THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of JO/ 20, 1951
Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association, National Editorial Association.
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 $10 a year.
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Business Manager
DREW LIEBERWITZ
Advertising Manager
Alan Hitsky, News Editor . . . Heidi Press, Assistant News Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the 10th day of Heshvan, 5735, the following scriptural selections
will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Gen. 12:1-17:27. Prophetical portion, Isaiah 40:27-41:16.
Candle lighting, Friday, Oct. 25, 6:18 p.m.
Vol. LXVI, No. 7
Page Four
October 25, 1974
Call for Vigilance in Era of Arrogance
Dr. Henry A. Kissinger would not yield to
the pessimism that has embroiled many Is-
raelis and their friends and 'kinsmen. Hope
must never be abandoned and if the responsi-
ble American intermediary for what appears
to 'be a most difficult road to peace retains
faith in a possible accord he must be given
the benefit of the doubt. Yet, there is a grow-
' ing pessimism that is accompanied by grow-
. ing fears of unavoidable new war threats.
Joseph Alsop is among the friends of
Israel who are warning against the emergence
of elements, specifically in Western Europe,
who would be "Israel's gravediggers."
"This country's European allies are not
•
merely ready to stand aside and criticize •
aid to Israel in a snide way, as they did in
the 1973 war, they are ready=-• almost eager
—to support the Arabs against the Israelis
in any further outbreak of fighting. They
will positively obstruct U.S. aid. They will
assist the Arabs at the UN. In sum, they
will pay oil blackmail with both hands."
Perhaps this is far-fetched. Alsop is not a
war-monger. He is cordially inclined to Israel
and is certainly not an antagonist to the
Arabs: he seeks ground for hopes for peace.
He is a friend of Israel's Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin and Secretary of State Kissin-
ger. Yet he seems to differ with the head. of
the U.S. State Department's insistence on
hopeful results from negotiations with the
Arab states and with Rabin's cooperativeness
with the American negotiator.
Never abandoning hope, there is neverthe-
less the need for renewed mobilization of
forces both to defend Israel and to provide
for such social, political and economic assist-
ance that will guarantee the securities that
depend in large measure upon world Jewry.
The need is grave, the enemy is arrogant,
the people to be defended are in grave dan-
ger. Their friends must hold up their hands
in the hour of crisis.
Federation Anniversaries: Their Significance
While „the anniversaries of the United -
Jewish Charities and the Jewish Welfare Fed- -
eration are planned for a year hence,' their
significance merits earliest acclaim.
The UJC's 75th anniversary serves as a
reminder of the gradual development of phil- .
anthropic activities in this city: The commun-
ity was small, the needs were limited, but the
Jewish obligation never to abandon the needy
kept demanding the interest of all of the •
people in the traditional causes of providing
for the strangers who came to the city, for the
widoFs and the orphans, for the less affluent
on Passover.
Then began the influx of immigrants, after
the Kishinev pogrom and the anti-Semitic in-
dignities that were imposed upon Jews in
other East European countries and some so-
called enlightened places.
World War I and its many obligations
added to the community's duties to the war
sufferers and eventually the Joint Distribu-
tion Committee b6came one of the great bene-
factors from the charity-minded Jewish com-
munity.
Formation of the Jewish Welfare Federa-
tion in 1925 inaugurated a new era of benevo-
lence and interest in Jewish needs, and the
50th anniversary of the Federation will be
celebrated as an occasion for acknowledge-
ment that wise leadership recognized the
value of more extensive unity of all forces
into a single meritorious communal body:
It was a time to recognize the validity of
Jewish education, and that was the time when
the United Hebrew - Schools became a member
agency of the central community body.
The Zionist movement, the United Pales-
tine Appeal, the Keren Hayesod and some
Palestinian agencies, whose fund-raising tasks
were conducted independently, soon became
evident as inseparable factors in a unified
community., Soon, through the Urlited Jewish
Appeal which was to be formed several years
later, the Palestinian efforts also were merged
with Federation. It was an affirmation of
Zionist libertarianism.
The 50 years of Federation history have
marked a unity of purpose. Sinai Hospital be-
came a reality, out of the nucleus of a limited
Jewish Hospital Association; the Jewish, Home
for the Aged began to render services that
lend great pride to Detroit Jewry; the Voca-
tional Service and Community Workshop . are
of major significance; the Jewish Center and
the Fresh Air Society, the recreational and
camping programs, the assistance given to
refugees and to immigrants from Russia and
other lands through the Jewish Family and
Children's Service — these are part of com-
munity attainments too numerous to be re-
membered in their entirety.
