THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with the issue of July 20. 1951
Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers. Michigan Press Association. National Editorial Association.
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CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Business Manager
DREW LIEBERWITZ
HEIDI PRESS
Advertising Manager
Assistant News Editor
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
ALAN HITSKY
News Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the 26th day of Sivan, 5738, the following scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Numbers 13:1-15:41. Prophetical portion, Joshua 2:1-24.
Wednesday and Thursday, Rosh Hodesh Tammuz. Numbers 28:1-15
Candle lighting, Friday, June 30, 8:54 p.m.
VOL. LXXIII, No. 17
Page Four
Friday, June 30, 1978
New Schocken Library
Imperishable Holocaust Literature
Donat, the chairman's son, Hadassah Rosen-
saft, Leon W. Wells and Elie Wiesel. All are
deeply involved in the families of survivors and
the groups concerned with and active in keeping
the memory of the Holocaust alive.
It is significant that in addition to Donat's
book the Schocken Holocaust Library includes
one of the most moving stories related to the
heroism of the victims of Nazism, Janusz
Korczak. His "Ghetto Diary" is presented here
as memorandum on the courage of a man who
could have saved himself but went to the death
camp with 200 orphans he called his children
and from whom he would not be separated.
Then there are Leon Wells' ",The Death
Brigade," Philip Friedman's "Their Brothers'
Keepers: The Christian Heroes and Heroines
Who Helped the Oppressed Escape the Nazi
Terror," and Gideon Hausner's "Justice in
Jerusalem," the recorded story of the Eichmann
trial by the Israeli prosecuting attorney in that
historic case of the captured Nazi who was
punished by Israel.
It is not often that a publishing venture
Let it be noted that an important advisory merits editorial comment. The Schocken
board guided the publication of the Schocken Holocaust Library merits all the appreciation
Holocaust Library. It is headed by Alexander that can be expressed for the availability of a
Donat, now a New York printer, who had writ- valued and merited series of books that will
ten "The Holocaust Kingdom," in which he de- fulfill the need of keeping the record of Jewish
scribed his and his family's sufferings under suffering, and of the resistance, as well as the
Nazism in Poland and their survival. On that courage of Christians who would not submit to
board with him are Sam E. Bloch, William H. the Nazis, as an inerasable chapter in history.
Recapitulation of the Holocaust story will be
incomplete without the perpetuation of the
memoirs of the sufferers, the documentations by
survivors, the accumulating literature on the
subject without which historical facts will be
lacking and knowledgeability about the issue
reduced to a minimum.
The NBC television programs revived an in-
terest in the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s. The
facts recorded in important published works
demand even greater attention.
Schocken Books, the publishing house in this
country that bears the name of or. e of the most
noted Jewish publishers in the world, whose
beginnings were in Germany and continued in
Israel, a firm with a reputation for the most
important list of classics of Jewish and general
nature, has just made available five volumes of
great significance. They must assume a de-
manding role upon all who are concerned that
an important era in history should not be
erased, that they should be read as a warning
for all generations to come never again to per-
mit the crime of Hitlerism to be repeated, any
A Lesson in Po pulation Figures
Israel's population figures made public after a
census conducted on the eve of the nation's 30th
anniversary shows that there are presently in
Israel 3,677,000 people, including 581,000
non-Jews.
In 1948, there were 650,000 people in the
reborn state of Israel — 156,000 of them were
non-Jews.
Of the 2,445,000 Jewish increase during the
30 years of Israel's statehood, 1,112,000 repre-
sent a natural increase and 1,333,000 were
newcomers to the land.
At Israel's rebirth only 36 percent were
native-born while the present figure 'shows 53
percent to be native-born sabras.
These figures do not include the pre-Israel
Arab population. Excluded also are the
1,100,000 Arabs who reside in Israel's adminis-
tered territory that was acquired on the West
Bank.
Taking into consideration the basic fact that
more than 3.1 million residents of Israel are
Jews, making Israel the second largest Jewish
community in the world, next to the United
States, a serious obligation devolves upon world
Jewry to assure the security and progressive
status of the Jewish state redeemed after 1,900
years of exile. While the third largest commun-
ity, Russian Jewry, suffers from the dispute
over the USSR government population figure of
2.5 million as opposed to some Jewish claims
that there are more than three million Jews in
Russia, their tertiary status is generally con-
ceded. The status of Russian Jewry also is a
matter of concern to the Jews of the world and
Jews in free communities, especially the United
States, Great Britain and Canada, will continue
to strive for amelioration of the discriminations
practiced against Jews there.
