2 Friday, December 30, 1977 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Purely Commentary
A New Year With the Most Joyous Message Ever Phrased
for Mankind...Out of an Embattled Area Comes Word
of Amity for Two Neighboring Nations and the World
By Philip
Slomovitz
A New Year With Better Tidings for Those Who Aspire for Peace
A new civil year is being ushered in with hopes for better human relations.
Only a year ago the atmosphere was filled with panic over impending warfare. It is
different now. There are hopes for amity in the Middle East, and just as "put of Zion shall
go forth the Law" so mankind also may hope that out of Jerusalem will come a clarion
call for an end to warfare, for the beginning of good neighborliness where there
previously was animosity.
There will be sniping in the press. Those who, in Cairo and in Jerusalem, in Ismailia
and in Alexandria, are negotiating and bargaining and dickering over peace proposals
may be called theatrical because they attract world attention. As long as they are
committed even the dramatic is excusable.
The truly fantastic has occurred. It is going on without interruption. Egyptian meets
Louis Untermeyer's Nostalgic
Jewishness ... Notes From His
and First Wife's Viewpoints
Louis Untermeyer left many legacies. He was the leader
among anthologists and his encouragement to poets added
glory to an era of creativity.
He was a man of many claims to fame, as jeweler,
author, editor, poet. His death on Dec. 19 at the age of 92
was cause for reconstructing many of the forgotten chap-
ters in the history of American literature and especially in
the ranks of practically all the poets of distinction in this
century, not only in the United States but in many other
countries.
The surprising fact is that he
had even befriended the anti-
Semite Ezra Pound. The Pound
aspect is relevant to a review of
Untermeyer's life interests be-
cause the eminent poet and an-
thologist did have concerns about
Jews and Jewish roles as an
entity in the world.
The very extensive obituaries
in practically all of the American
newspapers made no mention of
Untermeyer's Jewish back-
ground. But there is such a mat-
ter in the life of this distinguished
personality. In 1949, the promi-
nent American Jewish commu-
nity leader, Henry Montor, the
organizer of the Israel Bonds
movement, whose career began
LOUIS UNTERMEYER
as a newspaperman, wrote a
lengthy review of Louis Untermeyer's autobiography. It
was syndicated by Seven Arts Feature Syndicate. Montor's
1939 article included this reference to Untermeyer's Jewish
loyalties and interests :
Because "From Another World" is not actually
autobiography, there is little opportunity for Unter-
meyer to say anything but an aside of the people of
whom he is a part and to whom the expression of
creativity is denied in lands which Untermeyer fre-
quently visited and admired. His salty comment on a
meeting with Mussolini sometime after he was
awarded an Italian prize for his "Donkey of God" is
typical of the unpretentious pride with which. Unter-
meyer contrasts the quality of the Jews with that of
their detractors. One can sense his humor as well as
his bitterness in quoting Godowsky's remark that today
much of the world seems to be divided between two
kinds of people: "non-Aryans" and "barbarians."
His portrait of the schizophrenic Lawrence leads him
into comparisons with the Jewish people.
"Here was the real split between Lawrence and
myself. As a Jew I could not accept dictatorially
inspired authority; freedom was not a 'detestable .
negative creed,' but something for which one never
ceased fighting. The Jew suffered because he con-
stantly denied divine authority in mortal man; he was
bounded, put to the rack, beaten and broken because he
refused to take power for granted.
"The Jew doubted perfection, and agonized himself
to make something, anything, better. He was hurt,
literally, not because he could not adapt himself to
strange people, but because he dared to believe he
could help them, even when they did not want to be
helped. It was not merely - the itch to reform; it was a
constant weltschmerz, a sad but stubborn moral
yearning. He pitted himself foolhardily against
inertia.
