Cassin--Nobel Prize-Winning Humanitarian By EDWIN EYTAN (Copyright 1968, TPA, Inc.) PARIS—This year, for the third time since the Nobel Peace Prize was established, its recipient is a Jew, Prof. Rene Cassin, an elderly man with a little pointed white beard and soft warm eyes, with precise, pendantic gestures and a low, practically inaudible voice. To Jews he looks like the typical re- incarnation of an old-fashioned rabbi, to his French compatriots, the typical 19th Century French lawyer. Rene Cassin is that rare com- bination of Jewish wisdom and idealism and French method and obstinacy. All these qualities have been used throughout his life for a single purpose: the rights of man, or as Prof. Cassin himself said: "All the rights and for all men, Jews and non-Jews alike, for men cannot really be free as long as anti-Semitism or racism exists anywhere in the world." Rene Cassin was born Oct. 5, 1887, in the French city of Ba- yonne, in a Jewish family which had lived for centuries in France while preserving Jewish traditions. He studied law first at the Univer- sity of Aix and then at the Sor- bonne in Paris and was called to the bar in 1909. At the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered for front-line action in the French Army and was wounded several times. He spent a year in hospitals where he was awarded the two highest French decorations for bravery, the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille Mili- taire. At the end of the war, he gave up his short-lived bar career and joined the faculty of Aix Uni- versity and several years later was awarded a full professorship at the University of Lille. The cause which was nearest to his heart in the immediate post- war years was that of the millions of orphans and widows of the fallen soldiers. He launched a na- tion-wide movement for the full rehabilitation of war invalids and adequate pensions for the families of dead soldiers. Cassin's real interest in Jewish activities started with the rise to power of Hitler. As Nazi Germany conquered country after country, Cassin drew closer to all forms of Jewish life, warned France's Jews that their country would soon be at war too. After the fall of France and Gen- eral de Gaulle's historic appeal from London to all Frenchmen to join him and fight for freedom, Prof. Cassin was the first to cross over to London, where he joined de Gaulle's war cabinet. He wrote at that time many of de Gaulle's speeches and drew up, as a con- stitutional expert, the de Gaulle- Churchill agreement which was to serve as the basis for the war- time relations between the two countries. In 1942, his official activities brought him once again in contact with organized Jewish life. In January 1942, he headed the I French committee investigating Nazi war crimes and later that same year he was appointed chair- man of the French commission for public education. In that capacity he visited the Alliance Israelite Universelle school network in North Africa and the Middle East, and was at once irresistibly at- tracted to the principles of the organization, declining it: "Its task is to form the best men, the best women, the best Jews, the best members of the human commu- nity to serve humanity." From that day on, Cassin was to devote his life to the Alliance in which he discerned another aspect of his fight for the rights of man. , He saw his Alliance work and his efforts in less specific Jewish fields as part of the same struggle. In 1945, he was the first French delegate to UNESCO. A year later he headed the French delegation to the United Nations General As- sembly. There he concentrated on the subject closest to his heart: the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man. . Tel Aviv U. Head Charges Prejudice TEL AVIV (JTA)—The president of Tel Aviv University charged the Israeli government with discrim- ination against that institution. Dr. George Wise, speaking on the opening of the new academic year, said his university does not re- ceive the same budgetary alloca- tion from the government as the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Haifa Technion. Tel Aviv University has a cur- rent enrollment of more than 9,000 students compared to over 12,000 at the Hebrew University and 5,600 at Technion. The latter is Israel's oldest and largest technical col- lege. The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.—Thomas Jeffer- son. WHEN YOU i,, A COCKTAIL t.ip ,...fwca-cutty ") • 100,000 or more still earns 6%° o interest at Birmingham Bloomfield Bank. 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Among them were several army generals and cabinet members, members of the Hagana, and the other underground organizations, Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern group. Also on hand to accept the awards were descendants of the early pioneer fighters who were members of Hashomer (guards- men), a force created when Tur- key ruled Palestine, and relatives of such legendary figures as Yosef Trumpeldor, Sarah Aaronson, Dov Hos and Gen. Itzhak Sadeh. One contemporary recipient was Capt. Ike Aharonovitz, who com- manded the illegal refugee ship Exodus in 1947. 1.re, the French president used to ask for advice. This period came to an end last year when Gen. de Gaulle abruptly changed his country's policy in the Midle East, support- ing the Arab cause and placing an embargo on the shipment of the Mirage planes which Israel had bought in France. Cassin was one of the few Frenchmen to speak out against the new line. He was practically the only man in the country to tell de Gaulle personally of his mis- givings. After the president's press conference of last autumn, during which de Gaulle spoke of the Jews as a "domineering nation," Cassin reportedly had a stormy and pain- ful meeting with de Gaulle. This attitude is typical of the quiet- spoken man with the little white goatee who, all his life has placed "human dignity and honesty" above all other things. • Shazar Distributes Medals to Israel's Pre-'48 Heroes • He brought to its elaboration his Jewish humanitarianism and his French pedantic method and ob- stinacy. For several years he worked out the legal basis for its promulgation and then, with the cooperation of Mrs. Eleanor Roose- velt, entered the political fight to bring about its ratification by the United Nations. He always found the time and the patience to deal with Alliance affairs, heading its committees, presiding at its assemblies, indefa- tigably visiting its schools. This at a time when inside France he served in one of the country's highest posts — vice-president of the State Council — the French equivalent of the American Su- preme Court with constitutional' jurisdiction. He was the council's nominal head, as minister of jus- tice, taking the oath of office in 1959 when Charles de Gaulle be- came president of France. The two men have always been close. For 20 years, Cassin used to meet at least once a week with de Gaulle, one of the handful of men THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 8—Friday, November 8, 1968 BIRMINGHAM BLOOMFIELD BANIM - P. O. Box 500. Birmingham. Michigan • East Maple-Adams • Martin-Bates • West Maple-Labser • Woodward-Benneville • Woodward-Maple • Wixom Road, Wixom • • ... .. t • limbo. hard 90•11 Wee. 6""*"