2 Friday, April 11, 1980
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Purely Commentary
Rescue of Danzig Art Treasures, Their Significance
Is Described in an Impressive Catalogue, With
Eminent Scholars' Commentaries on Tragic Experience
By Philip
Slomovitz
The Danzig Art Treasures and the Tragedy of a Devastated Community
An art collection rescued from the Nazis, the im-
pressions and historical analyses that accompany the ex:
hibition of these works in this country, serve as reminders
of the barbarism that threatened humanity on a world scale
and resulted in more than 12 million casualties, six million
of them Jews.
Danzig Jewry is the community that was ravaged, and
its treasured art works fortunately were transferred in
time, before they could be stolen or harmed in any form by
the Nazis. They have become the valued possessions of the
Jewish Museum of the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America in New York.
The contents of these treasures are described in the
catelogue published by Wayne State University Press
under the title "Danzig 1939; Treasures of a Destroyed
Community."
Initiated by the Jewish Museum of New York, the art
collection will be on exhibition in a number of cities during
a national tour, according to Dr. Bernard Goldman, direc-
tor of Wayne State University Press.
Joy Ungerleider-Mayerson, in an impressive introduc-
tory preface, provides a deeply moving account of the rescue
of the art treasures.
Dr. Joseph Gutmann, professor of art history at Wayne
State University, provides his expertise in the selection
and research of objects in this collection, in a scholarly
essay, "The Danzig Treasures." He comments:
The treasures of Danzig, one hopes, will encourage art
historians to research further works of Christian sil-
versmiths in Europe and inspire Jewish scholars to study
the remarkable customs and ceremonies which shape this
The WSU Danzig Catalog, issued jointly with the
Jewish Museum, has a number of essays which supplement
significantly the vast library available on the Holocaust.
The catalog includes an important article on the history of
the Jews of Danzig. Its author, Dr. Gerhon C. Bacon, states
in part:
Community officials invited back to Danzig Zvi
Hermann Segall, a local Revisionist Zionist figure
who one year earlier had first broached to them
an evacuation plan for Danzig Jewry. Segall also
had good connections with the local police. There
began a series of meetings with local officials to
develop an "orderly" plan for Jewish emigration.
Sonie 6,000 Jews left in Danzig needed places to
go, and only about half could easily find places of
refuge (these later being the 2,000 Jews who were
Polish citizens and the 1,000 with wealth or per-
sonal connections). In these desperate times,
Segall's plans no longer seemed outlandish.
The local Danzig authorities wanted the Jews to
leave, but still insisted on the legalistic formality
of having the Jews "agree" to leave. For this pur-
pose, a community-wide meeting was convened in
the Great Synagogue on Dec. 17, 1938. Two
thousand people filled the synagogue, where they
heard Segall and others speak of the painful deci-
sion they had to make. Those assembled rose from
their seats to show their agreement with the emig-
ration plan and their willingness to allow the
community leaders to make all necessary ar-
rangements.
The Danzig officials further insisted that each
Jew sign a document in which he promised to
follow the directives of the Jewish community of-
ficials. According to the plan proposed by Segall,
Polish Jews in Danzig would return to Poland,
other Jews who could get visas to various coun-
tries would do so, and the remainder (the major-
ity) would go in illegal transports to Palestine.
The Danzig Senate gave the Jews until May 1939
(later extended until the fall of 1939) to evacuate
all but the elderly and infirm Jews. In fact, even
the elderly tried to leave.
To finance their emigration, Danzig Jews
needed large sums of foreign currency. Little aid
came from Western Jewry. Some organizations
opposed any project run by the right-wing Re-
visionists, while British Jews considered aiding
illegal immigration to Palestine a "disloyal" act.
Finally, the American Joint Distribution Com-
mittee provided aid in a roundabout way: it sent
dollars to Danzig as the "purchase price" for the
collection of ritual objects belonging to the com-
munity. (These are the objects sent to the Jewish
Theological Seminary in New York that consti-
tute the present exhibition.)
The community also sold off all the real estate it
owned, including the Great Synagogue, for a frac-
tion of its actual value. A tragic scene unfolded
when Danzig Jewry gathered for the last time in
the Great Synagogue on April 15, 1939. The event
symbolized for all the beginning of the end of their
community. They consoled, themselves with the
thought that the sale of their beloved synagogue
would help finance the emigration of some corn-
munity members, so that Danzig Jewry might live
on somewhere else.
The exodus of Danzig Jewry continued until
October-November 1941, when the Nazis stopped
all emigration. Before that time, some Jewish
children found refuge in England. Several
hundred Jews went on various illegal transports
to Palestine. Some were successful. Others were
on the Patria, a ship the British were using to
deport illegal immigrants, which was blown up in
Haifa harbor on Nov. 25, 1940. Those Danzig Jews
who survived the Patria disaster were the only
ones allowed to stay in Palestine.
Danzig refugees who had not yet been trans-
ferred to the Patria were sent to distant exile in
Mauritius. Jews still in Danzig received "special
treatment" by the Nazis. Whereas the mass depor-
tation of Jews in the Reich only began in the fall of
1941, the deportation of Danzig Jews began the
previous February — to the Polish ghettos and to
Theresienstadt, from where they were sent to
their extermination. By the end of the war, only a
handful of people the Nazis defined as Jews re-
mained alive in Danzig.
