48 Friday, July 1, 1977
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Boris Smolar's
'Between You
... and Me'
Editor-in-Chief
Emeritus, JTA
(Copyright 1977, JTA, Inc.)
INSIDE THE JDC: Something hew was presented recent-
ly at the two-day Joint Distribution Committee conference
in New York to Jewish community leaders assembled
from various parts of the country.
It was for the first time that the newly-formed MK area
committees reported to the JDC board on problems con-
cerning their respective areas.
Benefitting from the innovation will be the Jewish com-
munities in each area which receive JDC aid, as well as
the JDC itself. The communities will have a group "in-
side" the JDC leadership dedicated to their needs and to
securing maximum assistance for these needs, while the
JDC will have on its area committees members who will
be fully acquainted with the problems in the respective
areas, will often visit the area in which they are inter-
ested, and will intensify their activity for the JDC.
THE JDC SCOPE: To understand the functions of the
newly established area committees, it is sufficient to say
that the JDC will this year spend $36 million. About 25 per-
cent of this sum will be spent in Israel. In the East Eu-
ropean area, the JDC will spend some $9.5 million includ-
ing $6 million for its Relief-in-Transit program and close
to $3.3 million for Jewish needs in Romania.
In Western Europe, the JDC will spend about $4 million
to maintain Jews who emigrated from the Soviet Union
and found themselves stranded in Vienna and Italy, await-
ing entrance visas to the United States, Canada and other
countries outside of Israel. More than $2 million will also
go to France to help maintain and absorb thousands of
Jews from Arab countries who found refuge in French
cities.
In the Moslem countries, JDC will spend $1,660,000 on its
program in Iran. It will spend some $2 million in Morocco
and Tunisia—two Arab countries where JDC is permitted
to function; - it will also reach Syrian Jews with aid. It con-
ducts a program of assistance in Latin America, and has
allocated this year $3 million to ORT for vocational train-
ing of Jews in various countries.
Although not an Orthodox body, the JDC now spends
more than $1 million a year on supporting some 100 yeshi-
vot in Israel. The JDC supports 163 yeshivot in various
overseas countries.
- -
- -
The JDC will allocate this year more than $3.5 million
for care of Jewish aged, including the Malben homes in Is-
rael which it had established for the aged victims of Naz-
ism who lost their families in the Holocaust. It spends on
health services to needy Jews in various countries more
than $3.5 million a year. It maintains feeding programs in
schools and canteens in a number of countries overseas at
a cost of $1.5 million.
THE SOVIET BAN: The JDC is not permitted to operate
in the Soviet Union, Poland, and other Communist coun-
tries, except in Romania.
It was the JDC that put Polish Jewry back on its feet
following World War I, when the country had 3.5 million
Jews, most of them destitute and in need of aid.
In the Soviet Union, too, the JDC has played a tre-
mendous role, through its "agrojoint" office in Moscow,
which in the early years of the Communist regime was per-
mitted to operate in Russia. With funds from American
Jewry, the agrojoint offered more than 200,000 Jewish fami-
lies land in Crimea and in the Ukraine, converting them
into productive farmers restored to full citizenship rights.
It was the agrojoint that brought the first tractors into Rus-
sia and introduced modem methods of farming which
made the uprooted "declassed" Jews excellent land work-
ers praised by many Soviet agricultural experts who vis-
ited their settlements. Nevertheless, the Kremlin ordered
the agrojoint in 1939 to liquidate its-operations and to leave
the Soviet Union.
Today, the JDC spends about $2.3 million a year provid-
ing relief to Jews in Romania through their organized com-
munities, with the permission of the Communist govern-
ment there. It also sends aid to the Jewish communities in
Yugoslavia. Jews emigrating from the Soviet Union and
stranded in Vienna or in Italy while awaiting entrance
visas to the United States, Canada and other countries out-
side of Israel, are being helped by the JDC to the extent of
about $4 million this year. Another form of aid to needy
Jews in East European countries in the JDC program is
sending them foOd and clothing parcels.
New Poems by Ruth Finer Mintz:
Jerusalem Poems—Love Songs
==
Ruth Finer Mintz has
risen to an undisputed rank
of leadership among Jewish
poets. Her works have been
featured in leading literary
periodicals. Since the ap-
pearance of her collected
poems in "Travels Through
Time" — it was reviewed
in The Jewish News Nov. 6,
1970 — her achievements
have gained added acclaim.
"Jerusalefn Poems —
Love Songs" is her newest
work. Creditably, it was
published in Jerusalem, by
Masada Press. It is a high-
ranking collection of her
poems, in English, with
Hebrew translations by
noted Hebraic scholars.
Mrs. Mintz wrote her
poems in Jerusalem, from
1956 to 1976. Back for a
time in Los Angeles, she
has just returned to Jerusa-
lem where she gained her
greatest inspiration.
Her new poems are not
all about Jerusalem. Im-
bedded in them, however,
is the love inspired by the
Holy City.
