4041. 4Nrgarar
Purely- commentary
Expose of Communist Anti-Semitic
Trends ... Appeal fbr Knowledgeability
to New Left to Reject Holocausts
This page is primarily devoted to consideration of two
aspects in the historical developments in this century—
the Holocaust and the sociological and political extremisms
which have divided people and which continue to create
discord.
Because of the seriousness of both factors which are
indelibly recorded in the minds and hearts of an older
generation, they serve as admonitions for the younger
elements in our midst.
The Holocaust warns us not to forget, lest it recur.
It keeps reminding us of the barbarities that dominated
in a section of the world over a decade; threatening its
spread throughout the world.
Because it is such a horrifying chapter in our history,
it needs the emphases by those who had gone through
the hell that preceded their survival.
That is why Ka-tzetnik 135633 is so vital to us and why
his newest outcry against injustice, "Star Eternal," to
which a portion of this page is devoted, is so significant
in the consideration of the savageries that transformed
people with a lust for power into beasts.
Perhaps it is this lust for power that also affects a great
nation—the Soviet Union—and causes its rulers to be so
cruel in dealing with the Jewish citizens, many of whom
have resided in that land much longer than some of the
elements who now rule over them heartlessly.
Russian Jews played a great role in overthrowing
Czarism, in establishing the Socialist regime. Some-Jews
were leaders in Communist ranks.. Many 'assimilated- thorz
oughly and abandoned Jewiih loyaltitaln the fashion that
was practiced by- Leon Trotsky, in the form that was
advocated by Nikolai Lenin. Those who became totally
linked within the Communist orbit were never Zionists
and as Communists they became anti-Zionists. But now
they are paying a price they never dreamed of under a
vast dictatorship: they who differ with Communist dic-
tators or those who are rejected by these dictators are
called Zionists and the new campaign of bigotry, even in
lands where Jews are practically nonexistent and where
Jewish life has been obliterated—Poland and Czechoslo-
vakia are major examples—the scapegoats are called
Zionists and the drive against Jewry is the anti-Zionist
drive.
To elaborate upon this factor in the issues under con-
sideration we turn to another valuable documentary, an
important volume published by Doubleday, written by an
authoritative Hungarian-born Austrian political writer,
Paul Lendvai. Under the title "Anti-Semitism Without
Jews—Communist Eastern Europe," Lendvai exposes the
terror that exists in the guise of anti-Zionism in Eastern
Europe. In the course of his political and social analyses
he also reveals how the Russian anti-Semitic machine
functions, how the scapegoat is being dramatized as the
Jcw, the Zionist even in the areas where Zionism had no
support and where Jews are vanishing, as a result of the
Communist persecutions. Lendvai incidentally shows how
the New Left has failed, how those who have submitted
themselves entirely to Communist influences have been
betrayed by their own fellow Communists in the traditional
fashion in which those who placed hopes in utopian inter-
nationalism found disillusionment in betrayals from ultra
-".
•
Psychological Lessons for the Distressed of All Ages_
... Warnings to the Misled in New Left ... Data
About the Nazis Era Not to Be Ignored by our Youth
radical elements, and notably from Jewish antagonists
who stood in the way of Jewish libertarian tasks.
L••
Paul Lendvai, an historian who is now a London Finan-
cial Times correspondent, in "Anti-Semitism Without
Jews," which is fully documented to show the treachery
to justice from Communists to the Jewish fellow-citizens
in Poland and in Czechoslovakia, makes the charge:
"For all the differences in vocabulary; when Soviet
propagandists refer to the 'Zionists' they are speging to
the population in a familiar language. The Zionist is the
old, mythical Jew, the faceless enemy, the cunning foe.
