Purely Commentary
Anti-Semites Who Persecute Fellow Communists Even in Exile
The few thousand Jews who survived both the Nazi Holocaust and
the Communist plague in Poland have chosen, in the main, to go not to
Israel but to Sweden and Denmark. The governments of the two
countries and the Jewish communities there are treating them royally
and have provided means for their sustenance. But the anti-Semites
are pursuing them. Here is an excerpt from a report in the Israel
Hebrew newspaper Yediot Ahronot:
"In Odense, anti-Semitic daubings could be seen on houses
in which Jewish refugees from Poland are living. The daubings
like 'Death to the Jews' and other anti-Semitic threats are in
Polish. According to the Danish police the criminals are non-
Jewish Poles as well as Polish nationalistic refugees."
There is a lesson in this for the former Jewish Communists who
thought there was panacea for them in the extreme political philosophy
that blinded them into believing that the radicalism they embraced
would mean an end to bigotry. But the anti-Semitic poison that has
seeped into the Polish mind, as in the Russian, has not abated. It
is like a legacy from the Middle Ages and it persists. These victims
of the re-emerging anti-Semitism were themselves, by their opposition
to Zionism, the suppliers of comfort to those who have made Zionism
the mirage upon which the hatred of Jews nourishes. Will these suf-
ferers from the anti-Semitic poison ever learn a lesson from the bigots
who were their political bedfellows?
*
*
A Case in Point—in Quest for Fairness
Israel as a Unifying Factor in Jewry ... Regrettable
Misuse of Genocide Term . . . Timely Admonition
to Misconceptions by Some Civil Rights Leaders
By Philip
Slomovitz
Unity That Stems From Kinship ... The indestructibility of the Family Unit
Whatever the threats to the Middle East's equanimity, there is an Israel that is inde-
structible. How could it be otherwise, with the unity that marks Jewry's interest in Israel,
with the spirit of solidarity in support of the defenders of the Jewish state from all quarters?
We would have liked to have a greater concern for Israel and the peace of the Middle East
from Christian ranks, and out of the turmoil we pray that a sense of justice will guide all
peoples, in the best interests of Israelis and Arabs alike. In the meantime, there is a hearten
ing evidence of Jewish unity without which Israel could not subsist as easily.
The demonstration in Israel's behalf in Detroit, the mass parade in New York, the
rallies throughout the land—on the occasion of Yom Atzmaut—are proof that Israel will
not be let down. There is a partnership that is unbreakable—and both members of the
combine know that neither has value without the other.
How glorious the interest that was displayed here! Youth marched, sang and danced,
adults exchanged holiday greetings on the occasion of Israel's 23rd anniversary, thousands
took an interest in Israeli products and bought them with pride to give encouragement to
the sponsors of the Israel Trade Fair!
Out of the devotion to and admiration for Israel there also is a revival of interest it
Zionism, with a realization that without the Zionist idea there might not have been a state
of Israel.
Jewish National Fund adherents have given new status to the land reclamation and
Israel afforestation movement . . . Bnai Brith is completing a memorial forest in Israel . .
A forest in tribute to Russian Jewry is on the agenda . . .
The United Jewish Appeal gets new encouragement from generous communities—
like Detroit's, which has just concluded a highly successful campaign . . .
These successes are ascribable to the fact that we are one family—a unified mishpaha
—a united people for Israel. When the Jewish state was in trouble the able observers
from the outside said Israel's defense forces are succeeding because they act like a family
unit . . . That's why there is confidence in Israel's ability to retain its sovereignty: because
an undivided family cannot be destroyed!
Such is the spirit that marks Israel's 23rd anniversary, that looks to the future with
hopes for peace. It is a spirit that awaits the restoration of kinship with our Arab cousins
with whom neither Jewry nor Israel desires to be at war.
Often, an irrelevant case can be so distorted in its application to
the situation involving Israel and the Jewish people that unless there
is clarification there can be something worse than confusion: then
there is the danger of a mounting prejudice and of accusations that
lead to divisiveness in our communities.
Frequent references to the Angela Davis case is a point related
to this issue.
In countering the protests that have been expressed against Soviet
Russian persecution of Jews we have been taunted: why don't you
act in the Angela Davis case? New Leftists also taunted us with this
challenge. The distinguished spokesman for just rights for his people, War II, when you were trying to michael enjoys when he chooses to rampaging children during a pillow
James Baldwin, equated the Angela Davis case with the inmates of sort out things for yourself. From live in Guinea instead of in Wash- fight. Disgruntled leftist German
Dachau.
your religious upbringing you knew ington; that W. E. B. DuBois en- college students—sons of Nazis, no.
