THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1951
Member American Assuciaton of Englshslewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association, National Editorial Association
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17515 W. Nine Mile, Suite 865, Southfield, Mich. 48075.
Phone 356-8400
Subscription $7 a year. Foreign 58.
CHARLOTTE DUBIN
CARM1 M. SLOMOVITZ
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
City Editor
Business Manager •
Editor and Publisher
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the tenth day of Shoat, 5730, the following scriptural selections
will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Exod. 10:1-13:16. Prophetical portion, Jer. 46.13 28.
ilantisha 'Isar b'Sherat will be obserred Thursday, Jan. 22.
Candle lighting, Friday, Jan. 16, 5:07 p.m.
January 16, 1970
Page Four
VOL. LVI. No. 18
Keren Hayesod: State-Building Foundation
We speak today of the unifying force in
fund-raising: the United Jewish Appeal. All
who have labored in behalf of Israel's re-
demption in the past three decades retain in
view not only the functioning Jewish Na-
tional Fund, which is the land-redeeming and
reclaiming agency in Israel, but also the fund
as it was known in the founding stages of
statehood: the Keren Hayesod.
In the course of the years the United
Israel Appeal emerged and it functions today
as a supervisory agency within the United
Jewish Appeal and the Jewish Agency for
Israel.
With the new strength that has been
given the UJA through the unity that makes
the Keren Hayesod-United Israel Appeal one
of the vital agencies in world philanthropy, a
review of Keren Hayesod achievements is
especially interesting bow, on the fund's 50th
anniversary. Thanks to the Keren Ilay_esod-
with credit now being shared by the UJA
- Israel's population has grown to nearly
3.000.000 and the figures by ethnic groups-
etimated in thousands- through the year
1967, has been computed as follows:
Chris- Druze,
Year
Total
Jews Moslems tians others
14.5
1949
1,173.9
1,013.9
111.5
34.0
1,577.8
1,404.4
118.9
39.0
15.5
1951
170.8
50.5
25.8
- 1961
2,179.5
1,932.4
58.5
31.0
2,657.4
2,344.9
223.0
1966
286.6
70.6
1967
'2,773.9
2,383.6
33.1
*Including population in East Jerusalem
(about 66,000)
As a matter of specific interest in relation
to the Jewish population of the world as con-
trasted with Israel's, the following figures-
also in thousands-are worthy of note for the
years 1882-1967:
Year
1882
1914
1940
15.5 1948
1951
Census 1961
1966
1967
Total
7,700
13,500
16,700
11,300
11,533
12,866
13,538
13,628
Percentage
In Israel in Israel
24.0
0.3
0.6
85.0
467.5
2.8
649.6
5.7
1,404.4
12.2
1,932.4
15.0
2,344.9
17.3
2,383.6
17.5
The sources of increase in Jewish popula-
tion in Israel from 1948-in thousands-are
indicated in these figures:
SOURCES OF INCREASE OF
JEWISH POPULATION
(15.5.1948-1967) (in Thousands)
Population at time of establishment
of State (15.5.1948)
Natural increase
Balance of immigration
Total increase
Percentage of balance of immigration
of total increase
Population at end of period
649.6
635.1
1,098.9
1,734.0
settlements, Israel has made advances in
trade and industry exports have grown, a
variety of products have been popularized
abroad and the record points to constant
growth in every field of endeavor.
The foundation for Israel's redeemed na-
tional existence remains a powerful factor
in Eretz Israel that has been transformed
through Keren Hayesod, Jewish National
Fund and now the United Jewish Appeal into
a national entity that can no longer be
ignored internationally. It began partly as a
dream, but those who adhered to prophetic
lore viewed it as an approaching reality. On
the 50th anniversary of the Keren Hayesod
the glory of creativity justly deserves fullest
recognition. Those who shared in the making
of this foundation for statehood have much
to be proud of. Those who are in the midst
of it now should justly celebrate the half
century of great activities that have elevated
world Jewry anew to the status of partici-
pants in the fulfillment of prophecy and in
the realization of the great need to end the
homelessness of Jews for all time to come.
* *
Currently, through the Keren Hayesod,
there is an assurance to new settlers in Israel
that their positions as creators of an agricul-
tural economy will be protected because it
is not merely the financial aid the hundreds
of settlements receive but a major role is
played by the experts who have been trained
to direct the destinies of state-builders.
This is one of the remarkable factors in
the emergence of Israel-that not a single
item related to statehood has been ignored,
while the emphasis has been placed and con-
tinues to be given to the skill of finding new
scientific methods for farmers while seeking
methods of advancing the people's industrial
needs.
The Keren Hayesod anniversary brings
back recollections of the early struggles in
the Zionist movement to assure means for
the settlement of Jews who were persecuted
on many fronts in an era of extensive anti-
Semitism. There were pogroms in Poland,
uncertainties in Russia, tensions in many
'Transnistria' as 'Forgotten
Cemetery' Lists Romanian Crimes
A record of a great tragedy, part of the horrors of the Holocaust.
was compiled by the late Rabbi Julius S. Fisher. His "Transnistrim
The Forgotten Cemetery, published by Yoseloff, is a reminder of one
of the saddest chapters of the Hitler era.
