Purely Commentary
U.S. Aide Says World Opinion Force;
Communist Govts. to OK Emigration;
Refugees to Be Aided Here or in Israel
By Philip
Slomovitz
Vatican Role During Nazi Era of Terror . . Appeal
Fell on Deaf Ears ... Courage, Martyrdom of Kurt Gerstein
Carlo Falcon'. in The Silence of Pius XII. -
(Little Brown), deals with the Pope's failure to act
against the Nazi atrocities. It also describes him as
practically doing penance after the war for his in-
action
Appeals made in behalf of Jews during that era
by Israel's Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog are taken
into account in describing the tragic era.
The author reviews the many appeals to the
Pone to intervene in efforts to stop the atrocities.
But as late as 1955. the Vatican official organ,
commenting on the posthumous Einstein Testa-
ment, attacked it as materialistic and, as Falconi
writes. "the editorial rather irritably ends up on
the side of the prevailing materialism of contempo-
rary man. Pius XII spoke as a Father, he spoke
of maalcind. Einstein spoke as a member of the
"human race - . he spoke of a "biological species"
like the director of a zoo or a wild game pre-
serve . ' "
1 he numerous appeals that were directed to
Pius XII and the evidence of failures to act are of
immense interest Vet, it emerges as a surprise
that P.os XI also was inactive, and guilt by Pius
XI is described by Falconi as follows.
"Pius XI said nothing on April 7, 1933 when
the first two anti-Semitic laws were passed in
Germany excluding non-Aryans from nubile of-
fire and the bar (the Concordat with Hitler was
then helm! prepared—in record time). He said
nothing after the promulgation of the Nuremburg
race laws on September 15, 1935 which, among
other things, prohibited sexual relations between
Germans and Jews 'so as to protect German blood
and honour'—though this touched the question of
marriages' (incidentally. between July 1,
1933 end September 15, 1935. fifty thousand
Jews had had to leave Germany and many had
committed suicide). He even said nothing after
the '.'inschluss' in 1938 when anti-Semitic 'ilea.
sore, were redoubled and it was made obligatory.
for example, to declare all Jewish property so
that it could be expropriated, and the letter 'J'
(Jude—Jew ) was put on passports and identity
cards. Nor did he Sc:' anything after the night of
November 9•10 when revenge was wreaked on
German Jews for the murder of Ernst von Rath.
counsellor at the Paris Embassy, by a Jewish
hos. This revenge involved the destruction of
7,500 shops, the setting fire to some 200 syna•
rogues, the arrival at Buchenwald (within four
days) of 10.454 Jews, and the elimination of 'non-
-Aryans' from commercial activity, with the im•
pasIion of a thousand-mark fine and the restric•
ti-'n of their movements.
"'The de:- the first synagogue was burned,'
wrn'e a well known German Catholic writer, Rein-
hold Schneider, 'the Church should have risen
up like a sister on the side of the Synagogue.'
But Pius XI made no mention whatever of these
crimes. any more than of the persecution of the
evangelical sects. There was not even a reference
to them in the famous 'Mit Brennender Sorge.'
This encyclical is (amens without reason, for
far from being an anti-Nazi document (as it is
reputed to be) it did not even dare lay at Nazism's
door the errors in dogma and morality then
spreading throughout Germany; it confined itself
to laying the blame on certain currents in Naz-
ism. The one reproach made by Pius XI (and
with all due respect) against the Nazi leaders,
the one reason why the encyclical was written
at all, was that the Concordat had been violated.
Nothing else struck the Pope as urgent or im•
portaul. And so as to obtain a modest guarantee
that there would be no further violations, he
scrupulously avoided making any clear judg-
ment en a concept of the stale inspired by the
most brutal and grotesque racial theories. The
only aspect of Nazism criticized in the encyclical
was its totalitarianism, and that only because it
Ay as in the name of state totalitarianism that the
Cerman author ities were staking their claims
mer the education of the young and abolishing
4 Mari h N(11111.1, And Pius 'AI untied up by offering
thir the take branch of reconcili.olion so as to
y.un b.0 k fur the German Catholic t hurch its
merien
ev% i sh
111)(11'1'11
exorbitant bureaucratic and organizational pros-
perity."
