer return from a trip to Israel, Com-
be eradicated."
mander Samuels said that "the
This was all well as an argument for Jewish statehood, as an image of America is seen by the
expressed view that a lack of a national abode is a major cause of Israelis in highly favorable terms.
* *
the anti-Semitic virus. Yet even now, with Israel the State a reality, This is true from the top circles in
Poland's Zionist Scapegoats
the ghost has been resurrected again.
government to the average man on
Poland's Premier Wladyslaw Gomulka needed a scapegoat. The
So, the backward nations have returned to demonopathy, and all- the street." He added that "it was
Kremlin dictated to him and to others in the Communist bloc to too-often even supposedly advanced nations stoop to such hatreds.
heartwarming for the one thousand
break relations with Israel and to make the Zionist his bogeyman.
American Jewish veterans who this
* *
When students rioted against oppressive measures, what better ghost
month met in Israel to discover
. Barbering . . . the Presidency
could Gomulka resurrect—as Kosygin did in Moscow and at the Machiavellism
that the United States and the Pres-
This country is being torn by strife, much of which has been ident were tremendously appre-
United Nations, as Tito followed their orders — only brave little
caused by the Vietnam situation, a great deal by the race issue, and ciated."
Romania refusing to follow orders from the bosses!
Objective students of Polish affairs may not be at all surprised now with a threat of economic challenges occasioned by the emer-
Commander Samuels said that
at what is happening in that country, but they have cause for amaze- gence of a black market for gold. All these issues affect the campaign "President Johnson is known to
ment. Those of us who studied conditions there, who witnessed the for the Presidency.
the Israelis as a man who keeps
There is something Machiavellian in the entrance of the newest his commitments and does not
status of the Jewish community at first hand, and who are aware of
candidate
—
newest
only
in
the
sense
of
his
having
thrown
his
hat
in
Jewish reactions, may have answers for all the questions that are
swerve from his course, whether in
being posed—except for the absolutely wild accusations leveled at the ring, but certainly not unexpected. We wonder how many people Vietnam or the Middle East."
He
Zionism! Except that if the United Nations platforms could have been were distressed by the candidate's assertion that he does "not oppose said that the President's position,
turned into jungles where similar charges constantly were heard any one man, but proposes new policies."
stated June 19, on the basis for
last June and July, why not also in Warsaw—as in Moscow?
What a travesty: that a man himself seeking the Presidency settlement of the Arab-Israel con-
The fact is that the Jewish population in Poland has been reduced
should at the same time say he also will campaign for another flict, was known to every Israeli.
(from more than 3,500,000) to barely more than 25,000—possibly only
candidate (McCarthy)! Shades of Machiavelli!
The President's "Five Points," as
20,000. The remaining Jews there are Communist-oriented. They
And a relevant question: where was Bobby when only two they are known, "are a blueprint
refused to go to Israel. They chose to remain under a Communist
courageous Senators (Gruening and Morse) spoke up against the for stabilizing the Middle East
regime. Their cultural status is reduced to a minimum, to a few noted
present Vietnamese policy? Is THIS the time, when solutions call conflict and giving hope for a
scholars and to museums. Even the symbols of Oswiecim (Ausch-
for unity, to do political back-stabbing?
peaceful future," the commander
witz) frequently are being reduced to derision, with Poles preferring
would imagine that a thinking and acting constituency would said.
to speak of Polish heroism, of Poles having helped Jews—that's a say One
to Bobby, in a time of crisis, that, under conditions which im-
concession to compassion!
peril the state of our nation, as a member of the United States Senate
And the handful of Jews, now deprived of cooperative labors with he owes it to all of the people as well as to the President to present Synagogue Council
the JDC which has been expelled from the country, their Jewish his
proposals for action NOW! Just as Richard Nixon has no right to Urges Strong Support
affiliations being limited to a few kosher soup kitchens and a few
dozen children studying in Jewish schools, once again are the ghosts! suggest that as President he would have a way of solving the Viet- for LBJ Tax Request.
issues. NOW, Mr. Nixon, is the time to act, not when you can
They are the ghosts who are utilized for hatred! Some one has to be namese
hope to be in the White House!
NEW YORK—Synagogues aeros,..
hated when there is an uprising—and what better object than the Jew?
the country were urged to make
It
would
have
been
more
logical
if
Robert
Kennedy
had
said,
When, after the last war, there were reports about the 1,000 or
known to Congressman ."their en- .
a few more Jews in Japan, it was conceded that few Japanese knew frankly, confirming what no one doubts, that he wants to be President, dorsement of higher taxes,
if nec-
that he would like to displace Lyndon B. Johnson. All that business
anything about Jews. But the cynical said that even if there hadn't of
essary" to finance the implemen,
being
the
savior
is
a
lot
of
boloney,
and
no
one
is
deluded
by
been a single Jew there, they would either invent him or import at
tation of the recommendations
least one; how else could a suitable scapegoat for hatred, if he were sanctimonious talk. Even a candidate can't talk through both sides of made by the President's National
needed, be utilized? That's how it continues to be in Poland, in the the mouth (or the falling hair locks) by first taunting LBJ, then af- Advisory Commission on Civil Dis-
respect for him, then getting into a battle for political
countries behind the Iron Curtain (except in Romania), and the poor firming
aspirations.
orders.
Polish Jews are beginning to feel the sting of anti-Semitism. Didn't
The action was taken in a reso-
Every
native-born
American
has
a
right
to
aspire
to
the
Presi-
a group of them sign an anti-Israel condemnation after the Six-Day
dency. Which is the basic right of Bobby. We wonder, however, lution adopted unanimously by the
War?
general board of the Synagogue
But that wasn't enough. They themselves must suffer the indigni- about the validity of the comment on TV by the distinguished author, Council of America,
the national
Gore Vidal (his great play dealing with politics, "Week-end," is now on
ties that have become the pattern for Polish anti-Semitism.
coordinating agency for Conserva-
The Zionist scapegoat! That's the new means of striking at the Broadway, and his noteworthy novel, "Julian," is among the great tive, Orthodox and Reform
Jew while denying resort to anti-Semitism. That's how Nasser American literary creations), that Bobby will lose his chances for ism. It was announced at a Juda-
speCial
operates. That's how Prof. Federenko and Kosygin demonstrated their the Presidency if, by waiting for 1972, he may at the same time, lose meeting at Harmonie Club,
some of his hair. Which gives barbering an important role in a
which
hatred.
presidential campaign!
was addressed by Mayor John V.
* * *
There'll be a lot of fun in the month ahead; and the hope of all Lindsay, who served as vice chair- „
Tragedy of Polish Jewish Leaders
Americans is, of course, that we shall come out of the present battles man of the President's commission/
Not only is the Polish tragedy immense in the measure of the —those LBJ's administration must solve NOW and the wordy ones in-
insanity of the anti-Zionist charge—since there are no Zionists left separable from political machinations—with honor. Honor, however, is
Early Arkansas Settlers
in Poland, and there hasn't been a Zionist movement there for many dependent upon knowledge and understanding of the issues. That's what
The earliest Jewish settl
every potential voter must set out to acquire: knowledge of existing Little Rock, Ark., arrive
2—Friday, March 22, 196$
17_
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THE DETROIT JEWISH NFWC_affnitle
Johnson Popular
in Israel, JWV's
Commander States