2 Friday; becembill 31, 1976' ". THE DET1101TiiiiISH NEW Purely Commentary Hopelessness for Humanism at Abortive United Nations Whatever hopes were entertained for a modicum of decency and justice at the United Nations was vio- lated at the present session. Re-elected UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim spoke of better chances for peace than ever before, at a press conference that followed his re-election, and his views were echoed in many quarters, including Israel. The evidence, however, is that the hatred that stems from the UN General Assembly has not vanished. The triumphs of the PLO, even after the fiasco in Lebanon, again serve as warnings that there is no hope from that quarter. Before the General Assembly began its present sessions there were appeals to its delegates for a re- turn to the principles upon which the world organiza- tion was founded. Very distinguished people joined in appeals for fairness. In a letter that appeared in the Detroit News on Oct. 27, there was a plea to the UN- by spokesmen for the Writers and Artists for peace in the Middle East, and the signers of that letter included the following eminent Americans, non-Jews as well as Jews: Edward Albee, Cleveland Amory, Saul Bellow, Col- leen Dewhurst, Julie Harris, Norman Mailer, Ber- nard Malamud, Louise Nevelson, Leontyne Price, Robert Rauschenberg, Beverly Sills, Raphael Soyer, John Updike. In their plea for justice and fairness these dis- tinguished Americans wrote: It was less than a year ago that the UN was manipu- lated by voting blocs to thwart its functions and pur- poses, which many of us had prayed would keep the peace. It became, instead, a cauldron of prejudice and hatred. We refer specifically to the infamous resolu- tion which smeared Zionism as racism. The UN was created by governments of the vic- torious Allied Forces after they overthrew Hitler to put an end to the streams of venom which he had spread across Europe. It was the great hope then that the UN would prevent the rise of new Hitters and the resurgence of religious and race bigotry. No one ever dreamed that the UN could become the weapon for new hatemongers. The Western nations must firmly resolve to act to prevent the re-enactment of last year's action. They must resist mischievous resolutions. They must stand up and be counted. They must abjure abstention and absence. They owe this to the United Nations itself— and they owe it to the civilization which. the UN was intended to defend. Whatever venom emanates from the UN is not unexpected. Nevertheless, there is always hope that representatives of the nations of the world will come to their senses. They didn't. Therefore, the tragic viola- tion of all human rights by the organization that was formed to propagate and assist in assuring world peace continues to be violated. Not only peace, but the basic rights of member nations thus remain in jeopardy. Will time solve this travesty on justice? 'Hypocrisy at Turtle Bay': A Lone Voice of Decency at UN The Third World continues to harass Israel and the Russian influence is tortuous. Yet, there are occa- sional defections even from that part of the dissenting world. While it is a dated item, an editorial in the New York Times (Nov. 12) merits emphasis. Under the heading "Hypocrisy at Turtle Bay," the NY Times credited Malawi with an honorable stand, declaring: Malawi's delegate to the United Nations spoke blunt truth when he accused some of his African col- leagues and their fellow sponsors of "double-faced hypocrisy" in resolutions they rammed through the General Assembly, condemning specific nations for trading with South Africa. J. T. X. Muwamba referred particularly to the singling out of the United States and its major allies, along with Israel, for selling arms to South Africa; but his indictment applies to other trade as well. "All types of military haidware, from both East and West, can be found in South Africa," said Mr. Muwamba — a statement supported in a study just issued by the American Jewish Congress. The study points to Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, along with Saudi Arabia and several Western countries, as suppliers of arms to the Pretoria government. But it is on the economic front that the black African states are behaving hypocritically. Will the Marxist dictatorship in Mozambique, for example, adhere to the resolution it supported calling for an economic and financial boycott of South Africa? Not likely — for that would mean ordering home more than 100,000 Mozambiquans who work in South Afri- can mines and whose wages are remitted directly in gold to the government in Maputo, providing it with desperately needed foreign exchange. Since the closing of its border with Rhodesia, Zambia has been forced more than ever to depend on its trade with South Africa. President Kenneth UN's Abortive Legacies . . . Hopelessness for Humanism from Poisoned Sphere . . . Bettelheim's Admonition to Lack of Resistance to Nazism Paralleled in Noteworthy Album Kaunda may continue to deplore racial apartheid; but Zambia perforce must maintain its economic links with the country that spawned and practices that hideous doctrine. South Africa's white rulers have built one of this century's more efficient police states. They have fashioned a draconian structure of racial segregation and discrimination and built a burgeoning economy on a system reminiscent of slave labor. The Pretoria government may well pose a long-run threat to peace in the southern African subcontinent. The United Na- tions is right to apply what pressures it can to pro- mote change. But resolutions calling for sanctions that even some of the most vociferous sponsors have no inten- tion to invoke can only enfeeble the United Nations, eroding the very machinery for multilateral peace- keeping that smaller and weaker nations are likely to need most of all. Malawi is not alone. There are other nations whose representatives are outraged by what is hap- pening at the UN. But they fear economic conse- quences, and even many in the Free World often fail to speak as bluntly as did Malawi. Now we experience the farce of a threat of a PLO in exile. The advance stages of such a proposal speak of Cairo as headquarters for such an anti-Israel oriented movement. This at once negates much of the so-called peace talk by Anwar el-Sadat. The sensitive on the world scene can not be fooled too long by venom mixed with nonsense. By Philip Slomovitz This revealing account of the tragedies imposed on Jewry and mankind by the Nazis would be incom- plete without further reference to the attitudes of Dr. Bettelheim. The noted psychiatrist had written a lengthy reyiew, with serious comments, on the recent Italian-filmed story of sisters who suffered at the hands of the Nazis. He took exception to what could have been interpreted as brutal humor and his con- cluding -views declared: - From the beginning of time, those who have borne witness have been an