2 Friday, Joe 23, 1918

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Purely Commentary

Authoritative Investigators Refute
Anti-Israel Brutality Charges

Israel Upheld on Terrorist "Brutality" Allegations . . .
Admonition Against Forgetting the Many. Horrors of the
Holocaust . . . An Oil Spill on U.S. University Campuses

Holocaust Library. In an introductory essay to the Korczak
"Ghetto Diary," Igor Newerly wrote:
This is the first printing of a typewritten copy,
As has already been expressed, the Sami Esmail case was
the only one saved, of the manuscript which was
a deplorable one. Would that the Israeli courts had tackled
handed
to me under Korczak's will a few days
the incident quickly, thereby avoiding what had developed
after his deportation to Treblinka together with
into a scandal.
all
residents
of the Children's Home.
Nevertheless, the facts regarding charges made against
At that time I did not consider my apartment at
Israel during that case should be studied carefully. If Israel
Zoliborz
a
sufficiently
safe place for this valuable
tortures prisoners her system must be condemned. If the
document, so I asked Maryna Falska to hide it
charge is untrue the facts should be established.
somewhere in Our Home at Bielany, and I man-
Two qualified students of judicial procedures did study
aged to pass it to her before my arrest. Wladys-
the case thoroughly, and their conclusions, absolving Is-
law Cichosz, an employee at Our Home, following
rael, must be recorded. Monroe H. Freedman and Alan M.
Falska's instructions, bricked it up in the attic of
Dershowitz, professors of law, respectively, at Hofstra Law
the orphanage building.
School and Harvard Law School, made a thorough study of
After the war the papers were recovered and
the case. In a N.Y. Times Op-Ed Page article, under the
passed
on to me when I returned from the con-
title, "Israeli Torture," they gave a complete analysis of the
centration camps.
Esmail case, listing all details, all charges. They turned to
Korczak
wrote his "Diary" in the ghetto mainly
the accusations of torture leveled at Israel and they rejected
between May and August 1942, although for some
the charges, asserting:
time, from 1939, his growing sense of desolation
had made him anxious to leave a final testament.
Mr. Esmail's case does appear "typical" in at
"Not so much an attempt at a synthesis as a grave
least one important respect: In virtually every
or
attempts, experiments, errors. Perhaps it may
case in which a suspected terrorist is arrested in
prove of use to somebody, some time, in 50 years
Israel, there are allegations of systematic torture,
.
.
.
In view of the deliberate and demonstrable lies in
He wrote the first pages in January 1940, then
the Esmail case, therefore allegations of systema-
put
the work aside. Two years later, in the face of
tic violations of human rights by Israel must be
approaching extinction, he resumed, and carried
viewed with more than a little skepticism.
on more or less systematically to the end.
We do not mean to suggest that abuses have
In order to understand and properly evaluate
never occurred in Israel. Among those people in
them it is necessary to visualize the place, time
any country who choose police work, there is a
and
conditions of their being written.
given percentage who are inclined to brutality.
Thus — the ghetto, a relatively small district of
The test of a society is not whether violations of
the
capital,
increasingly constricted by walls,
human rights occasionally occur. but how they
packed with over half a million Jewish popula-
are dealt with by the authorities. In Israel,
tion from Warsaw and nearby towns. "The dis-
policemen have been removed from office and
trict of the damned!," Korczak calls it, and
imprisoned for mistreating prisoners. Unhappily,
elsewhere in the "Diary" he writes: "The appear-
there are cities even in the United States today
ance
of the district changes from day to day: A
that do not have as good a record.
prison — a plague-stricken area — a lunatic
On the basis of direct observation of the Israeli
asylum — a casino. Monaco. The stake — your
criminal-justice system, including this highly sen-
head."
sitive case in which charge§ have been made of
Famine and typhus were decimating the popu-
systematic violations of human rights, it is our
lation. People dropped dead in the streets. Pin-
conclusion that Israel's system, though subject to
kert's
Last Service could not keep pace with the
particular criticisms, is one of the most highly
removal of corpses. Cleared in the morning, they
civilized and refined in the world.
piled
up
again by the evening. Normal. Children
This certainly is not an issue to be ignored. It so happens