"Doomed by his very nature to resist complacency,
winch he identified with rigidity and death, the Jew
offended those who did not wish to be roused. The
objections to him were logical. He was, in the strictest
sense, an agitator; he excited and irritated those who
wanted no change. From the point of view of those who
prayed never to be disturbed, the Jew was truly a
disturbing element. The Jew might well have expected
the reaction. He should have remembered that the
pioneer is ridiculed by the stay-at-home, the disturber
is cast out, and the prophet is stoned."
Israeli and the hoped-for face-to-face talk is a reality. How else could there be an
approach to good will among neighbors?
Begin, Sadat, Weizman, Ghali, Dayan, Ghan-el-Gamassy, et. al., and many others, are
shaking hands. They are differing, but they are on speaking terms. Egyptians are
acclaiming Israelis at the decimated synagogues, just as Israelis had waved the flags of
his country when Sadat visited Jerusalem.
This is the new era ushered in on the eve of 1978 to be continued in the year now
being welcomed.
That which was begun in 1977 must continue in 1978. That is why the New Year augurs
so much of glory for mankind.
When was it so joyous as it is now to say Happy New Year?
Untermeyer was a man of wit and was regarded as a
parodist. He was serious when he defined the role of the
Jew in a statement that surely denotes his own legacy.
He was married five times to four women. His first wife,
Janet Starr, became known as the able poetess Jean Starr
Untermeyer, when he was 22. They were married from 1907
to 1923.
While resurrecting the sentiments of Louis Untermeyer
there is justification also in bringing to light again a view of
extreme interest that was expressed by Jean Starr Unter-
meyer nearly 30 years ago. The following is from the
"Private Collection of Jean Starr Untermeyer:"
The Nobel Prize winner of 1948, T.S. Eliot, had
declared, in the course of a lecture at the University of
Virginia, that in the homogeneous society toward
which he was looking and planning there would be . no
place for "free-thinking Jews." Eliot, whose influence
was then at its height, had already found followers for
his social canons, as sycophants among the critics and
epigones by the dozen among less-gifted poets.
Both (Ezra) Pound, who was ultimately more hope-
ful, and Eliot had been keenly aware of the loss in our
time of moral idealism and of the social and personal
malignancies that followed in the wake of that decline.
It may be that Pound's violent reformer's ardor first
planted the anti-Semitic virus in Eliot.
Viewing the latter in the round, one would have
thought that a fastidiousness that seems to be at the
core of this writing and being would have restrained
him from invidiousness, especially an invidiousness
which included (and excluded) a whole people. Be-
sides, I wondered then, as I do now, are Jews any more
free-thinking than other people with active curiosity
and the urge toward learning?
Neither Louis Untermeyer nor his wives had strong affi-
liations with the Jewish community. But they were not sen-
timentally estranged. "Dos Pintele Yid," - The Root of the
Jew," they used to call it. There is a bit of it in all of us.
Hidden Facts About Jewish
Sufferings in Poland
What purpose does it serve for the Soviet Union to
suppress the truth about the Babi Yar massacre and for
Poland to make the Jewish tragedy a mere symptom of
Nazism in a complex of Polonization ?
It can't be anything other than a perpetuation of the anti-
Semitism that has made Russia and Poland leaders in anti-
Jewish politicization of government policies.
The hiding of facts about Babi Yar, the Ukrainian guilt
linked to it, is one of the appalling denominators in hum
relations.
The "why" of it is applicable to Auschwitz and Treblini,d.
Why are the Poles shading the facts? Why is the Jewish
tragedy reduced to a figment as if the only sufferers in the
Nazi era in Poland were the Poles and Jews had been
victims only partially?
This is how the Jewish agonies are defined and Jews who
are easily misled when they tour Poland become victims of
the fib. The New York Times published such an exoneration
of the Poles. They were victims of a policy that defrauds
the truth. The euphoria over the Poles that was expressed
in such a NYTimes letter did not fall on blind eyes. Helene
Russ of Flushing, N.Y., challenged the blindness of mis-
guided tourists and replied, also in a letter to the NYTimes,
by indicating not only the failure to detect the truth and the
attempts to hide it but also the guilt of many who do the
misrepresenting. She called attention to these facts about
Polish guilt in ending many centuries of Jewish life in
Poland and the reduction of population of nearly three
million in that country to the present few thousand:
Now that Poland is virtually judenrein, a few lines in
a pamphlet and a monument to the heroes of the
Ghetto are but token testimony to the fact that Jews
once lived there. I need not harp on the 2,982,000 Polish
Jews killed in the Holocaust, many by Poles them-
selves.