The 1975 anniversary celebrations will be
remarkable Opportunities for stock-taking, for
unity and for the many benefits yet to be re-
corded through such efforts. The attainments
of the past augur well for even greater com-
munal triumphs in the years -to come. ,
Tourism as a Protective Israel Weapon
Inevitably, the aftermath of the Yom Kip-
pur War created economic difficulties for Is-
rael, and not the least of the regrettable oc-
currences was the reduction in tourism.
For a number of years one of the three
most important factors in Israel's income-
bearing industries, tourism was among the
proud symptoms of the kinship that united the
Jewries of the world. Of equal significance
was the deep interest in Israel by Christian
communities throughout the world whence
came tens of thods'ands'cif Visitors to Israel.
The reduction in the number of visitors to
Israel is regrettable because Israel is in such
vital need of the good cheer tourists bring to
her citizens.
A fact not to be forgotteh is that Israel's
airline, El Al, so conscientiously thinks ,of the
Safety of its passengers that it has suffered
the least from the plague of terrorism that
stems from the murderous ranks of Aram
extremists. A new wave of tourism to Israel
would serve -as a mark of recogrfition of the
efficiencies of El Al's security while giving
comfort to the embattled' Israelis.'
Ringelblum's Warsaw Ghetto
Notes Reveal Nazi Crimes
Hitler's schemes could never remain a secret as long as Simon
Wiesenfeld pursued the victims and primarily thanks to the determin-
ation of archivists to keep a record of what had transpired to assure
retention of the facts.
Emmanuel Ringelblum has left a record for which posterity will
honor his name among the men with vision and an historic under-
standing. He kept a diary, he hid it, it was found after the war in two
sections, and it remains among the most moving and most devastating
indictments of Nazism.
At the same time it is a revealing document of the attitude's of Jews
in the Warsaw Ghetto, how some resisted, some yielded, some collab-
orated.
This record of vast historic significance is now available in a
Schocken paperback under the title "Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto:
The Journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum."
Edited and translated by Jacob Sloan, first having been published
in abbreviated form in Midstream magazine, this diary gains new
attention and serves as a reminder of the tragedies suffered under
Nazism.
There are many accounts of the life of the half-million Jews in the
Warsaw Ghetto and their harrowing deaths at the- hands of their perse-
cutors, but few reflect the enormity of human hope and despair, of
courage and fear as effectively as "Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto."
This day-to-day eyewitness account told by the man best equiped to
tell it, Emmanuel Ringelblum, a trained historian and archivist of the
ghetto, is based not merely on his own observations, but on his cullings
from the experiences of the many people from various backgrounds
who kept him in "daily lively contact with everything that was happen-
ing . . . every event affecting Jews in Warsaw and its suburbs." His
journal is thus both a detailed historical account and a profundly moving
human document.
Spanning the entire period from the beginning of the war in 1939
to the eve of the ghetto uprising in 1943, "Notes from the Warsaw
Ghetto" describes all life in the ghetto: the erection of the wall in
1940, the period-of deceptive calm with all of its poverty, disease, smug-
gling, and crime, and the eventual mass murders.
Conviriced that the world must know of the horror that befell his
people, .Ringelblum hid his notes before the ghetto uprising. Although
he, himself, was killed, the documents were saved and the story was
revealed to the world.
The Ringelblum diary is a powerful human document. It relates the
sentiments of the harrassed and it does not mince words in criticizing
those who did or might collaborate. It is replete with stories and the'
humorous when it occurred and, it is true, it is the Galgenhumor, the
humor on the gallows, it nevertheless echoes the tragic while recognizing
the ironic.
Jacob Sloan's introductory essay provides the biographical data
and the explanatory about Ringelblum, adds to the significance of a work
that has become historic and that assumes the character of must read-
ing for all who seek knowledge about the horrors under Nazism.
Sloan paid tribute to Ringelblum in his introduction by stating:
"The anonymity of style. the awkward prosiness, is not to be re-
garded simply as a failure of esthetic taste. These are jottings, delib-
erately left lean for the future historian to put the meat of interpre-
tation on them. A fuller style would have hindered the work of
analysis. And they were part of the character of the Ghetto; that was
not the time and place for gracious ornamentality. Besides, this was
a highly moral man with a strong sense that his time was running
out, and he had a destiny to fulfill. That destiny was not his own;
these notes were not his private creation, where he might display
his own sensibility. He was acting as the mouthpiece of his time and
place and people. These notes were to serve mankind — as a warning
of how men consume one another, and yet can love one another.
.was the motto of the group he represented."
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