As a Czech novelist aptly put it at the time of the 'anti-
Zionist' campaign in the wake of the invasion of Czecho-
slovakia: 'Jews can be set apart and defined more easily
than, for instance, the Intellectuals, the opposition, or the
deviationists. Neither a janitor nor a mailman can be
100 per cent certain that an attack on the intellectuals is
not also aimed at him in a way; the term "opposition" or
"those extremist forces" Is even more oblique and flexible;
but every Aryan knows quite definitely that he is not a
Zionist.'
"In other words, 50 years after the October Revolution
and more than two decades after the Communist takeover
in Eastern Europe, when the spokesmen of the ruling
regimes use the euphemism 'Zionists' for the Jewish citi-
zens of socialist countries they are merely giving a new
'theoretical' justification for the old stereotype, 'the Jews,'
the agents of a closed conspiracy for world control. We are,
therefore dealing here not with anti-Judaic, anti-Israeli,,
even anti-Zionist strictures in conventional terms, but with
modern political atiti-Semitism of the Communist variety.
"It is no longer 'an orthodox believer or a shady specu-
lator with a Jewish.sounding name who is involved, or
even Judaism as .a 'reactionary political force' or Israel
as 'an aggressive outpost of imperialism.' The Jews now
appear—in- the guise of 'Monists'--as the carriers of both
financial conspiracy and imperialist encirclement as the
incarnation of the foreign enemy, made more powerful by
their international connections: in short as a world danger.
"In accordance with both the classic use of the scape-
goat and the constant suspicion that distinguishes the
totalitarian system, the corporate Jew is a symbol of
external danger.
"The references to the Joint (JDC), Western Intelligence
agencies, and political penetration into the 'socialist'
countries, coupled with the heavy hints about 'citizens of
Jewish origin' evoke the memory of Stalin's last years—
the 'Doctors' Plot' and the Slansky trial in Prague . . .
The 'murderers in white aprons,' nine professors of medi-
cine (six of them Jews), were publicly accused on Jan.
13, 1953, of having poisoned some of their patients among
the rulers of the Kremlin and of planning farther attempts
on the lives of several Soviet marshals and generals, acting
on behalf of the British and American security services
and the 'international Jewish bourgeois nationalist orga-
nization,' the Joint, which had given them orders to 'wipe
out the leading cadres of the Soviet Union.'
"ft is important to remember that, as always, the openly
anti-Jewish campaign was not an end in itself, but only a
means to an end, to a last great purge 'finishing off,'
among others, the old members of the Political Bureau
of the Communist Party. Equally significant, anti-Semitism
had become the single most important catalytic agent for
all the strains in the system. As Isaac Deutscher, a by no
Bk. : 111114- :
-
Slomovitz- -•
means unsympathetic observer of Soviet affairs put it:
'If the intrigue had been allowed to run. its course, if the
trial of the doctors had been held, It could have only one
sequel—a nationwide pogrom.' "
There are these explanatory comments in Lendvai's
study of Communist techniques for the continued anti-
Jewish campaigns in Communist countries, undoubtedly
under the inspiration of the Kremlin:
"The question is not whether Stalin or Klumsfichev or
Brezhnev disliked Jews more or less, but whether they
allowed the violation of one of the hallowed tenets of Marx-
ist socialism which recognizes neither Jew, Moslem, nor
Christian buronly classes and class interest. While anti-
Semitism in the Soviet Union as everYwhere else has many
and varied sources, the crucial point is that the operative
logic of the Soviet system, doctrinal considerations, and,
last but not least, coldly calculated 'reasons of 'date' have
led and still lead Soviet rulers to consider the Jews a
security-risk group. , . .
"By its very nature, a totalitarian system cannot tole-
rate any form of ethnic, religious, or commnaldwiditiaritY,
any diversity of culture, any plurality of views fir political
currents. It must also create artificial outlets' within the
state for the dissatisfaction that inevitably. develops. The
Jews, a unique minority with international traditions; a .
worldwide religion and emotional or cultural ties to their
'co-religionists' beyond the borders (mainly in 'hostile'
countries) are a natural target.