In the current issue of Midstream, its editor, Shlomo Katz, ad- the Jews as people who are cast joyed when he chose to become a doubt — proclaim themselves "the
dresses An Open Letter to James Baldwin which touches upon the
citizen of Ghana. A single word Jews of today" and one of the
issue that on occasion has caused anguish over the injection of irrelevant into furnaces, beginning with Ab- from Miss Davis on behalf of those first planks on their agenda, na-
raham, the first Jew. Yet the
matters into vital issues affecting the Jewish position. We are indebted Jewish Sheldons and Mortimers hapless victims of Soviet tyranny turally, is the destruction of Israel.
to Katz for his frank presentation of the actual facts relating to whom you met in school or on the in Leningrad would have gone far, The Soviet Union, devourer of na-
distorted equations of vital issues and we hope Baldwin and others street didn't seem to resemble the both because she is an ideological tions and peoples, fuels the fires
who, like him, are resorting to such argumentation, will see the jus- type, until you recalled that at that ally of the Soviet Union and be- in the Middle East. The Black
tice of our position as Katz has outlined it. The Open Letter to very moment hundreds of thou- cause she is in the limelight, the Panthers call for the murder of
James Baldwin follows:
sands of Sheldons and Mortimers Soviet press has leaped to her Moshe Dayan.
In this welter of confusion,
any unfairness in her trial and to were being literally thrown into defense, and Soviet authorities
Dear Mr. Baldwin:
verging
on madness, sanity is
would
not
and
could
not
lightly
furnaces
a
mere
couple
of
thousand
In the New York Review of Books report it to the world.
Surely, I thought, since you drew miles away. You then grasped the ignore a plea for freedom and called for, and one of its first
(Jan. 7, 1971) there was published
an Open Letter by you addressed a parallel between the two, you uniqueness of Jewish fate. And justice, or mercy, from Miss Davis. prerequisites is a clear defintion
of that which is, who is who and
to "My-Sister, Miss Angela Davis." would also mention what were the your cry "Nobody Knows My But mum was her word.
No, Mr. Baldwin, It is not a mat- what is what.
In it you state: "You look exceed- charges against "the Jewish house- Name" should certainly have
ingly alone, say, as the Jewish wife . . ." When was she tried? alerted you against comparing the ter of picking on some unfortunate
In writing this letter to you, Mr.
housewife in the boxcar headed for Where? Who were her lawyers? "aloneness" of Miss Davis with phrase in your open letter to Miss Baldwin, there is no doubt also an
Dachau . . ." Who rushed to her defense? Did that of the "Jewish housewife . . . Davis. Much more is at stake. For element of self-interest. Genocide.
or headed for Dachau" whose name some time now we have been wit- It is a fact now. It has happened,
It was this statement at the very Hitler perhaps
invite England,
or Patagonia
to send ob- you no longer remember, whose nessing such a consistent debase- in the literal sense and not in the
beginning of your letter that made Sweden,
servers to her trial? For that mat name
name nobody remembers any ment and confusion of the meaning rhetorical misuse of it by fly-by-
jump, and I have reason to
what wa s the " Jewish house longer,
longer, except, of course, her own of the most important facts and night self-styled revolutionists. .
that many others have re- ter,
wife's" name?
brothers—those who survived, that events of our time that all guide- That which has happened once__
acted likewise.
The question of the "Jewish is.
posts, and meaning itself, have be- can happen again, is almost cer-
Because, you see Mr. Baldwin, housewife's" name—it is very im-
A word about Miss Angela Davis. come perverted. A devilish mock- tain to happen again. Jews know
we Jews have a thing about "the p ortant, Mr. Baldwin. It is not
ery has been transforming tragedy this in the marrow of their banes.
Jewish housewife . . . headed formerely because it was an uncon- Were she truly "alone," I would itself into an obscene joke. How That is why we are so sensitive
Dachau." To us her experience scionable lapse on your part not feel duty bound to rush to defend else explain the fact that genocide, to any debasement of the term and
less than 30 years ago is both even to mention her name that I her right to a fair trial, a right the most terrible word in the lexi- its implications. For sometimes,
freshly remembered reality as well stress this point. Nor do I ask this that everybody is entitled to. But con of the 20th Century, has itself when at night I speculate on geno-
as dread portent for the future. question for purposes of informa- considering the legions of defend- been made a mockery? Poverty is cide, how it is likely to recur, I
The facile manner in which you tion. I, and most other Jews, know ers, supporters, admirers and wor- proclaimed to be genocide; the ask myself: To whom is it likely
equated her fate with that of Miss the name of this "Jewish house- shipers who stand about her, in availability of contraceptive pills to happen next time? And the walls
Angela Davis arouses within many wife . . . headed for Dachau" even this country and abroad, I feel in neighborhoods where mothers silently echo: To whom? To whom
of us the same kind of reaction if you do not know it, or have for- that my presence would be super- have 10 and more children whom did it happen last time?