The beauty of her work,
its depth and impressive
,r4L2 tn) rik:pplj
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nTe4 pinD
I Know When I Butter Bread
211o'? rIppt
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r)L77 1 r;).
nRirn
rJz
idealism, can best be appre-
ciated by a sampling of an
original with its Hebrew
translation, from "Jerusa-
lem Poems—Love Songs":
'217
:mtt na 'Tan;
n 1 14 ntV ""
I know when I butter
•
somewhere the swolle
y
of a child
ceases crying for food..
I know when I bed my son
soft
on some doorstep, a mother
wraps
her infant in a dirty shawl.
I know too, when my heart
sings,
somewhere in an empty
room
echoes the silent weeping of
a stone.
`Forgive me, or is it you who
beg my pardon?' •
"1`.717
n.r71x
11-1'?b
rr.)citP n'ti,j1P.n 7 ?73
Translators into Hebrew
of Mrs. Mintz's poems in
her new book include Simon
Halkin, Shin Shalom, Ha-
noch Kalai, Amir Gilboa,
Avraham Huss, Reuben
Shari and Leah Tantzman.
Resistance Fighters and_Victims of locaust
Ho
Will Always. Recall the Horrors of Nazism
NEW YORK—In July
1942. a young Jewish Resist-
.ante fighter smuggled a let-
ter penned in her own blood
out of a Gestapo compound
near the Polish town of
Vilna.
"I am going to die,"
wrote Liza Magun, a cou-
rier for the then-fledgling
United Partisan Organiza-
tion of the Vilna ghetto.
"Keep the organization
alive."
Her name became a sym-
bol of courage and in-
spiration for thousands of
Jewish partisans through-
out Eastern Europe during
the war.
"I will always remember
her name as long as I
live," said Morton Shames,
one of a dozen surviving
members of the under-
ground movement who met
recently with students at
the City University of New
York who are studying the
Holocaust.
About 60 students and fac-
ulty members watched as
Shames' wife, Lucy, a labo-
ratory technician at the col-
lege who organized the reun-
ion, showed slides of the Re-
sistance members in their
youth and of the Jewish
graveyards. We couldn't
community inside the bar- deny what was happening.
bed-wire fences of the 'Vilna We saw it."
ghetto.
At the height of the resist-
"This is my life, this is
ance, 400 people were organ-
all my life," Mrs. Shames ized into fighting battalions
repeated tearfully as each
in the woods around Vilna.
new slide appeared.
Farther to the north,
around what is today the
"I will have nightmares
Russian City o Novogorod,
for the next few weeks,"
an even larger band of fight-
said Berle Druskenik, "but
ers, led by Tuvia Belsky,
all of this must be put on
kept several thousand heavi-
the record. All of us are
ly armed German soldiers
going to die soon. -
from participating in bat-
Druskenik was one of the
tles on the Russian front.
founders of the United P arti-
san Organization, 'which
Belsky, who, at the age of
started with three members
70 is still a bearish man,
in Vilna and grew to more
had more than 1,250 fight-
than 125,000 partisans
ers scattered throughout
across Europe by the end
the Siberian woods. They
of the war.
were responsible for the de-
"Everyone has to know
struction of power stations,
that not only did six million
railroad terminals and food
die in the concentration
supplies along the Russian-
camps. but that thousands
Polish border.
of other Jews fought ac-
Once, during a midnight
tively against the Ger-
raid, the entire area's grain
mans," Druskenik said.
supply for the winter—sev-
Although historians have
eral thousand tons of
recorded the resistance of
wheat—were burned in a
Jews in several European
tremendous bonfire.
cities, especially the War-
"Russian bombers flying
saw ghetto uprising of April
overhead- saw the flames."
1943, relatively little is
Belsky said, "and bombed
known about the scope of
the entire area."
the Resistance movement.
The Germans thought
"It all started in Vilna,"
"Belsky's Brigade" had
said Shlomo Kowarski, a
ties to the Russian Army
medical researcher at Co-
and; as a result, kept out of
lumbia University who was
some of the wooded areas.
a young college student at
"If they only knew how
the start of World War II.
few we were—no shelter,
"As early as 1942, we saw
no foods, no weapons at
the Ponare wards of Vilna,
first except for little knives
in which thousands of Jews
in our hands," Belsky said,
were dragged out of the
"they could have wiped us
city and killed in mass
all out."
Meanwhile, survivors of
German concentration
camps and. other World
War II refugees who fled to
Britain are haunted 30
years later by the horrors
of war, the British Red
Cross reported recently.
In a report on the 50,000
wartime refugees now enter-
ing old age in Britain, the
Red Cross told of a Czech
woman who lived with the
body of her _dead husband
for five months because she
did not know whom to con-
tact in her adopted country.
A locksmith brought to
light the case of an elderly
-Russian refugee who kept
having locks fitted to her
doors. "Every door had at
least three locks on it. The
old lady was convinced that
the Nazis were still at
large," a Red Cross spokes-
man said.
A Polish man reak
from all strangers, mt., r-
ing "Gestapo, Gestapo," in
a fearful reference to Nazi
secret police who helped op-
erate the wartime concen-
tration camps.
The man now is visited
by Red Cross workers.
Another Polish man
claimed the Nazis infested
his • house in Britain with
rats. He has been moved to
a rest home.
The spokesman said these
cases came to light in a
Red Cross campaign to
trace World War II expat-
riates. .