"But the troubled history of the Jews under Communism
,shows that the Jewish Question has never existed in a void;
it must be viewed in the wider context of general policies.
If it is true that the fate of Jewry has always been em-
bedded in the structure of Soviet lodety; then the- re- .
kindling of latent anti-Semitism: is a concomitant of the
rise of social tensions in a conservative society,which for
a variety of reasons (loss of inner ,dYnaMillak ■ iionsiset -of
major unsolved problems; a political vacuum- sit ,the step,
the threat of China, and the growing • strains .111 Eastern
Europe) in periods of insecurity whips als party ilMelpline
and heroic traditions, nationalism -and xenophobia, racial-
ism and the hatred and fear of the alien."
"It is not in spite but because of the nature of Soviet
Communism that the technique of scapegoats, in this case
anti-Semitism, is applied as a calculated device to release
the tensions, conflicts and struggles within the sYstem."
To indicate how the bias against Jews is carried on,
Lendvai presents figures regarding the Jewish populations
in various Communist countries. While these may not be
totally accurate they certainly approach the nearly correct
data regarding Jews in the lands enumerated as follows:
JEWISH POPULATION STATISTICS
1968
Prewar (in % of pop.) 1945
5,000
49,000
48,000 (0.8%)
Bulgaria
12,000
51,000
360,000 (2.5%)
Czechoslovakia
100,000
140,000
444,000 (5.1%)
Hungary
25,000
50,000
3,350,000 (9.7%)
Poland
100,000
428,000
757,000 (4.2%)
Romania
•
6,000
.
13,011
68,000
10.5%)
Yugoslavia
248,000
731;000
5,027,000
Total
"Prewar figures refer to prewar borders and postwar
statistics to postwar borders. Official censuses of 1930 for
Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, of 1931 for Yugo- -
slavia, of 1934 for Bulgaria and 1939 calculations based
on the 1931 census for Poland. The 1945 figure for Poland
(Continued on Page 44)
Ka-tzetnik Reminds Us Again of the Terror That Robbed People of Their Human
Dignity . . . Woe Unto Those Who Forget the Indignities of the Nazi Barbarities
His name is Yehiet De-Nur and he lives
in Tel Aviv with his wife Nina De-Nur. He
is the idealist who has been laboring in this
country and in Israel for the creation of
amity between Jews and Arabs.
He is better known as Ka-tzetnik 135633.
Ka-Tut is how the Germans pronounce
the letters K. Z. which stand for Kon-
zentration Zenter—Concentration Camp.
Every inmate of a K. Z. was a Ka-tzetnik
and be bad a number—the one that was
branded into his left arm by the Nazis.
Ka-tzetnik 135633 Wrote "House of
Dolls," a story of terror, of innocent
Jewish girls placed in brothels for Nazi
officers. He also authored "Atrocity" and
"Phoenix Over the Galilee."
Now he provides us with a -work so
stirring, so heart-rending, that, upon those
who read it, it will leave indelible
memories never to forget the Nazi crimes.
"Star Eternal," which first appeared
in Hebrew has now been issued by
Arbor House in New York, in a translation
by his wife. World Publishers are distribut-
ing the book for Arbor House.
De-Nur reconstructs the Ka-Tzet story
in all its aspects. We meet the victim
and the would-be victor, the sufferer
and the tyrant, the man who would resist
and the rabbi who believed that relief
would emerge from the wrestling by
Jacob with the angel.
It all begins "where your cradle stood,"
on Park Street in the Polish commu-
nity, and when the survivor returns to
Park Street, after the horrors, the Auschwitz-
agonies, "there's no longer anything here
for hirn." • -
The mass graves, dug by the people
themselves who are-about to be murdered,
2—Friday, February 12, 1971
leather straps on top. The gold imprint
My sister, now they want to give me
the earth opening up on orders from
on the steep arch glitters in the face
money for you. But I don't know how
Germans toying with our fear .. ."
many German marks -your curls should
of the sun.
