18

Friday, October 14, 1983

According to "A Dictio-
nary of Jewish Names and
Their History," the sur-
name Behar is an acronym
of ben harav, "the son of the

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

rabbi," among Eastern
European Jews. If it is a
Sephardic name, it is de-
rived from the Arabic and
means "from the sea."

40th Anniversary of Sobibor Uprising

By JAMES RICE

CHICAGO (JTA) — "On
Oct. 14, 1943, at about 5

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p.m., a revolt of Jews in the
SS camp Sobibor, 25 miles
north of Chelm. They over-
powered the guards, seized
the armory, and, after an
exchange of shots with the
camp garrison, fled in un-
known directions. Nine SS
men murdered, one SS man
missing, two foreign guards
shot to death. Approxi-
mately 300 Jews escaped.
The remainder were shot to
death or are now in camp
. . .
That report was sent by
the SS to Berlin on Oct. 15,
1943. In point of fact, 600
Jews had stormed out of the
death camp in a carefully
planned escape led by Ale-
xander Pechersky, a Rus-
sian Jewish officer, and
Leon Feldhendler, son of a
Polish rabbi.
Almost half were killed as
they broke through the
gates and barbed wire of
Sobibor, where 250,000
European Jews had been
exterminated in the 20
months of the camp's exis-
tence.
This was the largest
prisoner escape of World
War II — and it was
Jewish slave laborers
who accomplished it. Not
even Allied soldiers in the
relatively humane Ger-
man prisoner-of-war
camps ever managed to
escape in such numbers.
Of the 300 or more who
made it through the gate,
only about 50 survived the
war — most of them bet-
rayed to the Nazis later by
Poles. Some fought and died
in resistance groups, where
Poles also killed them.
Some survivors were saved
by Poles.
This too little known

story is dramatically and
compassionately told in
"Escape from Sobibor"
(Houghton Mifflin), by
Richard Rashke, a non-
Jewish writer.
Why is the Sobibor story
still so little known? When
the Allies captured millions

of German documents, Only
three referred to Sobibor, as
part of Himmler's Opera-
tion Reinhard, the code
name of Sobibor, Beize, and
Treblinka, where 1.65 mill-
ion Jews were gassed.
Sobibor, the smallest, was
Himmler's best kept secret.

Prince Asks Jews to Help
Repair Westminster Abbey

LONDON (JTA) — Pr-
ince Philip, husband of
Queen Elizabeth II, has
asked Chief Rabbi Im-
manuel Jakobovits whether
British Jewry would sup-
port a fund for repairing
Westminister Abbey, one of
the most historic cathedrals
in England.
The surprise suggestion
is revealed in an exchange
of correspondence published
by Jakobovits. The chief
rabbi, in his reply, did not
rule out the Anglo-Jewish
community's support, but
suggested it would have to
be directed at some aspect of
the Abbey "not directly
connected with worship,
such as perhaps the lib-
rary."
In his letter, dated March
31, Prince Philip said that
as president of the
Westminister Abbey Trust,
set up to raise money for
cleaning and repairing the
Abbey, he had been told of a
forthcoming display of the
Abbey's archives. Among
them were letters from a
group of Jewish merchants
in the north of England to
the King, sending some
money to help with the re-
building of the Abbey in the
13th Century.
He continued, "The

thought occurred to me
to ask whether it might be
an idea to invite the
Jewish community as a
whole to make a con-
tribution on the repair of
the Abbey." He added
that he would "quite un-
derstand" if the chief
rabbi told him the idea
was not worth pursuing.
Replying, Jakobovits re-
ferred to the Jewish associa-
tions with Westminister
Abbey going back to the
13th Century, including the
Jerusalem Chamber and
works of Jewish interest in
the Abbey library.
What both men glossed
over was the fact that the
13th Century saw the
climax of Jewish sufferings
in medieval England, cul-
minating with the commun-
ity's expulsion in 1290.
Among many ways of bleed-
ing the community dry was
to force individual Jews to
contribute to the rebuilding
of Westminister Abbey.

Honor Bestowed

Dr. Sidney Grossberg has
been elected to the National
Academies of Practice as
Distinguished Practitioner
in Social Work. He is the
only Michigan resident so
honored.

4th ANNUAL DINNER-DANCE

of the

FRIENDS OF ISRAEL CANCER ASSOCIATION IN MICHIGAN

on

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6th, 1983

at

Congregation B'nai David

Guest Speaker

Mr. Irving
Nusbaum

m.c.s
Max Sosin &
Arthur J. - Weiss

Music by Eric Rosenow and his Continentals

Couvert -$50 per couple

Cocktails 6:00 o'clock

To reserve tables of 10 for your relatives and friends R. S. V. P.
or call Mrs. Mary Papo, 967;4414 or Michael Weiss, 399-5388

