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Purely Commentary

By Philip

Slomovitz

Elazar Family on Aliya

Albert Elazar and his family have left their mark on our com-
munity. The retiring supereintendant of our Hebrew schools has in-
troduced many new policies in the course of his services here. He was
under great challenge as successor to Bernard Isaacs, one of the
nation's most distinguished Hebrew scholars. Administratively, in his
aim to unify the school system, by publishing several texts as aids to
teachers and students, Mr. Elazar performed a valuable function.
Himself a native of Jerusalem, Mr. Elazar inspired his entire
family Zionistically. Mrs. Elazar was active in women's Zionist ranks.
Their sons assisted immensely in building up the school library. The
elder son, Daniel, is a distinguished professor. The younger, David,
became sort of an expert in detecting Arab and anti-Semitic propa-
ganda. The latter and his family already have gone on aliya. Prof.
Daniel Elazar divides his time between teaching at Temple Univer-
sity in Philadelphia and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Now the
elders have gone on aliya.
Indeed, all of the Elazars are on aliya, and as they pursue con-
tinuations of their labors in Israel the community's blessings go with
them with wishes for their uninterrupted successes.

No Obstacles to a Free Press
Already overtaxed with problems too numerous to be listed, our
generation also enjoy its blessings. Not least among them is the reten-
tion of freedom to speak out on all issues and to be free to explore
historic facts and to report them fearlessly and without interference.
The revelations in the New York Times and the Washington Post
and the court cases that ensued should encourage all who aspire to
free expression of their views in their beliefs and hopes that only
when truth is unfettered and is available to mankind will humanity
be free in the fullest sense of liberty's prerogatives.
It is not a matter of a court case. National security is vital, yet
the extent of its hidden aspects and the secrecy of operations are
at best temporary. The basis for human existence is the right of people
to know how the rulers wish to dominate over the governed. If it leads
to tyranny, there is the right to rebel. If it is slightly faulty, the people
affected must have the opportunity to guide and and to correct. In
principle, the ideal of freedom has been defined a millionfold.
In one of his dissenting opinions, back in 1928, Supreme Court
Justice Louis D. Brandeis said:
"Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect
liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent."
If the present administration's Justice Department sought to be
beneficent by seeking obstructions to the press, it only inspired the
adherents to a free press to be even more seriously on guard.
Interestingly, more than 150 years ago, Ludwig Boerne wrote:
"The difference between liberty and liberties is as great as
between God and gods."
He was the same Boerne who, in his "Der •Ewige Jude," written
in 1821, said: "To want to be free is to be free."
That's what the press wants and that's what the readers—the
people—need. That's why it is a blessing for this generation of many
despairs to have the signal that freedom is not lost as long as the press
desires to be free.

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*

Warning From Russia: Secret Trials

There should be a lesson to us from Russia. Trial after trial is
being held in secret. Leningrad, Riga, now Kishinev: where next?
Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry has issued a new appeal—to
. help save nine Jews who are go-
ing on trial in Kishinev. Among
them is David Chernoglas, pic-
tured on the left. The other eight
in the Kishinev 9 are Alexander
Galperin, Harry Kirsiner, Arkady
Voloshin, David Rabinovich, Ab-
raham Trachtenberg, S e m i o n
Levit, Hilel Shur and Anatoly
Goldfeld.
What's their crime? They want
to be Jews, as listed in their
passports! What else: they wish
to settle in Israel. They'd like
to know their history, study and
speak Hebrew, be themselves!
Russia doesn't like it. Many trials are being conducted—the
secret tribunals that spell medievalism.
When we speak of liberty, let us learn the lesson that is provided
for us by the secret Russian trials. Perhaps as much out of Riga,
Leningrad and Kishinev as from the portals of the New York Times
and the Washington Post will emerge the lesson of liberty to our people
in this country, as a guide also to our courts.

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A Jew in Communist Prisons

By BORIS SMOLAR

(Copyright 1971, JTA Inc.)

Magadan is the "capital" of a
cluster of prison camps in the far
section of Siberia where hundreds
of thousands—if not millions—of
people perished under inhuman
brutalities of the Stalinist regime.
These were people arrested
mostly for "political crimes" or
no crimes at all, like the hundreds
of Soviet Jewish writers and intel-
lectuals "liquidated" after World
War II on Stalin's orders. There
were among them thousands of
scholars, physicians, journalists as
well as workers and ordinary peo-
ple against whom charges were
trumped up as an excuse to send
them to the dreadful camps in the
Taiga to do slave labor on mining
gold, platinum, and other precious
metals, and to build roads in the
wilderness of the frozen wasteland.
One of the prisoners was Michael
Solomon.
Solomon, now the Jewish Tele-
graphic Agency correspondent in
Montreal—and who was born in
Romania—was detained for eight
years in a Magadan prison camp
and nine years in jails in Commu-
nist Romania on political charges
which were never proven. He sur-
vived to write a book about his
horrible experiences. The book has
just been published under the title
"Magadan" by Auerbach Publish-
ers, Inc., Princeton, N.J.
His is a tale of life in Soviet
slave labor prisons never told so
vividly before except on a smaller
scale by the famous Soviet writer
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who also
was held in a Soviet prison camp
under Stalin. Solomon tells us not
merely a story of man's inhuman-
ity to man. His book depicts the
dehumanization of people through
unimaginable barbaric methods.
At one time the author at-
tempted to hang himself in his
cell in a Romanian jail. He was
saved by a cellmate when he was
already hanging. Death was pre-
ferable to him also in the Siber-
ian camp. But the Russians, an-
ticipating that many of the inmates
would attempt to take their lives,
introduced precautions against the
possibility of committing suicide.
Nothing was left there to chance.
Solomon left Romania in 1939
when it became clear that the
Nazis, following their occupation of
Poland, would also become the

"bosses" of Romania.
In Palestine, he joined the "Free
Romania Movement" and enlisted
in the ranks of the British armed
services. He served in North
Africa and the Middle East, but
decided to return to the "liberat-
ed Romania" after the war. This
was the greatest mistake of his
life. He was arrested shortly after
his return to Bucharest and
charged with being an enemy of
the Soviet Union.
After frightful torture in the
Bucharest jail he was handed over
by the Romanian political police
to the Russian secret service in
Romania, which sent him away to
Siberia. After serving eight years
in Magadan, he was returned by
the Soviet authorities to Roinania
and was arrested again by the
Romanians immediately upon
reaching the Romanian frontier.
He was tortured for an additional
nine years in Romanian dungeons.
He survived to tell the "true
story" of Magadan..
Some Americans read about
Maagdan in a book by former
Vice President Henry A. Wallace
entitled "Soviet Asia Mission."
But what a difference between
what Wallace—who was an apolog-
ist for Russia—had to report, and
the picture which Solomon, the vic-
tim of Magadan, gives, Wallace
was in Magadan in 1944, arriving
there by air. All he had to tell in
his book was the story of the gold-
mining operations in the region
without even a hint of the price of
human lives and sufferings that the
development of the region in-
volved. He was enthusiastic about
the industrial achievement in the
Magadan area, but he did not men-
tion the fact that this achievement
was reached by the most murder-
ous institutions of our inhuman
world. He did not even mention
the slave labor camps and their
inmates. He posed for a photo-
graph with Ivan Nikishov, chief
of the Soviet political police and
actual dictator of the Far Eastern
slave empire, but he spoke of him
only as an "industrial boss."
Solomon's "Magadan" tells quite
a different story. His book should
be read by Americans just to keep
the record straight. Solomon's
volume, a personal tale of horror
in the Soviet prison camps, also is
a monument for the millions of
people who perished there under
most brutal circumstances.

Prcifft Jaffe Heads
U. S.
• Drug Agency

Dr. Jerome Jaffe of the Uni-
versity of Chicago faculty has
been named by President Nixon
to head the new national drug
agency. He has been a White
House consultant on drug prob-
lems during the past year.

Tel Aviv, Hebrew U.
Vie for Top Billing

TEL AVIV (ZINS) — When
Haim Lebanon, former Tel Aviv
mayor, decided to create Tel Aviv
University, many Israeli intellec-
tuals were openly scornful of what
they considered a rash ambition.
By 1965, however, the Univer-
sity of Tel Aviv had an enrollment
of 3,000, and in the following year
the student body doubled.
At that point the Hebrew Uni-
versity attempted to persuade
the Academic. Advisory Coun-
cil that Tel Aviv should not be
accorded recognition as a full-
fledged university since the stu-
dents could not obtain their full
quota of academic requirements.
However, university rector Dr.
George Weiss, an American schol-
ar, did not take it lying down. The
government's ministry of educa-
tion intervened, and Tel Aviv Uni-
versity received full accreditation.
At present, there are 12,000
students enrolled there, and the
number is expected to rise to
15,000 within a year or two.
A new medical school has been
established at Tel Aviv, and more
recently a bitter rivalry has de-
veloped between the two insti-
tutions as Tel Aviv began to
"pirate" leading scholars and pro-
fessors from the Hebrew Univer-
sity.

Hoffberger Heads Smolar Awards Committee

Jerold C. Hoffberger, prominent
Baltimore communal and business
leader, chairman of the executive
committee of the Jewish Tele-
graphic Agency, has been named
chairman of the Smolar Award
Committee for Excellence in
American-Jewish Journalism, it
was announced by Max M. Fisher,
president of the Council of 'Jewish
Federations and Welfare Funds.
Named to membership of the
newly-formed prize committee are
14 representatives of the Jewish
and general press, arts and let-
Another Protestant Defense of Israel
ters, public relations, community
There is no end to the calumnies hurled at Israel, especially in leadership and the CJF board.
relation to Jerusalem. But there also are frequent demonstrations of
The award, established last
fair play from religious quarters. There was a conference in Jerusalem
last 'week of 1,500 Protestant Evangelicals from 22 countries and they month in honor of noted journalist
asserted themselves in a declaration commending Israel "for the and author Boris Smolar, editor-
scrupulous care with which it has protected Christian holy places and in-chief emeritus of the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency, will recog-
people."
nize
outstanding writing and re-
These churchmen called for the preservation "at all costs" of
portage dealing particularly with
Jerusalem's present status as a united city.
American Jews and American
Proposals to internationalize Jerusalem were criticized by six Jewish communal developments.
JEROLD C. HOFFBERGER
American clergymen representing major Evangelical bodies. They
The award is to be presented at Smolar Award Committee through
characterized internationalization as "an idea which never worked in
the past" and warned that it "would not .be a viable solution." They the CJF's annual general assem- its first stages of establishing
were awake to the fact that the present status spells freedom as corn- blies.
specific procedures and eligibility
pared with the Jordanian oppression over a period of 19 years, and
Hoffberger, whose many busi- standards for the awards.
they stated: "We are struck by the fact that since the Six-Day War ness and community interests in-
The 14 committee members are:
all people are free to worship in the place of their choice, unlike the elude serving as member of the Max Fisher, ex-officio; Lavy M.
board of Baltimore's Associated Becker, Montreal, a former De-
situation that pertained during the prior 1948-67."
These are historically factual situations never to be forgotten, and Jewish Charities and Welfare troiter, past president of Mon-
it is to be hoped that the seekers of fair play toward Israel will con- Fund, and a director and trustee treal's Allied Jewish Community
tinue to increase in numbers, especially among clergymen.
of numerous Baltimore hospitals, Services and of the Canadian
universities, and civic organiza- Jewish Congress; Mrs. Louis A.
2—Friday, June 25, 1971
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS tions, initially will help guide the Bernhard, Milwaukee, an active

member of the CJF Large City
Budgeting Conference; Saul Vie-
ner, Richmond, board member of
the National Foundation for Jew-
ish. Culture; Robert T. Arnow,
New York, president of JTA and
of American Association for. Jew:.
ish Education; Jimmy Wisch, Ft.
Worth, president,' American Jew-
ish Press Association; Irving
Isaacs, Pittsburgh, president, Jew-
ish Chronicle of Pittsburgh, board
member of JTA; Elie Abel, New
York, dean, Columbia School of
Journalism, former foreign cor-
respondent for the New York
Times; David Starr, New York.
editor, Long Island Press, board
member of JTA; Elie Wiesel, New
York, journaliSt, noted author;
Elmer Louis, executive director,
Rochester United Jewish Welfare
Fund and Rochester Jewish Com-
munity Council; Isidore Sobeloff,
Los Angeles, past executive direc-
tor, Detroit Jewish Welfare Fed-
eration and Los Angeles Jewish
Federation-Council and a former
newspaperman; Dr. John Slawson,
New York, vice president emeri-.
tus, American Jewish Committee;'
Alfred Fleishman, St. Louis, pub-
lic relations consultant and past
president, St. Louis Jewish Fed-
eration.
The committee will convene in
early July to fix standards for the
awards as well as establish nom-
inating and eligibility procedures.

