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THE JEWISH NEWS

Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle. commencing with issue of July 20, 1951

.

Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association, National Editorial Associa-
tion. Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17515 W. Nine Mile, Suite 865, Southfield, Mich. 48075.
• Second-Class Postage Paid at Southfield, Michigan and Additional Mailing Offices. Subscription $8 a year. Foreign $9

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ

CHARLOTTE DUBIN

DREW LIEBERWITZ

Editor and Publisher

Business Manager

City Editor

Advertising Manager

Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the 28th day of Tamuz, 5733, the following scriptural selections
will be read in nur sunnanaues:
Pentateuchal portion, Num. 30:2-36:13. Prophetical portion, Jeremiah 2:4-28, 3:4.
Rosh Hodesh Av Torah reading, Monday, Num. 28:1-15.

Candle lighting, Friday, July 27, 8:38 p.m.

VOL. LXIII. No. 20

Page Four

July 20, 1973

Order Taking: 'Propnety'and'Immorahty'

A new "twist" was given the Watergate
hearings. A witness whose testimony created
sensations kept insisting that he had been
given an assignment — to secure some
$600,000 to be used in defense of the indicted
in the Watergate crime, and to provide relief
for their families. The question of "propriety"
in "following orders" was raised in the inter-
rogation. The witness kept insisting that he
was pursuing "a humanitarian" principle in
living up to "the assignment."
Immediately, the question arose whether
"following orders" could be equated with the
lessons of the Nuremberg trials of the. Nazi
criminals and of the Adolf Eichmann trial in
Jerusalem. Then, too, there was a defense
that "orders from superiors" were being
followed.
Such defense also was offered in the
notorious My Lai case that involved William
L. Calley Jr V Then, too, the question of "order
taking" arose.
A basic principle is involved here. If it
can be claimed that following orders from
superiors justifies acts of defendants, whether
they were in the instance of Nazis or invol-
ving relatively innocent people who thought
they had, thereby, turned humanitarians,
then the very nature of humanitarianism is
under challenge.
It's not a new issue. It is a repetitive one.
In our issues of June 14, 1963, and April 16,
1971, it became necessary for us to deal with
the "order taking" issue and we quoted a
Catholic dignitary on the subject. A Catholic
army chaplain, Maj. Gen. Patrick J. Ryan, in
his book "A Soldier Priest Talks to Youth,"

published by Random House, made these
assertions:

"The men who followed Hitler and Musso-
lini said 'My country right or wrong,' and we
all know the beastliness that the Nazis turned
loose on the world. Look at Adolf Eichmann,
the Nazi official whom Israel hanged in June
of 1962 for having done most to organize the
slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews during the Nazi
persecution. Eichmann's defense throughout
his trial was that he was 'following orders'!
He pleaded that he was serving his country!
Could any man have done his country a
greater disservice than to have followed the
bloody path that led to the destruction of Ger-
many from the air, and its division into two
separate, hostile camps?
"No one can place country above con-
science, any more than he can place loved
ones above conscience. The Church teaches
us that the Fourth Commandment, on which
patriotism is based, also commands: 'Obey
your mother and father in all that is not sin.'
The same applies to the fatherland. If you
saw your father striking a cripple you would
be horrified and very quick to plead with him
to stop. The same should apply to you if —
God forbid — you should find your country
bullying a little land or mistreating minorities
within its own community. You love the face
of your country too much to see it disfigured
by brutality or prejudice."

These views are as basic today as they
were during the Nuremberg, Jerusalem and
My Lai trials, and to the Watergate experi-
ence as well.
If the clock is not to be turned back again,
if mankind is truly to emerge from barbarism
to humanism, blind order taking must be out-
lawed in civilized ranks.

Oil Crisis; No Yielding to Panic

News analysts are having a heyday over
the "energy crisis" and especially the threats
emanating from the Middle East that the Arab
states, utilizing their oil wealth as a threat,
will seek a change in American friendship
policies towards Israel.
It is a normal result, in the course of
human events, that the "warnings" of Saudi
Arabian King Faisal should cause a scare in
Jewish ranks. Neither is it to be wondered at
that non-Jewish Americans should show con-
cern over possibly menacing results from the
new eruptions of hatred in the Middle East.
At the outset, such developments compel
serious deliberations in Jewish ranks to as-
sure retention of solidarity of action in de-
fense of Israel. The moment panic sets in,
the Jewish state can be harmed seriously.
There is need, however, to study the issue
and to learn whether the impending dangers
really are as serious as portrayed.
Not all experts are agreed that the situa-
tion is as menacing as news analysts would
lead us to believe. The Arabs need American
cash as much as we need Arab oil. U. S. Sena-
tor Henry M. Jackson was asked, during dis-
cussions of what has been described as "an
impending crisis," whether America's need
for oil from the Arab countries is so great
that it may force a change in U. S. policies
toward Israel. His reply is vital to the issue.
Senator Jackson, whose success in sponsoring
action to speed establishment of the Alaska
oil lines places him in a strategic position as
a leader in efforts to solve the so-called
energy crisis, stated:
The average American gets the idea
that our trouble in the Middle East stems
from our support for Israel. Nothing
could be further from the truth. The
facts are that if Israel did not exist,
Jordan would have disappeared. Saudi
Arabia, which has over half the known