Amung the items recorded by Falconi is the
activity' of Kurt Gerstein, who "joined the ‘A'affen-
SS so as to he able to unmask its monstrous activ-
ities in the concentration camps . . . " He was
unsuccessful. The Gerstein role is depicted in
llochhuth's 'Deputy'). But two prisoners who es-
caped from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp, Rudolf
Wrha and Alfred Wetzler, brought the message to
Msgr. Burzio, papal delegate in Bratislava. They
revealed the position of the gas chambers and
brought documentary evidence about the crimes.
A note regarding these revelations explains:
- Alfred Wetzler was present at the Frankfurt
trials in 1964 and provided the court with 'the trans-
lation into English of his report on the mass killings
by gas in Auschwitz, written in German directly
after his escape from that camp on April 7, 1944:
Ile told the court that he gave a copy to the apostolic
nuncio (sic) in Prague who in turn sent it to the
Pope 'At that time.' said Wetzler, 'we hoped that
the Pope would make the report public and brand
the Nazi atrocities against the Jews; but we never
heard anything from the Vatican.'"
The indictments are numerous. Falconi's book
will serve as evidence of Vatican failures, when
millions of human lives could have been saved.
The Kurt Gerstein Story
The stcry of Kurt Gerstein, first called to in-
ternational attention in llochhuth's "Deputy," has
become one of the very intriguing tales of the Nazi
era Gerstein risked his life—lost his life—out of
a determination to expose the Nazi horrors lie
joined the SS to be able to get at the root of the
crimes and to be in better position to ask for world-
wide action against his fellow' Germans who turned
arch criminals.
A French writer, Pierre Jaffrov, took a special
interest in Gerstein's activities, and in "The Ordeal
of Kurt Gerstein." published by' Ilarcourt Brace
Jovanmich, he tells the story of this hero who be-
came a martyr in the cause of telling the truth about
is fe'l-w Germans under flitter.
Translated from the French by Norman,
Denny, Joffrov's "The Ordeal of Kurt Gerstein"
deals not only with the life of the courageous
exposer of the SS and his activities but also with
the events that marked the Nazi terror,
Joffroy traces the events that led to Gerstein's
death', in July of 1945, in the military prison in
Paris, after he was charged by the Germans with
"war crimes and complicity."
Thorough documentation disproves some of the
skepticism that has been expressed about Gerstein,
and the author provides a list of institutions he had
consulted in gathering the material for his study
of the Gerstein chapter in anti-Nazism.
All the aspects of Nazi criminality are covered
in this work, and Joffroy deals with the Adolf Eich-
mann role, the numerous other Nazi criminals and
the basic facts related by Gerstein to those he had
approached with appeals to come to the rescue of
Jews who were condemned to die in the Nazi ovens.
Gerstein's personal testimony is recorded here.
The martyr told of his approaches for assistance to
Catholic prelates and the indifference to Jewish
suffering that accompanied the rejection of his
appeals.
Evidence of men with whom Gerstein was in
contact is presented as verification of his craving
to reveal the truth about the planned mass murders.
Gerstein's parents' concerns are indicated.
Joffroy presents for the record the report Ger-
stein had committed to paper to describe everything
he knew about the Third Reich crimes.
After the war there was a search for Gerstein
because his evidence would have been so valuable
at the war cranes trials. Yet there were the confu-
sions that nearly turned him into a war criminal,
w hereas his crime was his desire to expose the holo-
caust schenes of his fellow Germans.
Joffroy's is a deeply moving story. It is history,
di.ona. a story of martyrdom, and it serves as
purpose of pointing to the indifference,
t•
among churchmen, to the Nazi crimes,
as .‘
to 1114• Third Reich criminals themselves.
GENEVA (JTA)—An American programs during the last cal-
official said here Tuesday that endar year.
In a message, Barbara Wat-
governments in the Communist
thiantthisicsournet. son administrator of the Bureau
of Security and Consular Affairs
that
world opinion and
taken
into ac
fleeted in the recent marked in- of the U.S. State Department,
crease in the rate of emigration stressed that no Jew or other So-
from Eastern Europe of 2- to 3,000 vie/ citizen granted an exit visa
would be stranded merely because
per month.
James Carlin, counselor for rein- of delays in U.S. visa issuing pro-
gee, migration and Red Cross cedures.
