8 Friday, April 12, 1985 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS PURELY COMMENTARY Marc Chagall Continued from Page 2 Moscow correspondent who cabled this story from Russia. The Anderson report was mere intro- duction to the Chagall-USSR drama. Why did the Communists, who at the outset were served well by Chagall, ban Chagall and artists of his school of thought. Again in the Times, a year later, under the date of Nov. 18, 1967, Henry Kamm, also from Moscow, cabled this story to his paper: Tucked away among pictures by artists no one remembers in Moscow's largest museum is a drawing by Marc Chagall. The painter's works, banned here since soon after he left Russia in 1922, have been confined to the storage rooms of museums here and in Leningrad. Now one drawing has shown - up in a special 50th-anniversary exhibition of Revolutionary art at the Tretyakov Gallery. It is of minor artistic value but great his- toric interest, dating from the im- mediate post-Revolutionary period when Mr. Chagall was commissar of art and head of the fine arts academy in his native city of Vitebsk. _ It is a sketch meant to be copied for part of a large poster, dated 1918-19, devoted to the theme 'Peace to the huts, war to the palaces." The pencil and water-color drawing, about the size of a sheet of letter paper, illustrates the sec- ond part of the slogan. It shows a peasant holding a columned man- sion over his head as though about to smash it on the ground. He wears a belted red tunic, white trousers and black boots. His hair is green. In his autobiography, Mr. Chagall recalled Vitebsk just be- fore the first anniversary of the Revolution. "In our town there were a lot of house painters," he wrote. "I called them all together and I said to them: 'Listen, you and your chil- dren will all be students at my school. "Close your shops for paint- ings signs and walls. All orders will be sent to our school, and you will share them among you. Here are a dozen sketches. Copy them on large canvases, and on the day when the column of workers marches through the city, flags and torchesin their hands, you will hang them on the walls of the town." "All the house painters, the bearded old ones and their ap- prentices, got to work copying my cows and my horses," he contin- ued. "And the day of Oct. 25 (under the pre-Revolutionary calendar) my many-colored animals, swelled with Revolution, were hanging all over town." The people loved them, Mr. Chagall went on, but the Com- munist leaders asked: "Why is the cow green, and why is the horse flying into the sky, why? What does it have to do with Marx and Le- nin?" Chagall's inability to answer those questions satisfactorily led to his estrangement from the new leaders. The same thing happened to many artists who had believed the Revolution would also free art, and a number of the pictures in the Moscow display are in the Ex- pressionist or Futurist styles that were later banned. The sensational stories from the Soviet Union about the Communist atti- tude toward Chagall found a climax in a UPI cable from Moscow, dated April 13, 1968, revealing the following: An exhibition of the works of Marc Chagall has been canceled and measures have been taken against several dissident intellec- tuals in a mounting Communist campaign for ideological con- formism, according to informed sources. The Chagall show was to have opened May 12 in Akadem- gorodok, a city built recently as a suburb of Novosibirsk, Siberia, for the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Chagall was reported to have lent some of his paintings to the exhibition and to have promised to attend its opening. Mikhail Makarenko, director of Akademgorodok's art gallery, has been removed from his job, the sources said, presumably because he had published a catalogue of the exhibition without authorization. At the same time it was offi- cially reported that at least one painter, B. Birger, has been expel- led from the Communist party for having signed a petition protesting the trial in January of four dissi- dents who were found guilty of association with National Union of Russian Solidarists, an anti- Communist emigre organization based in West Germany and known as N.T.S. While Communists banned , him, the world accepted and acclaimed Chagall. On Nov. 17, 1967, the United Nations issued First Postal Commemoration of Art Gifts, containing a multi-colored sheet approx- imately five inches wide and three-and-a- quarter inches high depicting the Marc Chagall receives an honorary doctorate from Hebrew University in 1977. • Chagall stained glass window in the UN Secretariat Building. The 15 by 12 window was a gift from Chagall and members of the secretariat in memory of the late UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and 17 who died with him in a plane crash at Ndola, Africa, Sept. 17, 1961, while on a peace-keeping Cong mission. There is an updated item that adds merit to the Chagall story. The Times, in its April 1, issue, provides this addendum to the UN Chagall painting under the heading "Chagall's Gift": It is no longer included on the public tour of the United Nations, but a stained-glass panel donated by Marc Chagall still catches the eye. _ Staff and visitors have been stopping by to pay respects to the great French artist, who died Tlwrsday at the age of 97. The panel, which Chagall de- signed in honor of the late Secre- tary General Dag Hammarskjold, depicts symbols of peace, law and motherhood on a background of swirling luminescent blue. "The real beauty of it is in the color," said Jean M. Robinette, an artist from Dallas who works in stained glass and who stopped by the United Nations for a visit on Friday. The artist is dead. His memory lives on in Vitebsk, in Israel, the United Nations and the admiring world. Littell Symbolizes Chassid And Hacham Among Christians Rev. Franklin H. Littell "Holocaust Academy" has become a challenging and deeply emotionally- appealing title for an occasion to honor the righteous who have not failed to show re- spect for human values. Among the Chris- tians, these selected people with a sense of honor and with a dedication for justice have been listed as the Righteous Gentiles. A leader in these ranks will be honored at the current Holocaust Academy, Sunday at the Jewish Community Center. Dr. Franklin H. Littell is the righteous selectee for this occasion and great respect should be shoWn by the group sponsoring the event — the Shaarit Haplaytah move- ment composed of survivors from the Nazi horror and these co-sponsors: Holocaust Memorial Center, Greater Detroit Round Table of the National Conference of Chris- tians and Jews, Jewish Community Coun- cil and Jewish Community Center. It would be an unfair oversight not to provide the merited credit for initiating these academies to the man who has led in the formation of the movement in their behalf. Dr. John Mames inspired the academies. The result has become a com- munal inspiration. It is to the credit of Dr. Mames that he has chosen for the current Righteous Gen- tile designation the eminent Christian, Dr. Franklin Littell, the fearless advocate of every just movement that exposes tyranny, that registers the desired condemnation for religious bigotries. Dr. Littell is preacher and scholar. His works have made him a member of this newspaper's editorial family. His articles are the fearless expressions of a scholar who does not hesitate to indicate where his fellow Christians act unfairly and prejudi- cial toward Jews, blacks and whoever is chosen for hatred. Therefore the very mention of the name Franklin Littell must at once result in an expression of admiration for a man of justice and deep sincerity. Therefore his selection for the current honor as the 1985 Righteous Gentile at once lends great interest in the theme for righteousness, the merits accorded to the element included among the Hasidei Ummot Ha-Olam. There is an important definition for them in the Encyclopedia Judaica where they are defined as: Hasidei Ummot Ha-olam — A rabbinic term denoting righteous gentiles. The concept is first found (albeit in a limited form) in the Midrash. The Yalkut Shimoni, for instance, explains that the verse "Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness . ." (Ps. 132:9) refers to "the righteous of other nations who are priests to the Holy One in this world." The notion that the hasidei ummot ha-olam also merit a place in the world to come (a true sign of their worthiness) is found in the Tosefta, which teaches that they