I am bitter over the fact, which no Polish tourist
pamphlet dares write, that pogroms continued after
Polish liberation, when the world was still staggering
from Nazi genocide. The end of World War II in Poland
still did not bring an end to the extermination of Jews.
In two pogroms, one in Cracow on Aug. 11, 1945, and
the other in Kielce on July 4, 1946, thousands of Polish
men, women and children ran berserk in the Jewish
quarters. .
As late as Sept._ 15, 1972, the New York Times
reported, in an article entitled "Polish Jews in Den-
mark," that "officials estimate 10,000 to 15,000 Polish
Jews, or more than half of those who remained in
Poland after World War II, have been forced to leave
since the `anthZionist' campaign began in 1968....The
campaign...became anti-Semitic in tone...."
It is tragic enough that there were tragedies. It is equally
bad that there should be- distortions of truth. How fortunate
that there are the knowledgeable who reject untruth!
The Lesson From Bethlehem.... The Media and Israel's Mood
Bethlehem, the domicile for the Patriarchs in ancient times, now one of the holiest spots for Christians, serves an important lesson
for the world, with notable admonitions for the media.
The broadcasts during the Christmas season almost unanimously contained repetitions of a speculation about Israel's military who
guarded the area while many thousands of pilgrims travelled to Bethlehem to worship. There was an echo of_a speculation that next
year, because of the negotiations between Egypt and Israel, perhaps the holy area will not be militarized. The regrettable implication
was that there was an imposed militarization by a conqueror.
The fact is that the presence of Israel's military served as a police force to guarantee protection for all who came to pray and to
celebrate the holiest day on the Christian calendar. There were brawls resulting from drunkenness. There even was an explosion
which, fortunately, caused no damage. But for broadcasters to give the impression that the military acted like conquering occupiers
was an injustice. It was a lack of appreciation of the fact that a police force was assuring the thousands who had come as pilgrims
that they would be safe from terrorists, vandals and hoodlums.
The media have much to learn from the historic events now transpiring in Cairo and Jerusalem. with the intermittent confere t
that was held in Ismailia. Not a single newspaper or commentator, since the commencement of the sensational Sadat visit
'
Jerusalem in mid-November, as much as hinted that a two-way street was to be crossed, that if Israel was to make concessions there
also was need for concessions by the Arab states. True: the sensation commenced with the visit of Sadat to what was hitherto enemy
territory for Egyptians; but why the unceasing emphasis on the editorialized news that -
now is the time for Israel to make
concessions..." when nothing of a similar sound was proposed for Egypt?
Therefore, the :occasional demurring by Israelis and their friends that perhaps the one-sidedness of Sadat's domination over the
situation is menacing to a degree.
The relieving factors are double in nature: 1. There is confidence in the firmness, and pragmatism of Prime Minister Menahem
Begin. 2. The major Jewish demand upon the Arabs, in the 30 years of Israeli hegemony, has been for face-to-face
negotiations. This
has been achieved. Therefore the euphoria.
The Remarkable 26 Points Proposed by Israel
There is something unusual and very challenging in Prime Minister Menahem Begin's 26-point program as a basis for amity
between Israel and the Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
Could there be -
a better approach for peace first with the Arabs under Israel's administration and then with all the Arab states who
have waged war against the Jewish state?
What Israel asks is security, and a military on the borders is vital. In all other respects, the proposals are for good relations, better
education, guaranteed economic interchanges to assure high standards for all.
Begin thus challenges the good sense of all liberty-loving people. Could such proposals be rejected?