Jbhn Thomas, director of the
affairs at the U.S. Mission here,
told the 17th Overseas Conference Intergovernmental Committee for
of the United Bias Service that Eutopean Migration, told the
the U.S. government welcomed '.his BIAS conference that he hoped
development and was ready to Pr!•sident Nixon•s recent visits
assume a substantial share of the to China and Russia would produce
burden of the migrants' resettle- conditions under which people
ment, whether they go to Israel would be permitted to move free-
or elsewhere. ly when they felt such a move-
(An HIAS official in New York meilt would improve their future
told the JTA that the 2- to 3.000 poslsibilities.
per month rate represented Jew-
aynor Jacobson, executive vice
ish emigration from Eastern president of HIAS, the agency
European countries, including the aiding Jewish migration to coun-
tries other than Israel, said that
Soviet Union.)
several hundred Soviet Jews have
Carlin noted that the U.S. had
alrady arrived in the U.S. with
a long tradition of generous as-
BIAS assistance.
sistance to refugees as part of
its efforts to achieve lasting
Jacobson slid earlier that two
peace. He noted the U.S. spent
of the most ancient Jewish corn- -
some $312,000,000 on refugee aid
rriunities — those of Iraq and
Egypt—have virtualD, ceased Co
exist. He disclosed that in 1971
Iraq finally allowed its Jew-
ish subjects to leave to join
their families all over the
world with the result th^t only
540 Jews remain in Iraq com-
pared to 2,500 a year ago and
JERUSALEM—According to an
niore than 150,000 before the
ticle in the Jerusalem Post,
establishment of Israel in 1948
Irani Jews are finding that daily
4
•
Iraqi Jews Finding
Life Difficult After
Temporary Easing
and economic life is becoming more
difficult.
The Iraqi government had eased
its policy toward Jews after Janu-
ary 1959, when a bloody hanging of
Jew's had taken place.
The paper based its story on an
interview with a "prominent
Iraqi," who said that for the past
three months "Iraqi Jews have
been practically prohibited from
selling their homes" or other pos-
sessions while "bank withdrawals
have been limited to about 100
dinars ($240) a month."
After applying for permission
to travel abroad, the Jerusalem
Post source said, "an Iraqi Jew is
officially asked for an undertaking
not to sell any of his movable or
immovable property. Several Jews
who have applied to travel abroad
have been summoned to the secur-
ity department where they have
signed an undertaking" not to sell
their property.
The source noted that this is in
complete violation of Iraqi law'.
In May 1969, the government
abolished the laws promulgated by
the Taher Yahya government after
the Six-Day War. It gradually lifted
several, though not all, of the sec-
ret restrictions imposed on Jew's
by the Taher Yahya government,
maintaining that they should be
treated like other Iraqi citizens.
With these restrictions back in
force, Iraqi Jews are now in fact
suffering from the laws promul-
gated by the Taher Yahya govern-
ment and abolished by the Ba•th
govern nent in 1963, said the
source
Ex perienc(` Explored ill \ensile!• kflNenture Stud.
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Jacobson said that in Egypt, too,
Jeivish life has come to an end.
One of the last Jews to leave that
country was Chief Rabbi Douek,
who is being assisted by the HIAS
office in Paris to emigrate to the
U.S., Jacobson said.
The only Arab country where
thcire is practically no progress
to report is Syria, where 4,000
Jews have been deprived of their
baiiic liberties and are held vir-
tual hostages, the HIAS official
said. He noted that 13,000 Jews
wove permitted to leave Soviet
Russia in 1971, the same number
that left during the entire preced-
ing decade.
Jacobson estimated that there
are tens of thousands of pending
applications for visas to emigrate
to Israel from Russia. In addition.
he reported, HIAS has a case load
of well over 5,000 applications
from relatives of Soviet Jews.
no ably in the U.S., who want
to , bring their relatives over.
Meanwhile, HIAS enabled three
mdre Soviet Jews to arrived in the
United States Tuesday under the
attorney general's parole authority.
they were Dr. Tzilia Glinberg.
25, who last year received a
degree from the Institute of Medi-
cine in Czernovitch, Lithuania, and
het parents — Volodiya. a 66-
yeiirold mechanic, and Sima, an
in a photography lab-
lab-
or I tore.
t
the resettlement effOrt
w s s Lyle Rockier, a cantorial
stddent at the Jewish Theological
Selninary of America here . Rock-
leiJ's mother and uncle, who died
la 1 year in Minneapolis and Bos-
respectively. were the sister
in 1 brother of Mrs. Gliriber.
,, t ,se faniiiy's visas were delay
1.i"litianian authorities.
, ,••, immigrants are -`stay ing
it a twit:1 here. I rr.
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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Friday. !tine 9, 1972