Born in Hungary in 1892, belonging to a 400-year line of rabbis
dating back to Rabbi Loew of Prague, Rabbi Fisher was ordained at
the Yeshiva of Pressburg, Czechoslovakia, and earned his doctorate
in philosophy and law at the University of Prague. Upon the outbreak
of World War H he made an effort to provide avenues of escape for
Romanian Jews, but could not persuade his fellow Jews to leave their
homes. Foreseeing the inevitable he and his family left for the United
States in 1942. He became the rabbi of a Hungarian congregation in
Manhattan, later assuming a rabbinical post in Beaufort, S.C. He wrote
extensively exposing the Nazi horrors for the Woild Jewish Congress.
He died in 1965.
Rabbi Fisher not only reviewed the status of Romanian Zeway
in this volume, he gave an account of Nazi activities, of collabora-
tion of the Romanians with the Hitlerites and the extreme cruelties
they had perpetrated against the Jewish population.
It is as an historical that he treats Transnistria in exposing the
crimes and in relating how the area was turned into a cemetery for
hundreds of thousands of deported Jews.
His accumulated record especially indicts the Romanian clletater,,
Ion Antonescu, as one of the cruelest rulers of his time, as "a lunatic,
like Mussolini and Hitler, but without the leadership qualities at the
first and the iron will of the second.
In his expose of the Romanians' barbarities, he wrote; nil
grotesque imitation of their German counterparts they beat and
clubbed their victims, caused them to suffocate in locked cattle
wagons, and starved or worked them to death. But the RomanianS
lands.
added some brutalities of their own: the marching in severest
Dr. Chaim Weizmann and his associates
winter of men who were stripped naked or wrapped in paper; the
toured the United States, pleaded for assist-
mass rape of the daughters and wives of their victims; and as a
ance, were receiving pittances compared with
grim climax, the burning alive of 20,000 Jews in Odessa.
the generous gifts that are being made today.
"Transnistria became the cemetery for more than 200,000
Then came the Nazi onslaught and the
Jews. Their story is little known, even to students of this period of
Keren Hayesod emerged as one of the chief
history."
means of providing help for the oppressed.
While, as Rabbi Fisher wrote, "the entire story will never be
* * *
known, his book's attempt. "to present some of the details-others
The Keren Hayesod anniversary empha- are lost forever," fulfills an obligation to history, to Jewry and to
sizes anew the obligations world Jewry has humanity by exposing one of the worst crimes.
The record compiled by the late Rabbi Fisher is such a serious
to its less fortunate kinsmen. Now it is the
UJA that functions in behalf of Keren Haye- indictment and the revelations about Antonescu's cruelties are so
shocking
one wonders how those related to Romania and to
63.4
sod-United Israel Appeal. The parent fund Romanians that
can have a clear conscience in viewing past history. The
2,383.6
functions as the distributing agency and it work of sadistic
commanders in carrying out the mass murders Is
The matter of primary interest, because remains the chief appeal-creating element to part of the data that is presented in this volume chronologically,
Israel's aspirations are primarily in the cul- retain interest in Jewish ranks in Israel's based on documents the author had access to and public statements
tupral-spiritual spheres, are these figures of needs and in the plight of Jews who must that indicated the extent of the horrors.
Fixing responsibility for the crimes, Rabbi Fisher listed the
institution and the number of pupils in Is- go to Israel.
Therefore the anniversary must be util-
number of murdered in the various cities he enumerated and he
rael's educational network, excluding the aca-
showed that "the Romanians destroyed 68,957 of their own Jewish
ized in support of the UJA when the Detroit
demic institutions:
countrymen." This number matches and In some instances awn
ceeds those killed by the Nazis. Rabbi Fisher stated: "As they
1948/1949
1960/1961
1967/1968
1968/1969
annihilated 70,000 local Soviet Jews, it is clear that the Romanians
Pupils Institutions Pupils Institutions Pupils Institutions Pupils Institutions
Total
exterminated 138,957 Jews in Transnistria alone."
140,817
1,342
599,962
4,228
774,399
5,356
793,883
5,542
Such is the extent of the horror exposed in Rabbi Fisher's book In
which he asserts that "while the total responsibility rests with the
Hebrew education
129,688
1,286
548,147
704,280
5,145
3,932
691,490
4,982
National Socialist government in Germany, the regime of Auto:resell
Kindergartens
25,406
709
74,995
2,797
99,250
2,966
2,015
93,395
Primary schools
must stand as an ignominious accomplice to history's most horrendo4
91,133
4117
384,170
1,250
361,707
1,151
1,247
385,589
Secondary schools
Vocational schools
Agricultural school
Teacher-training
colleges
Arab education
6,411
2,002
--
39
26
--
30,015
11,560
5,598
713
12
56
2,853
51,815
11,129
In the higher schools of learning there
are students in Israel from all parts of the
globe. Many are from Afro-Asian countries
and there are Arabs in all of Israel's schools.
While establishing, through the aid of the
Keren Ha,yesod, vast chains of agricultural
101
59
29
58,114
41,044
7,865
188
216
30
59,033
43,604
8,072
193
224
30
32
296
7,502
82,909
46
374
5,994
89,603
45
397
crime."
obligations-to the chief philanthropies, to Israel's educa-
tional agencies, to the universities and centers of research,
to the libraries and museums, and especially of course to the
new immigrants who come to the land.
We are engaged in a serious effort and it is heartening
community commences, in the current Allied to know that while marking an important anniversary we
Jewish Campaign, to continue its role as a assure continuity for Jewry's dedication to the causes that
partner in Israel's building and protection. relieve want, assume a home for the homeless and protect
Now is the time to link the acclaim we those whose sovereignty is one of the great occurrences In
give to the Keren Hayesod with the local all history.