played on the sidewalks, among bodies covered
that the charges striking at Israel's integrity were con-
with
newspapers
— unnoticed, meaningless as
cocted primarily by two Israelis, attorneys known for their
the notice on the wall:
Communist affiliations and their venom linked with their
"Always
keep
your
body clean. Dirt breeds lice;
political machinations and hatreds. According to the pro-
lice, typhus!"
fessors:
Time — in the sense of a normal perspective of
Closing arguments have been delayed, how-
days and months — did not exist. There was an
ever, because of a death in the defense attorney's
ephemeral present instant — and eternity. Lying
family. In the meantime, that attorney has been in
down to sleep, nobody was sure that he would not
the United States raising funds for the Committee
be wakened by the sound of a prison van—or shot
to Defend the Human Rights of Sami Esmail.
dead in bed. Going out, nobody knew whether he
Anyone who knows and understands the Israeli senti-
would return or be rounded up in the street and
ments sees through the machinations of the Communists.
find himself in a cattle truck. In this district re-
The Israeli public would not tolerate brutalities. As indi-
sembling a sprung trap, the dread of death om-
cated in the study by the two professors, whenever there are
nipresent,
there existed only the possibility of
charges of misconduct the army and the courts in Israel act
smuggling an existence from one instant to the
promptly to stem injustice. It is well that the truth is
next, or of utter resignation — the fusion of life in
demanded, as it is in the findings by Profs. Freedman and
some extrapersonal great existence. In something
Dershowitz.
having eternal meaning and dignity: Struggle —
truth and beauty — God .. .
Memoir About the Ghetto,
In the ghetto were gathered large numbers of
Korczak and Holocaust Diaries
the intelligentsia, including many creative work-
ers. They sought to the very last to sustain human
In a recent speech in Berlin, at a conference at which he
life on remainders of contemporary knowledge
introduced his book, "The Jewish Paradox," Dr. Nahum
Goldman said: "The Germans can not be allowed to forget
and culture: Scholars and artists were engrossed
the crime of the Holocaust, and the Jews can not forget."
in their work. Young people flocked to clandes-
tine schools and courses, lectures by professors in
HoW can the Holocaust horrors be engraved in historic
memory so that the worst of crimes may never again find an
specialized fields Drama studios, artistic troupes,
echo anywhere on earth, among all peoples regardless of
exhibitions, concerts, meeting with authors, lec-
tures by eminent scholars attracted large audi-
race or religion?
So many inhumanities are now being enacted that the
ences.
In this district of superimposed contrasts,
lessons of the Nazi era must serve as emphases for vigilance
under conditions endlessly macabre, the abso-
against the uncivilized.
Has the Holocaust story been told properly?
lutely normal — so it seems to me and I should like
One must read the chronicled stories of the occurrences to
to call attention to it — was non-existent. No one
could suffer the atmosphere of a ghetto and an
be able to pass them to the oncoming and to future genera-
Auschwitz and emerge unflawed. Everyone, vic-
tions.
Would that the martyred could guide all historians as
tim and henchman alike, was left inevitably with
they record the stories so that the actualities might be
some psychical taint.
When he was writing the "Diary," Korczak was
engraved on human minds!
64,
his constitution ruined, succumbing to the
There is an instance to be guided by. Only three days
burden of full responsibility for the fate of more
before he and the children who were in his 'b arge were to be
than 200 children and adolescents, from seven to
marched to their doom in the Treblinka death camp, Janusz
17-18 years of age, including a considerable
Korczak, the hero of the Warsaw Ghetto who would not
number of former residents who turned to him for
abandon the children but went to his death with them,
protection
and shelter.
turned over his diary to Igor Newerly. Igor, too, was
Who could possibly fail to be moved by this brutal
marked for death, but he escaped. He resurrected the
Korczak memoirs and they are now part of the Schocken realism? How can a human being, upon reading these lines,

By Philip
Slomovitz

fail to understand what had happened and apply its lesson
to all mankind?
May these recollections, by one who had experienced the
horrors, serve as a guide for all who would erase for all time
to come any attempt to permit the inhumanities that had
turned human beings into beasts.