The Aktlon against children, against
Nearby—
bring.
parentless and other children, is among
"Whose hair is it, little goldilocks?"
the cruelties, among the distress-reported
A lime-spattered workman's shoe.
"My mother's .. "
recollections of "Operation Children" rec-
The sun peers into it as into the mouth
"Mother, Mother, what do you say—
orded here.
of a cavern hacked into barren moun-
how much is your little goldilock's hair
Then there is the road to Auschwitz.
tain rock.
to the crematoria, "the bearing of the
worth?"
Nearby—
There also were the shoes—his father's
last flicker of your life to Death's hinter.
A mountaineer's shoe, its toe wedged
land. And the "midnight silence of and others' who had been robbed, mur-
in the side of the mountain, as if the
Auschwitz ... No one here dares breathe dered, humiliated! Ka-Tzetnik weeps today:
climber had paused in mid-ascent,
Among tens of thousands of shoes I'd
a word. Words are no more. Sparks slim
breathless: "Oh, what a view! . - ."
out of the smokestack . . . Naked feet.
recognize a shoe of yours, father!
Nearby—
You can't bear their steps . .. Nothing
Your heels were never crooked.
A leg with a shoe on its foot—
is yours anymore. Even your head's hair
Father, your step was always straight.
prothesis to the groin. Tronseriess, naked
has been taken away from you .
Each day a new mountain of shoes
to the sun.
It is about the hair that Ka-Tzetnik De-
piles up on the compound of the crema-
We weep with De-Nur when he cries
Nur makes the most serious accusation
torium. Remember when I was little? The
out
for the world to remember, recalling
exposing the inhumanity of man to man:
first time you let me shine your shoes,
"Before my sister was burned in the
I polished them tops and bottoms. - Oh, that his sister was among the "Dolls" in
the
Hitler
carnage, admonishing all of us
crematorium of Auschwitz, they shaved
how you laughed at me then:
off her hair. Seventeen year the golden
"There is, sonny, a dirty side as well, as he writes in the final chapter about
Wledergutmachung:
Reparations:
locks lengthened on my sister's head .
on which a man must tread. When you're
"How can I take money for my sister
Long locks of gold. Seventeen years. In
big you'll understand."
the "Field _Whore" from you—and not
a shipment of hair, in sacks, or in
Father, I'm big now.
be a pimp?
rectangular bales, tight-pressed like
The sun bends over the slope of the
Give me—
cotton from rich plantations, my sister's
tall shoe-mountain, illuminating it for
hair was sent to Germany. It w as
Give me back one single hair of my
me as with a flashlight:
sister's golden curls !
unloaded at a factory to make: blankets
Shoes!
—soft club-chairs--upholstery
Give me back one shoe of my father's;
Shoes without end !
A broken wheel from my little broth-
The indictment persists. The Ka-Tzutnik
A torn baby-shoe--like ad- infant's
addresses himself to the.Germans of today:
open mouth, eager for the full spoon in
er's skates;
And --a mote of dust that on my
Somewhere, in Germany, a young
mother's hand; a torn baby-shoe—aa
fraulehi now covers herself with a
mother rested-
infant's head, eyes -bugging from the
blanket. A single hair of gold, unpro-
shoe-mountain to .the - sun shining on
.-Bow can one forget? Why should one
cessed, thrusts out of the blanket's
•earth.
forget
. ? How can the great crime be
-
weave. The Fraulein stretches out a
Nearby—
ignored in this hour of Israel's struggle
bare arm, pulls, pulls-
A narrow, delicate woman's - -shoe. to .sitrvive, when Ka-Tzetnik strived as he
- • "Fraulein ! Give me back that hair:
high and slender heeled, brovnaialed. did to tell: his tale of woe? Woe unto those
It's out of my sister's golden locks—"
Open on all sides. Several Ada- tined Who forget ! '
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS