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Friday, January 4, 1985

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

PURELY COMMENTARY

miamismilimem
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

An inerasable chapter for Raoul Wallenberg saga: Prof. Slusser's recollections

More than a score — perhaps scores —
of books have appeared in English and in
Swedish, and many, many more in transla-
tions in many languages, about the
heroism of Raoul Wallenberg. His courage
is recorded indelibly in the history of this
era and in the records of the Holocaust.

Every book dealing with the
Holocaust and the Hitler terror refers to
the Wallenberg task in which he rescued
more than 20,000 Hungarian Jews and
prevented their being shipped to the death
camps installed by the Nazis. Some believe
that fearless devotion to an aim led to
100,000 being rescued. The most impor-
tant of the current books on the subject,
Prof. David Wyman's The Abandonment of
the Jews (Pantheon Books), gave due and
special attention to the Raoul Wallenberg
inerasable record of unmatched heroism.

Few people remembered Wallenberg.
A girl friend in Ann Arbor spoke of his
gentleness, his intelligence. Only a
classmate in the University of Michigan
College of Architecture, Sol King, took into
account his classmate's compassion and
concern for fellow human beings and he
instituted the Wallenberg Fund, introduc-
ing a series of annual lectures in Ann
Arbor in honor of Raoul Wallenberg. It was
not to be a memorial. Wallenberg's mother,
_ who lived to be past 90, refused to believe
he is dead. Like many today she believed
that her son's fate was secreted in the
Soviet Union and that he is alive. The Wal-
lenberg lectures continue annually with
the funds still available from the amount
that was subscribed in response to Sol
King's appeal for remembering Wallen-
berg.

Now there is some advance informa-
tion, from Rabbi Charles Rosenzveig, that
a special section of the Holocaust Memorial
Center established by Metropolitan De-
troit Jewry will be established in Wallen-
berg's honor.
Because there are so few who re-
- member Wallenberg, the recollection by a
faculty member of the University of Michi-
gan College of Architecture is valuable. It
enhances the record of one of the most
humane stories. of World War II and intro-
duces the rescuer of tens of thousands in a
very human way.

When this commentator joined with
Sol King in raising the fund for the Wal-
lenberg U-M lectures, Prof. Jean Paul
Slusser (now deceased — having lived to be
past 90), wrote:

1223 Pontiac St.
Ann Arbor, Michigan
February 5, 1969
Mr. Philip Slomovitz,
17100 West 7 Mile Road,
Detroit, Michigan

Dear Mr. Slomovitz:

Your letter just received in-
terested me greatly. I did indeed
know Raoul Wallenberg very well
and over a period of several years.
He was one of the brightest and
best students I think I had in my
30-year experience as a professor
of drawing and painting in the Col-
lege of Architecture and Design at
the University of Michigan.
It gives me pleasure to accede
your request, and recall a few
things about Raoul as I knew him. I
do this at once, lest I put by your
letter and inadvertently fail to give
it a proper reply.
Raoul Wallenberg was so apt a
student in drawing and painting —
I must have had him in three or
four classes during his studies with
us — that he got nothing but A's
from I suppose all of us. He defi-
nitely did from me. I asked him fi-
nally if he were not intending to be
an artist. He looked at me slowly
and, as I think of it now, perhaps a
little sadly. He then explained to
me briefly and with enormous
modesty, too, who his family were
and how the sons of the house of
Wallenberg were educated.
Only much later, when I visited
Stockholm — and with a letter of
introduction to his mother (which,
alas, I never used) in my luggage —
did I really discover who the Wal-
lenbergs actually were. I think
most people here only vaguely
knew about his family and its
prestige.. Raoul took his place in
the student body as just another
bright and eager young student of
architecture, and I happen to
know that he was very much liked
by both the girls and the men with
whom he associated. He lived in a
tiny frame house on Hill Street
here, so small that he occupied the
only rented room in it, on the
ground floor at the front. The
house has since then been taken
down.
So competent a draughtsman

Raoul Wallenberg in his student days.

and painter was young Wallenberg
that in his last class with me I
encouraged him to create a large
mural painting in pastel and
crayon on the corridor wall across
from my office on the fourth floor
of the Architecture building. He
worked on it for days, maybe
weeks, and it was so good that I
allowed it to remain in place for
perhaps a year or more. Probably
about 12x15 feet in size, it con-
tained some excellent groupings of

Shimon Peres' ecumenical unprecedented gesture beckoning for normalcy

Israel's Prime Minister Shimon Peres
was in the international limelight the day
before Christmas. He made an unprece-
dented visit to Bethlehem and expressed
holiday greetings to the Christian celeb-
rants. In the course of his remarks he spoke
of goodwill and uttered hopes for peace.

Shimon Peres:
A Bethlehem visitor.

The visit was unprecedented in the re-
cord of his predecessors in the high office he
attained as the top spokesman for his na-
tion.
Perhaps the act was a bit belated. It
may have much to be accounted for in the
ecumenism that is global.
Scores of articles have been written in
recent days about the dilemmas confronted
in mixed marriages. Many of the directly
concerned wrote and spoke about duties to
newly-related families. Christians found
themselves obligated to light Chanukah
candles, Jews joined spouses at Christmas
trees and ,some resorted to the banality of
"Chanukah bushing."
The Israeli situation is, of course, vas-

tly different. Shimon Peres' visit was an
obligatory gesture which really was the
humanly statesmanlike act. It was be-
lated. It expressed the necessity of declar-
ing to all citizens of his state that freedom
of.religion is the fact never to be abused,
the duty to live up to. It is a duty which will
hopefully lead to peace among all peoples,
commencing in Israel, gaining status in
Jerusalem.
In the mixed marriage realm, the
genuine ecumenism is respect for all, dig-
nity in family and human relations. It
rules out submission. Families desiring to
live in peace need not expect treating
newly-acquired relatives as if they demand
a "sharing" in observances. This could lead
to disrespect because it approaches hypoc
risy.
In any event, what was unprecedented
in the realism of Peres' visit to Bethlehem
must be treated as genuine ecumenism be-
cause it is truly the goodwill without forc-
ing one's views on neighbor and/or fellow
citizens.

large figures in full color, and had
a true mural feeling, or so it seemed
to me. The work was on heavy
reddish-gray building paper
bought by the roll.
In his last year at school Raoul
treated himself to an adventurous
hitch-hiker's trip clear across
America to the Pacific Coast and
back. He traveled in old clothes
and with only a small piece of lug-
gage and all went well, until on the
last leg of his journey, between
Chicago and Ann Arbor. An evil
driver, probably there were two in
the front seat, robbed him of his
spare cash and dumped him out on
the roadside somewhere this side
of Gary, Indiana, I think it must
have been. But Raoul loved every
minute of the trip, and enjoyed this
down•to-earth adventure more
than anything else.
I had lunch with Raoul whom I
encountered by chance in the
Michigan Union grill just a few
days before the sensational col-
lapse of the fortunes of the great
Swedish match-king, Ivor
Krueger. The man had been pic-
tured badly in the news of the day,
and we discussed him as a matter
of course. But Raoul leaned
towards me in deadly earnest.
"Ivor Krueger" (I hope my spelling
is correct) "is absolutely all right,"
he said. "My family knows him
well, and I'd stake my honor on his
honesty." Two or three days later
Ivor Krueger was dead, a suicide
wasn't he?, and poor Raoul was
crushed and morally disoriented. I
think I saw him only once after