Oil Dollars Buying Everything,
Including Universities in U.S.

They have been in e ■ Oclence everywhere for a long time,
the possessors of Arab billions derived from oil profits. Now
they are spreading their wings.
They have bought banks and immense mansions.
Now, gaining from the guidance of Madison Avenue they
know how cleverly to invade the universities and the com-
munications media.
Their students are coming to this country in the tens of
thousands and they are not lacking in comforts. Their af-
fluence is not begrudged. It is when they become the
spreaders of unfortunate poison-tinged propaganda
against Israel that their activities become a matter of con-
cern.
The visiting students from Arab lands have been espe-
cially vile on the University of Michigan campus. Jewish
faculty and students made urgent efforts to befriend them:
it proved hopeless.
Now a new weapon has been discovered by the Arabs.
They are buying up land in the Israel administered areas
with the aim of acquiring a territory for pressure. It could
become a means of claiming a territory as a weapon on the
international front as well as in the Israeli courts.

The new great friend in the media, Anthony Lewis of the
New York Times, made much of it. He referred to a land
contract which Israel refuses to transfer from an absentee
to a Nablus claimant. On its face value it sounds like an
expose of more Israeli persecutions of Arabs. It is a longer
story than is briefly alluded to by Lewis. It is part of the
entire struggle which compels Israel to fight for existence
and to reject any attempt to force her into suicide. If there
were a world court with honor and fairness, instead of the
polluted atmosphere of the United Nations, perhaps there
could be a solution to the vexed problem.

Meanwhile, the enemy is introducing the kushan — the
land contract of the absentees — as another threat to Is-
rael's attempt to arrive at fair decisions affecting the Arabs
in administered territory.
Tragically, there is no one for Israel to sit with to resolve
the issues. Anwar Sadat recalled his negotiators as they
were about to reach some form of agreement in Jerusalem.
That's how the world is being fooled into false hopes and the
complacencies about an Egyptian ruler who has acquired
dictatorial rule over the media and politics is not a provider
of complacency.
Woe unto those who suffer from such agonizing enigmas!

Anti-Discrimination Progress

NEW YORK (JTA) —
Progress in lowering the
bars of social clubs and of
major corporations to Jews,
described as constituting
interrelated patterns of
bias, was reported at the
72nd annual meeting of the
American Jewish Commit-
tee.
Richard L. Weiss, chair-
man of the Los Angeles
chapter, reported that the
chapter, which has been
working on the issue of so-
cial clubs which discrimi-
nate against Jews and other
minorities, "has been effec-
tive in opening up all the
downtown clubs except the
two most prestigious ones."
Weiss said the chapter
has the backing of some of
the most influential Christ-
ian members of the Los
Angeles community. He
said the effort requires
"changes in by-laws that
now permit a handful of
bigots to block the admis-
sion of Jews and others."
The New York regional
task force on executive
suite discrimination
dealt with 22 companies
listed among the "For-
tune 500" which have

headquarters offices in
the New York region, ac-
cording to a report by
George Karp, chairman.
The task force cited a spe-
cial program it arranged
with the Savings Banks As-
sociation of New York
State, under which a com-
mittee of bankers will work
with the task force to en-
courage executive recruit-
ing among Jews.
A "highly successful"
program of executive re-
cruitment among Jews by
some of the largest corpora-
tions with headquarters in
Cleveland was reported by
Lee D. Power, chairman of
the Cleveland chapter
management action prog-
ram. He called the program
a "long-term, low-key effort
to break down the barriers
of executive suite discrimi-
nation."
He reported that "as a re-
suit of our efforts, more than
150 Jewish men and women
have been hired and/or
promoted into responsible
management positions by
Cleveland-based corpora-
tions that previously might
not have even considered
Jewish applicants."