For all practical purposes, the Danzig Jewish
community was no more. But Danzig Jewry lives
on in the memories of survivors scattered across
the globe, several of whom have written about
their community. Danzig Jewry lives on in the
community archives, which the community lead-
Silver Torah rimonim from the Danzig collection.
ers decided to entrust to the Jewish community of
Jerusalem.
Present and future Jewish historians can exam-
ine in minute detail the inner workings, ideals and
frustrations of this community as it faced the chal-
lenges of modernity and ultimately the horrors of
this century. Finally, Danzig Jewry lives on in the
collection of ritual objects from its Judaica
museum and its houses of worship. They are a
silent reminder of a living, _vibrant community
and a silent cry of anguish lamenting the tragic
end of that community.
There is special significance in the essay by the emi-
nent Christian author, Gunther Grass, whose article is
entitled, "What Shall We Tell Our Children?" Here is a
significant portion of this article:
The success of "popular" enlightenment has
never been more than skin deep. Demonstrably as
television series (as shown by public opinion
polls) shatter, touch, or horrify the masses, much
as they move them to pity or even shame — and
this was the effect of "Holocaust" — they are quite
incapable of disclosing the complex "modernity"
of genocide and the many-layered responsibilities
at the root of it.
Basically, Auschwitz was not a manifestation of
common human bestiality; it was a repeatable
consequence of a network of responsibilities so
organized and so subdivided that the individual
was conscious of no responsibility at all. The ac-
tion every individual who participated or did
not participate in the crime was determined
knowingly or unknowingly by a narrow concep-
Kaduk or
Ition of duty. Only the active agents
Eichmann, for instance — have been condemned,
but those who sat dutifully at their desks and all
-
—
those who suppressed their own powers of
speech, who did nothing for but also nothing
against, who knew but stood aside — they were
not judged, they had not (visibly) soiled their
hands.
Up until now the grave guilt of the Catholic and
Protestant churches has not been aired. Yet it has
been proved that by their passive acceptance they
shared in the responsibility for Auschwitz. At-
tempts of churchmen to justify their actions by
adducing reasons of state make it clear that cleri-
cally organized Christians took refuge in irres-
ponsibility unless they themselves were
endangered, with the exception of certain ,
courageous individuals who acted in disregard of
their church's instructions, and of the thus far
isolated case of the Evangelical Church's
"Stuttgart Confession of Guilt." Since Auschwitz,
Christian institutions (in Germany at least) have
forfeited their claim to ethical leadership.
The medieval persecutions of the Jews and the
deep-rooted Christian hatred of the Jews have
been taken over by modern anti-Semitism abetted
in recent years by the passive irresponsibility of
the churches. Not barbarians or beasts in human
form, but cultivated representatives of the region
of human brotherhood allowed the crime to hap-
pen: they are more responsible than the criminal
in the spotlight, be his name Kaduk or Eichmann.
In Danzig, too, the bishops of both churches
looked on, or stood indifferently aside, when in
November 1938 the synagogues in Langfuhr and
Zoppot were set on fire and the shrunken Jewish
community was terrorized by SA Sturm 96. At
that time I was 11 years old and both a Hitler
Youth and a practicing Catholic. In the Langfuhr
Church of the Sacred Heart, which was 10-
minutes walk from the Langfuhr Synagogue, I
minutes
never, up to the beginning of the war, heard a
single prayer on behalf of the persecuted Jews,
but I joined in babbling a good many prayers for
the victory of the German armies and the health of
the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler.
Individual Christians and Christian groups
shared the utmost bravery in resisting Nazism,
but the cowardice of the Catholic and Protestant
churches in Germany made the churches inactive
accomplices.
No television series says a word about that. The
many-faceted moral bankruptcy of the Christian
West would not lend itself to gripping, shattering,
horror-inspiring action. What shall we tell our
children? Take a good look at the hypocrites. Dis-
trust their gentle smiles. Fear their blessing.
The preface by Joy Ungerleider-Mayerson provides a
perfect evaluation of the catalogue and the genesis of its
rescue and transfer to New York. She states:
On July 26, 1939, ten huge crates, weighing over
two tons, were delivered to 122nd Street and
Broadway, New York City — the home of the
Jewish Theological Seminary of America. These
crates contained ceremonial objects, books,
scrolls, tapestries, textiles and memorabilia — the
precious possessions of a community that was
about to be destroyed, the Jewish community of
the Free City of Danzig.
In the early spring of 1939, the elders of the
Jewish community, realizing that life in Danzig
was becoming increasingly restricted by the
Nazis, undertook a heartbreaking project. By
agreement with the Nazi officials, who had been
elected to the Danzig government in growing
numbers from 1930 on, the elders negotiated the
sale of Jewish communal property, including the
historic Danzig Synagogue and the Jewish
cemetery. The proceeds of these sales were put
into a special bank account to finance the emigra-
tion of those members of the community who were
still permitted to leave. This dispersal would, in
effect, make Danzig "a city without Jews."
There remained the disposition of the religious
ceremonial objects used daily in the Great
Synagogue, as well as the exceptional Lesser
Gieldzinski Collection that was housed in a spe-
cial room of the same synagogue. the collection, a
gift of Lesser Gieldzinski, art collector, connois-
seur, and art adviser to Kaiser Wilhelm II, had
been donated to the community in 1904 and con-
tained outstanding examples of silver Torah
headpieces, breastplates, crowns and pointers; of
spice boxes and kidush cups; of silver and brass
menorot; and many other ritual objects.
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Corn-
.
(Continued on Page 12)