embarrassment. To those who have been carried away by Wertmuller's film, or by Des Pres' writings, what I have written here has perhaps caused embarrassment. Survivors won't be around much longer, but while they are, they cannot help objecting — not to their being forgotten, not to the world's going on as usual, but to their being used to bear witness to the opposite of the truth. Our experience did not teach us that life is mean- ingless, that the world of the living is but a whorehouse, that one ought to live by the body's crude claims, disregarding the compulsions of culture. It taught us that, miserable though the world in which we live may be, the differ- ence between it and the world of the concentration camps is as great as that' between night and day, hell and salvation, death and life. It taught us that there is meaning to life, difficult though that mean- ing may be to fathom — a Stirring Account . of Resistance: much deeper meaning Bettelheim's Admonition Confirmed than we had thought pos- in Auschwitz Survivor's Diary sible before we became survivors. And our feeling Dr. Bruno Bettelheim, the famous psychiatrist s of guilt for having been so one of the noted survivors of Nazism, a number of lucky as to survive the hell years ago expressed his bitterness over his conviction of the concentration camp that Jews in the concentration camps did not resist is a most significant part of sufficiently. In the process of analyzing his views he this meaning — testimony gave an example. If Jews were destined to die at the to a humanity that not even hands of the Nazis, he implied, the could and should the abomination of the have, at the time, exacted vengeance. BRUNO BETTELHEIM concentration camp can He gave an example of an attractive Jewish girl, a destroy. dancer, who was asked before she was to be taken into There are those who will keep saying, "Why bring the "showers" — it was later learned that it was a procedure to take the victims to gas chambers L- to up old crimes, why not forget them?" Which revezber- dance for the Germans. This dancer, while performing ates to the duty of not forgetting, of keeping the his- her art, grabbed the SS leader's pistol and shot him toric alive, of reminding generations that are forget- and a few other German officers who were bestially ting what happened in an ear-her age — not so old, since it happened less than half a century ago — lest glorying in their victim's art. The sequel — perhaps the original — of the Bet- what had taken place in an earlier part of this century telheim story appears in the diary of an Auschwitz recur in a later age. survivor included in a very excellent book: It will be found in a very impressive new book, "The Camera of Transitions in German-Jewish My Family" (Knopf). Catherine Hanf . 1\Toren told in Experiences Depicted in Album pictures and essays the 100-year story of her Hanf Noren's "The Camera of My Fam- German-Jewish Wallach family. It is the up-to-the ily" Charlotte is in many respects as much a social study of present chronicle of her kinfolk and included is the record of those who died at the hands of the Nazis. German-Jewish experiences as it is a magnificent There are the photographs and stories of Hitler's vic- photographic creation. In her story of her Wallach Family, beginning tims,-the members of her family. Included is the diary with the German genesis and continuing through the of a cousin: One member of the family, who was in a concentra- years in this country after the escape and the survival tion camp during the war, wrote a diary during the of the fortunate ones, the reader learns about split days immediately following his liberation but while personalities, about the Jewish roots and the eventual marriages and the current Christian domi- he was still in the camp. The author of this diary was mixed nance. half Jewish, as his mother had been born a Wallach. The author herself learned more about her past However, he had a Christian upbringing, and was and present from the photographs she had gathered taken as a political prisoner, rather than as a Jew. for a great book than from her own knowledge about • Because this cousin was a Christian he had the Germans who were Jews. She learned about the privilege of tasks in the concentration camps, duties Holocaust later than one would imagine from an from which he was able to observe the horrors that album which gave the able photographer a more inti- were practiced by the Nazi beasts. He describes the mate introduction into her family's past. manner in which Hungarian Jews were tortured be- There is much to be learned here about the Nazi fore being sent to their death and in that story appears ideology and the effects of Jewish industrial domi- the description of the resisting danger. nance upon the Germans. For example, one of the The tragedy of the Hungarian Jews also merits photos shows Hitler relaxing in Berchtesgaden "amid recording and it follows in this excerpt from Mrs. No- Wallach curtains." Referring to the product made in ren's book which includes the description of the resist- her family's -factory, the author further relates: "The ing young woman: curtain fabric is the same design that today covers the The leader of this action was the couch of my New York City apartment." beitsdienstfuhrer SS Oberscharfuhrer E . The Thus, the record of Jewish experience under woman knew what was about to happen. In her de- Nazism gains a place for "The Camera of My Family" spair she did something which immediately caused as a valuable part of the bookshelf exposing the Nazi about 3,000 people, and later, another 5,500 people crimes. their deaths. I was standing about 25 meters away and could see the woman clearly. In an instant, she took off her They Buy Banks and Aim ballet shoes and started hitting the Oberscharfuhrer at Control of Newspapers -with them. In the shock and confusion that followed, Arabs are buying their way into American banks. she succeeded in getting his pistol, and fired two In England the potentates from oil-rich countries shots, one into his thigh and the other into his hip. have even more ambitious designS. They aim at gain- Now the guards woke up. I barely had time to get ing control of the British press by purchasing leading to safety in the bathroom. There followed an unbe- newspapers in the UK. lievable bloodbath, in which about 3,000 people were No wonder; with little Kuwait ranked as the rich- shot or beaten to death. est (per capita) country in the world, the combined It was a single, screaming bloody and swarming wealth of the Arabs is staggering. heap. The machine guns and submachine guns shot What effect will these maniputations have on the uninterruptedly into the mass. The rest, after being democracies? The danger is primarily to Israel whose completely robbed, were immediately gassed, and status may be seriously affected by the Arab domina- there was no one left alive. tion of public opinion and the financial institutions.