Meanwhile, there is the major task of assur-
ing a secure position for Israel's Jews. Those
who would destroy the state, the Arafat-led
PLO, have linked their threats of brutality with
a plank in their platform for the expulsion of all
Jews who have not lived in Israel prior to 1947,
the year of the United Nations decision for the
partition of Palestine. The figures made known
in the census point to the inhumanism of
threats of another Genocide intended for Is-
rael's Jews. The 3 million established there are
the nation-builders who have lived in Israel and
rebuilt the desert, causing the Jewish state lit-
erally to blossom like a rose. Any threat to de-
stroy an entire people is in itself self-indictment
to savagery. Israel lives and population-wise is
a symbol of the people's determination to assure
indestructibility. Anything other than this
would mean another Holocaust and there is
reason to believe that even the most extreme
Arabs, excepting the-PLO, would not tolerate
that.
Drama of Janusz Korczak:
His Diary and Commentary
"Ghetto Diary" by Janusz Korczak is a dramatic story. It is the
narrative about one of the most moving tragedies of the last war. Its
inclusion in the Schocken Holocaust Library contributes in some
measure in preserving one of the most important episodes of heroism
under Nazism.
Translated from the Polish by Jerzy Bachrach and Barbara
Krzywicka (Bedder), the diary contains Korczak's entries from
January 1940 through Aug. 4, 1942, the day before he died. How was
this possible?
He had given the diary to Igor Newerly who preserved it . Newerly
was himself sent to a death camp but he survived. He wrote so moving
a preface to the diary that it, too, emerges as a notable contribution to
the Holocaust Library.
Korczak was a pediatrician. He
was a distinguished writer of stories
for children. He abandoned medicine
to become the director of the Chil-
dren's Home in Warsaw, housed at
16 Sienna St. and 9 Liska St. It had
been moved therefrom Krochmalna
St. which was outside the ghetto
walls.
Wherein lies significance of the
Korczak story? He could have saved
himself but he would not abandon
the children. He called them his 200
children. When they were ordered to
the death camp he marched with
them, two infants in his arms, to the
Umschlagplatz near the Gdabsja St.
Railroad Station on the way to Treb-
linka.
He led one group and was followed
JANUSZ KORCZAK
-
by another group of his children led
by Stefania Wilczynska, his loyal nurse and co-worker. They went to
their deaths heroically, refusing to abandon the children.
The drama as recorded by Korczak commences with the words:
"Reminiscences make a sad, depressing literature." It is a summary of
an experience that will go down in history as one of the most heart-
rending and at the same time as a definition of loyalty and courage to
an ideal.
The manner of Korczak's devotions, how he battled against Nazi
threats to secure bits of food for the children, how he provided for their
health and dignity are recorded. He conducted the home as if it were
in an atmosphere of freedom, teaching the youths, assuring a cultural
environment for them amidst music, reading, conversationalism, the
humanism they would otherwise have been denied.
Aaron Zeitlin (1889-1973), the eminent Yiddish poet who also had
lived in Poland, wrote the introduction which is a tribute to a noble
life. Zeitlin refers to Korczak as "a healer of the sick who built up his
dream . . . who planned to establish the world's first children's re-
public."
Zeitlin's is an account of Janusz Korczak.who was born Hirsh Zvi
Goldsznyt. His essay was translated from the Yiddish by Hadassah
Rosenzaft and Gertrude Hurschler.
The Korczak diary is the recorded story of a man who loved nature
and would not abandon the beauties of life. The very last entry, after
recording the agonies he had undergone, himself having been seri-
ously ill, is a defiance of the brutal, contained in the assertion: "I am
watering the flowers."
That's how he made his life consistent with -hopes of the good that
defies evil. He died for his ideal. His memory lives on and his diary
lends significance to the memory of a giant for whom even the Poland
that has been guilty of indecencies towards Jews has issued a postage
stamp commemorating him.