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Friday, April 19, 1985
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
PURELY COMMENTARY
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Paul Zuckerman's Star Role In Support Of Israel's AKIM
compassion. This role may now be consid-
ered major in his lifetime of activities, loc-
ally, nationally and on a world scale. His
services in behalf of AKIM must inspire
the support now sought for that important
movement.
President Reagan
On Dachau: Protest
From A Survivor
Paul Zuckerman: Boosting Israel's
retarded citizens.
An important Detroit community
service in support of a great cause was re-
corded here Monday evening, with the
showing of the film For Those I Loved. It
portrays the great drama in the life of Mar-
tin Gray, which really was the drama of an
entire people suffering from the Holocaust.
The movie in itself is important as a
retainer of the sad memories, with an aim
of not forgetting lest there is repetition of
the crimes permitted by sheer negligence
of libertarian duties.
The importance of presenting the film
here was its utilization in support of a very
important Israeli cause. Proceeds will be to
aid the work and encourage the efforts of
the movement called AKIM. It is the asso-
ciation for rehabilitation of mentally
handicapped children in Israel.
AKIM, established in 1951, is an ac-
ronym for "I shall comfort."
A member of the International League
of Societies for the Mentally Handicapped,
AKIM has gained worldwide recognition
for its notable services and uniquely in-
novative approaches to a pressing social
need. In its efforts for treating and re-
habilitating the handicapped, AKIM al-
ready provides services to more than
25,000 people and 50,000 more await the
opportunity of benefiting from the many
activities, including housing provided by
the Israeli movement that keeps gaining
much-needed support.
There is a relationship in the work of
AKIM with JARC — Jewish Association
for Retarded Citizens. A much lesser
number benefits from efforts here, yet the
pioneering tasks of providing means of as-
suring dignity for the handicapped relates
Israel and Detroit in great causes.
This is where the leadership of a prom-
inent Detroiter enters into the picture.
Paul Zuckerman has gained international
recognition for his devoted efforts in behalf
of the United Jewish Appeal, as well as his
share in the work of the Jewish Agency for
Israel and related Israeli causes. He and
his wife Helen recently gained added
acclaim for their work in behalf of the
Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent
of the Red Cross, their contribution of a
fully-equipped ambulance to the MDA
services and other.roles in the many fields
relating to Jewish efforts in Israel. The
Zuckermans also are prominent in educa-
tional ranks in Israel. Paul was highly
honored by the Hebrew University and one
every one of his many trips to Israel he
addresses Hebrew U. advanced classes
thus being referred to as "Professor."
It is in his national chairmanship of
American Friends of AKIM that Paul Zuc-
kerman attains a major role as a man of
Menachem Z. Rosensaft, a survivor
from Nazism, who was a very young boy
when the war ended, took exception to
President Reagan's decision not to visit
Dachau when he goes to Germany next
month. In a March 30 New York Times
Op-Ed Page recollection of his family's ex-
periences, under the heading "Reagan
Erred on the Holocaust," Rosensaft thus
introduces the theme:
President Reagan apparently
believes that all Germans alive
today are under 60 years old. Ac-
cording to him, "very few" Ger-
mans today even remember, let
alone took part in, the Second
World War, and none of them
"were adults and participating in
any way" in the events of 40 years
ago.
This is his rationale for not
going to Dachau next month and
not paying homage to the victims
of Nazism. He is afraid that the
German people's "unnecessary"
guilt feelings would be aggravated
if the President of the United
States were to visit the site of a Nazi
concentration camp. It would seem
that a brief history lesson is in or-
der.
Thereupon follows "the lesson" Rosen-
saft would teach those who hesitate to keep
alive the memory of the Holocaust, and he
admonishes the President:
In 1943, when my parents ar-
rived at Auschwitz, they were in
their early 305. Most of the German
guards and doctors who tortured
them and sent their families to the
gas chambers were their age or
younger. Similarly, many of the kil-
lers of Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen,
Dachau and all the other death
camps were in their 20s and 30s
when they participated in the an-
nihilation of six million European
Jews. Nazi Germany was, after all,
youth-oriented. Relatively few of
these mass murderers died in
battle, and only a handful of them
were executed for their crimes
after the war. Thus, many of them
are today in their 50s and 70s, still
alive and well and living in Ger-
many.
Josef Mengele, the notorious
chief doctor of Auschwitz, for
example, was two months younger
than my father and a year and a
half younger than my mother.
Mengele is now 74 years old —
exactly the same age as President
Reagan. Somehow, I think
Mengele remembers the Third Re-
ich. So do his high school and uni-
versity classmates.
