F QB VII Message By JACK SIEGEL (Copyright 1974, JTA, Inc.) In the wake of the recent occasions memorializing the uprising of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, an appar- ently coincidental TV timing of an adaptation of QB VII, a novel by Leon Uris, took place. The basic story of the book centers on a trial in London uncovering a Polish doctor war criminal who col- laborated with the Germans in a concentration camp. President Nixon's talk to the country on Watergate cut into the number of peo- ple viewing this movie, which place over two evenings _. six hours. In New York, the film averaged 47 per cent of the televised audience; in Los Angeles, the film aver- aged 54 per cent, from 9 to midnight. Apart from the stellar performers and the huge promotional build-up, what attracted such a mas- sive audience nation-wide? Was it the trial sequences, which always excite audi- ences, regardless of the na- ture of the case? Or was it an interest, whether natural or neurotic, in the recital of the medical experiments per_ formed (mainly on Jewish inmates in one concentration camp)? The subject is not new, nor has it been ignored in the past. In this instance, there was no visual dramatization of the tortures but only re- citals, and one big scene invoking the sounds of Holo- caust as the Jewish writer- hero, and a friendly Polish Communist official, escort a - .11M • • -4 a1111111-- -111111111111P -411111111111111 111• ■ • IN= • 111 • II • IN • II. Jewish People 'Shall Not Fail Pole, concealing his Jewish identity, through the old camp in an effort to break down his refusal to testify at the libel trial instituted by the Polish doctor identified in the writer's book as a war criminal. The novel was even-handed politically as was the tele- play; it was also given to broad rhetoric about its never happening again, not only to Jews but to people everywhere, without saying how, except for the hero's reference to "as long as evil men are organized . ." But the drama's essence was the submission of the inmates. Once inside a concentration camp, there was little choice. The Nazis parlayed terror upon innocence and had their way. But outside it was a different matter. In Warsaw, for instance, the ghetto archivist Emanuel Ringelblum, in a letter to the Yiddish Scientific Insti- tute, outlined the activities of what he called "self-help." It was organized on many levels: economically with the aid of the Joint Distribution Committee; culturally with local artists, singers and painters; and in communal welfare and health. The rallying cry was not only for self-help but for struggle, conducted by the ZOB, the Jewish Fighters Organiza- tion. Ringelblum noted in his diary in 1942: "We will at- tack them with whatever weapons are available, with knives, with clubs, with acid —to prevent blockades and round-ups, now that we are certain that the so-called labor camps are actually death camps. Now we must resist, we must arm our- selves against the foe." Once the innocence was g o n e, resistance replaced submission. In a broadcast to the people of the world, the ZOB fighters said: "We shall avenge the crimes com- mitted in Auschwitz, Tre- blinka, Belsen and Mai- danek!" They also pro- claimed: "This is a struggle for our common freedom, for common human and social dignity and honor." Even in a proscribed area, cut off from the rest of the world, the resisting Jews of Poland understood the strug_ gle was total. Ringelblum writes of the "superb epic of the Jewish armed struggle in Poland . . . the heroic de- fense of the Warsaw Ghetto, the magnificent struggle in Bailystok, the destruction of the annihilation centers in Treblinka and Sobibor, the battles in Tarnow, Bedzin, Czestochowa and other points. The Jews showed they could fight with arms, that they knew how to die with honor in the struggle with the arch-enemy of the Jewish people and of all humanity." The Holocaust was specific and genocidal: Jewish. In retrospect, one wonders how it could have happened. Ob- viously, the Jews were deci- mated because they were isolated, as Israel today is isolated, although its capac- ity and will to struggle has not been diminished. Nor has the will of the Jewish people gni THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS elsewhere to enlist in and support that struggle been lessened. On the contrary. We do not know what les- sons the Americans who saw QB VII drew from the tele- play. Statistics unfortunately deal with the commercial as- pects of the numbers who saw it and the. in-between commercials. But if we are not to forget the courage of the ghetto fighters, if we are to remember the lesson of their battle, it cannot be limited to a recall once each year. Martin Buber is quoted by Ringelblum: "The true history of man is not com- posed of sterile victories but of fruitful defeats. A hopeless minority fighting an anti- human oppressor does not experience what we are used to call `success'; it 'fails,' but succumbing, it may an- nounce and prepare a great turn. One of the seed decom- posing in the soil the new stem invisibly sprouts." Perhaps that new stem was Israel. One must not forget, how- Friday, May 24, 1974-15 ever, the basic lesson of the Holocaust: Never Again. But there is a corollary today, in a world made much smaller by the march of time and events and technology: The Jews of the world must not isolate themselves from the rest of the world. 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