oil reserves in the world outside the So-
viet Union, would have disappeared from
the map, and maybe Lebanon, too. The
problem in the Middle East is the have-
not Arab countries against the haves.
The two stabilizing factors in the
Middle East are Israel and Iran. It's only
Israel and Iran that could prevent an
overrunning of the regime in Saudi
Arabia. A key country that we're con-
cerned about for oil for the U. S. is Iran.
Iranians are Moslem, but they aren't
Arab. They have a relatively close alli-
ance with Israel. Iran is a crucial coun-
try.
Then there is Kuwait. What's the
threat to Kuwait? Israel? Not at all. It is
Iraq, backed by the Soviet Union. What's
the threat to Saudi Arabia? The have-not
Arab countries: Egypt, operating through
Yemen as they did several years ago;
Syria,• and Iraq, a country with a lot of
oil but with an extremist government in
power.
These are the real threats to the
security of oil supplies out of the Gulf.
It's not Israel that's the problem. in the
Middle East.
These are the words not of an amateur
but of one who has made a deep study of the
oil situation and who is deeply involved in
efforts to end discrimination of Jews in
Russia while assisting in tasks to provide
security for Israel. Perhaps Senator Jackson's
definitive statement on the Middle East crisis
— a crisis that is as serious for Arabs as it is
for Jews — will serve to end whatever fears
may have been injected in Jewish ranks.
What it should serve to do, primarily and
speedily, is to assure retention of the spirit
of faith that Israel will survive newly men-
acing situations and that the kinsmen of
Israel will be the last to yield to panic.

Szajkowski's 'Jews....Communism'
Notes Historical Backgrounds

Zosa Szajkowski, a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish
Research at the YIVO Institute, has packed in such a vast amount of
data into the first volume of "Jews, Wars and Communism," published
by Ktav, that his forthcoming volumes in this series will be awaited
with keen interest. Students of historical developments will be en-
lightened by issues involving the Soviet Union, the attitudes of American
Jews and Communism, the Zionist activities in Russia and the reactions
to it, and many other issues related to the subjects touched upon by
Szajkowski.
The immensity of this work becomes apparent in the division of
the text—more than 200 pages of the 740 devoted to explanatory notes.
This study is very detailed. It contains, for example, the resolution
adopted on the Russian anti-Zionist actions at the Zionist Organization
of America meeting held in Detroit in 1932.
It includes the various declarations made by Stephen S. Wise on
major issues affecting the Russian Jewish position.
The author of this study touches upon the work of the Joint Dis-
tribution Committee and the Agro-Joint, the activities of an eminent
leader, James N. Rosenberg, and the anti-Zionist role of the former
Detroit Jewish Welfare Federation director, Maurice Waldman. This
was in 1944, and at that time, the author states, "The American Jewish
Committee became obsessed over the danger of the Jews being
identified with Communism."
The first Szajkowski volume leads up to the period when there was
consternation over dispensing relief to Russian Jews and Stephen
Wise's demand that American Jews should control it. It was the period
of Polish anti-Semitism, the Kielce pogrom, the Polish government's

role. The author quotes, on this score, this statement that was issued
by the then American Jewish Conference:
"The American Jewish Conference is deeply distressed over the
statement made yesterday (July 21, 1946) by Cardinal Hlond, Primate
of Poland, in which first having expressed formal regret at the
murder of the Jews in Kielce, he then attempted to place responsibility
for the massacre upon Polish Jews. To justify the murder of Jews by

the allegation that Jews 'occupy the leading positions in Poland's
government' is tantamount to absolving the murderers of their guilt and
serves to undermine the earnest efforts of the Polish government to
extirpate anti-Semitism. The statement by a high church dignitary in
Poland, the soil of which is saturated with the blood of 2,500,000 Jews,
will not have the effect of quelling dissention in Poland, nor can it be
that calming influence upon the Polish population which should be the
desire of every spiritual leader. Furthermore, the statement carries
with it the implication that the price which Jews must pay for the
protection of life and property is non-participation in public service.
This view will be repudiated by free men everywhere as contrary to
the principles of the Atlantic Charter and to the purposes of the United
Nations, whose charter provides for the promotion of respect of human
rights and fundamental freedoms. We refuse to believe that this state-
ment represents the view of the Catholic Church."
Ironically, the last chapter in the first volume concludes with an
anonymous anti-Semitic letter addressed to Stephen Wise, containing
threats and accusing Jews of disloyalties.
Dealing with basic facts, this study points to some distortions in
quotations from Jewish sources by non-Jews. One such "error" was
utilized in an address by Charles E. Coughlin in 1938.
With regard to the attitudes on Communism by Jews in Russia in
the early stages, and the eventual spread of anti-Semitism, the author
makes this comment:

"In order to avoid judgment of the past by contemporary standards one
cannot blame those Jews who did, at first, look favorably upon Soviet
Russia. Soviet anti-Semitism was a much later event and, to many, com-
pletely unforeseen. The poet and novelist, Chaim Grade, relates the story
of a Red Army commissar who shot a soldier for having taken a watch from
a Jew during the occupation of Vilna. The novelist's mother could not
forgive the Jew for having complained to the commissar. Shooting a soldier
for having taken away a watch was a cruel and inhuman punishment. If one
kills for stealing a watch, then one might also kill for any trivial act. Many
years later, the mother made the following remark: perhaps it was the
same commissar who accused the Jewish boys and girls who had crossed
the border from anti-Semitic Poland into free Russia of being spies. How-
ever, when the soldier had shot the soldier, many Jews realized for the
first time that somebody defended them, while Polish soldiers were allowed
to kill Jews. The novelist's mother's philosophic remark was made only
in later years."