Klaus Barbie, a Gestapo chief
in Nazi-occupied France, who is
now awaiting trial in a French jail,
was born in 1915. Seven of the 22
defendants in the 1963 trial in
Frankfurt of onetime Auschwitz
SS men were also born after Mr.
Reagan.
One frequently reads about
the reunions that old SS gangs hold
throughout Germany. When they
meet, they reminisce about the
good old days — when men were
men and Jews were subhuman —
and proclaim anew their loyalty to
the Fuhrer. Today, they must be in
great spirits. After 40 years, the
President of the United States has
finally said that it is all right to
forget all about them and their
barbarous exploits.
But Nazi war criminals are not
the only Germans who were adults
between 1940 and 1945. West Ger-
many's President, Richard von
Weizsacker, is 65 years old; the
Bavarian Prime Minister, Franz
Josef Strauss, is only 70. They, to-
gether with all the surviving vete-
rans of Hitler's armed forces and
storm troopers, bear at least a
share of responsibility — if not
personal guilt— for the Holocaust.
I do not mean to imply that all
Germans were Nazis, or that any
German born after 1945 should be
held responsible for the Holocaust.
The fact is, however, that Hitler's
Final Solution of the "Jewish
Question" was planned and im-
plemented by the German gov-
ernment in the name of the German
people. Whatever President Re-
agan thinks, a nation's identity is
the totality of its past, the bad as
well as the good. MIAs, the
Holocaust is and must remain
forever a part of the German na-
tional heritage.
None of this should really sur-
prise President Reagan. He, too,
remembers the war. Two years
ago, he told a gathering of more
than 15,000 Holocaust survivors:
"Our most sacred task now is in-
suring that the memory of this
greatest of human tragedies, the
Holocaust, never fades — that its
lessons are not forgotten."
Why, then, his disingenuous
excuse for not going to Dachau?
The disturbing answer is that
while it is politically advantageous
for him to speak about the
Holocaust to Jewish audiences in
the United States, he does not want
to risk offending anyone — even
Nazis — in Germany.
President Reagan's refusal to
observe the 40th anniversary of the
end of the Holocaust is morally of-
fensive.
Any wonder that Menachem Rosen-
saft is angry? It is not surprising that he
should have concluded his critical essay
with the expression of concern and an-
guish:
He (Reagan) has made it clear
that for him, the dead of Dachau,
symbolic of the dead of all the Nazi
concentration camps, are less
worthy of respect than the fallen
soldiers of Normandy or the GIs
who lie buried in Arlington Na-
tional Cemetery. In essence, he is
telling the world that he cares
more about contemporary German
sensibilities than about the mem-
ory of Hitler's victims. As a son of
Holocaust survivors, I am angry.
As an American, I am ashamed.
How deplorable that it became neces-
sary to offer such criticisms! There is no
doubt that President Reagan is conscious
of what had occurred and is sympathetic to
the effort to keep manifesting the memory
President Reagan is criticized for his
Dachau decision.
of the Holocaust as a means of preventing
recurrence of the horrors. The German
government and people would surely re-
spect a concentration camp visit. It is evi-
dent that the President was acting on the
wrong advice.
Addendum On
Politics: Principle
Above Partisanship
President Reagan was severely
criticized by New York Governor Mario
Cuomo for his refusal to go to Dachau. Sev-
eral U.S. Senators had similarly joined in
his earlier decision not to go to Dachau as
an expression of renewed condemnation of
the Nazi atrocities.
A former Congressman with an im-
pressive record of pro-Zionism and anti-
Hitlerism nevertheless feels offended by
the Cuomo attitude. Hamilton Fish has is-
sued a statement on the the subject. His
criticism of Cuomo recalls his early record
in Congress and his following statement is
therefore self-explanatory:
I am a past national comman-
der of the American Legion, a
member of Congress for 25 years,
the author of the Fish-Palestine
resolution that passed the Con-
gress and was signed by the
President and the author of a bill in
January, 1943, urging all nations,
including the allies and the neutral
nations, to petition Hitler to stop
his brutal Extermination and Final
Policy of killing all the Jews of
Europe. When I introduced the
resolution, it was estimated that
7,000 Jews were being killed every
day, including those at Auschwitz
concentration camps, many of
them in gas chambers. The State
Department said they had no in-
formation of the killing of the
Jews. Every nation in Europe
knew, by that time, of the brutal
extermination of European Jews,
but for some unknown and unex-
plained reason, F.D.R.'s State De-
partment opposed my resolution.
Ben Hecht, in his autobiography
said that "President Roosevelt's
failure to raise one of his
humanitarian fingers to prevent
the extermination of the Jews, his
many sullen statements about the
Jewish situation and his spiritual
anesthesia to the greatest genocide
was beyond comprehension." He
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