that is no doubt aroused in you gotten it, or consider it of such fluous. Should I perhaps print a they cannot support is declared to
You, Mr. Baldwin, have, I hope
when you read that some disgrun- little importance that you did not sticker saying "A Fair Trial for be genocide. Legal abortion is de-
tied white high school kids who are even trouble to record it. (After Angela Davis" and paste it over fined as genocide. Faulty admin- inadvertently, helped to befuddle
bored with solid geometry or Ham- all she was not really "alone.,, one demanding her release with- istration of justice is immediately this crucial issue. You try to take
the thorny crown of martyrdom
let's Soliloquy proclaim themselves Her boxcar and thousands of oth- out trial?
About the merit of the charges defined as no less than Nazism, from "the JeOish housewife in the
slaves of the system on a par with ers were jammed with her kind.)
thus making a joke both of Nazi
black slaves on the cotton planta- Let me then inform or remind you. brought against her I know noth- crimes as well as of their victims. boxcar headed for Dachau" and
tions of Mississippi two centuries Her name was Sarah. For surely ing. But, I must confess, that I A bright young Jewish author attempt to place it on the head of
ago.
you must have heard or read some- am only mild about Miss Davis the came out with a theory that we Angela Davis.
But this crown' of martyrdom.
_Miss Davis as "alone as the Jew- where that in Nazi Germany all Public personage. She is a political are "White Negroes." Everybody
ish housewife in a boxcar headed Jewish women had to adopt the figure and she has sharply defined tries to jump on each other's band- can only be earned in one way—
for Dachau?" Come now, Mr. Bal- name Sarah in addition to their convictions. According to press re- wagon without regard to fact, to the way of the chimneys of Dachau.
On Miss Angela Davis it doesn't
dwin. On my way to pick up the given names, just as all Jewish ports she defines herself as a meaning, to consequences, like
fit.
copy of the NY Review of Books men had to adopt the name Israel. Communist. That's OK with me.
I was struck by the fact that nearly So it boils down to this—that you I believe in freedom for everyone
There is an equating of events that have taken place in this
every mail box and lamppost as compared the "aloneness" of your to define himself politically as he
likes, and I am not so enamored country—in the civil rights movement, in the Lt. William Calley and
o
well as much of the wall space on "Sister, Miss Angela Davis," t
buildings were plastered with stick- that of my sister Sarah on her way with the existing social system as other cases—with the horrors that marked the Nazi Holocaust. If
accepted this would denigrate the slaughter of millions and would
ers demanding "Free Angela Da- to Dachau, but you forgot my sis_ to uphold it against all critics.
But
it
so
happened
that
at
the
result
in an immoral distortion of history.
vis." Not simply "A Fair Trial for ter's name, or. simply didn't think
Causes of great concern to us must not be minimized. There is a
time when Angela Davis was
Angela Davis" but "Free Angela it important enough to deserve very
being arraigned and arrested, duty to lend all possible support to the civil rights movement and to
Davis." And the papers. in preced- mention.
Why
am
I
making
such
a
to-do
another
trial was being held in assist in repairing the damage that was done to millions of our fellow
ing days were full of news about
her — news about her lawyers, over her name? For that matter, Leningrad, foremost city in the citizens. But there needs to be a basis for judgments and that can
USSR, where Miss Davis' ideo- not be accomplished by relegating the tragedy of European Jewry to
about protest meetings on her be- Why am I writing to you?
I am writing to you because— logical colleagues are in power. a state of insignificance. Under no circumstances must the impression
half throughout the country, about
organizations formed for her de- because you are James Baldwin, Eleven persons were brought to be permitted that Jews are silent in the battle for decency in America.
fense, and, finally, an invitation the author of "The Fire Next trial for the crime of wanting to We are part of the struggle for justice. But the horror that stemmed
routine in human
from President Nixon to the Soviets Time" and also of a volume en- leave the Soviet Union and go to from Nazism must not be treated as if it were
to send a dozen or so Soviet per- titled "Nobody Knows My Name." Israel. The trial was secret, the experience. It was a chapter that demands remembering so that its
sonages from the intellectual elite I recall the emotion with which I verdict murderous. Yet all those like should not be repeated. And in remembering we retain the obliga-
of the USSR to be present at Miss read your memoirs of your boy- people asked was the same right tion to build security for the survivors from the Holocaust and their
Davis' trial , to observe if there be hood during the year.; of World that you, Mr. Baldwin, enjoy when descendants to be masters of their own destiny and adherents of the
you are free to go and live in Con- task that assures security for Jewry:, sovereignty for Israel and self-
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