PURELY COMMENTARY
Preserving 1Vieasurers
Continued from Page 2
of a matzo factory in Boston on
Parmenter Street, taken in 1894.
The photograph was presented
by Mrs. Harriet Waldstein
Rosenberg and is of a matzo fac-
tory owned by her
great-grandfather.
We were presented with a
large number of photographs of
the Woodbine Agricultural
School funded in Woodbine,
New Jersey. These photographs
came from the Baron de Hirsch
Fund which originally spon-
sored this school.
Partially as a response to
our very successful exhibit on
Emma Lazarus, we were
presented with original music of
Irving Berlin's "Give Me Your
Tired, Your Poor" by Mrs. Hans
Seligman of Newton,
Massachusetts.
Four delegate badges and
medals from very early conven-
tions of the Federation of
American Zionists and the
preliminary convention of the
American Jedwish Congress
were presented by Rabbi Daniel
Lee Kaplan of Stoughton,
MAssachusetts.
A medal struck to com-
memorate the medalist, Victor
David Brenner, was presented
by Phillip Applebaum of Oak
Park, Michigan.
Morris Speizman of
Charlotte, North Carolina, was
instrumental in securing for us
a photocopy of a diary written
by L. Leon entitled "Diary of a
Tarheel Confedereate Soldier."
Mr. Leon was one of the earliest
Jewish residents of Charlotte
and the first president of the
Charlotte Lodge of B'nai B'rith
in 1877.
The Honorable Justine Wise
Polier presented us with some of
the surviving papers of her late
husband, Shad Polier, a promi-
nent communal figure and a
civil rights activist.
Judge Polier also presented
us extensive correspondence
from her mother, Louise Water-
man Wise.
We received a very unusual
collection of documents that
had been lost for almost a cen-
tury, consisting of the contem-
porary accounts and cor-
respndence relating to the
American Jewish community's
reaction to the notorious
Damascus Affair of 1840. The
material, placed in a tin canister,
was presented to us by Mrs.
Ruth Klein, widow of the late
Rabbi Edward Klein of the
Stephen Wise Free synagogue.
A previously unknown
Hebrew Bible printed in
American in 1835. Rosenbach
389 records the publication of a
Hebrew Grammar by the con-
vert, Joseph Frey, to which is at-
tached eight printed pages in
Hebrew. Very few cpies of this
volume are extant .. .
Such are the noteworthy achievements
of a most important American Jewish
36
FRIDAY, JULY 31, 1987
movement. Dr. Kaganoff points out in
his report that the AJHS has provided
material for an exhibit on early
American Jewish life to the Beth
Hatefutzot Museum in Tel Aviv. The
sharing and exhibiting the material
ona wide scale lends importance to the
soceity and its library. It's surprising
and disappointing that the membership
of the soceity is less than 4,000. When
a task was undertaken several years
ago by the AJHS's most devoted Detroit
associate, Leonard N. Simons, some 200
were enrolled in less than amonth. At-
tention called here to the AJHS will
hopefully inspire renewed and increas-
ed enrolllments.
tic documents, the truth is that
both parents were Hungarian-
born Jews. These documents,
along with many other relevant
ones used for this study, were
discovered in the Csongrad
County Archive in Szeged, the
Municipal Archive and the
Museum of Mako, and the
Metroplitan Archive of
Budapest.
Tragic Kapos
Continued from Page 2
One thing is clear. These peo-
ple cannot and should not be
compared to the Linases, Dem-
janjuks, Barbies and other
Ukrainian, Lithuanian and
Hungarian kapos who
volunteered to torture, murder,
and rejoiced in their bestiality.
Jacob Tannenbaum was a
victim of the German torture
machine and his brutality too
was a result of German
brutality.
Still . . . masses of Jews went
to their deaths refusing to
cooperate .. .
It is well to admit and recognize
that while kapo spelled cruelty there
were kapos who risked their own lives
and helped some victims of Nazism. The
Tannenbaum case is saddening. All the
related facts should be understood. Rab-
bi Liebhaber contributed toward such
an understanding.
Joseph Pulitzer
a Christian, an Austro-German
Catholic.
As early as the 1930's, Ed-
mund Vasvary, in his work Lin-
coln's Hungarian Heroes, re-
jected the veracity of this asser-
tion relative to the mother's
background. In fact, as can now
be verified by numerous authen-
In the popular census of
mako for the year 1850, each
member of the Pulitzer family is
entered separately and un-
mistakably under the heading of
religion as "Israelitic" and
under nationality as "Jedwish."
Other official records from this
time, such as registers of issued
passes and passports, which,
among the particulars and
various other data, state
religious persuasion, confirm
that Mrs. Pulitzer, too, was a Jew
and was born in Hungary.
The lengthy study outlined by Andras
Csillag traces several generations of
related Pulitzer families. The quotation
above is the only direct reference to the
Jewishness of Joseph Pulitzer's mother.
It provides much correcting not only in
my May 22 Commentary but also of all
Pulitzer references in all encyclopedic
works where Pulitzer is mentioned.
NEWS
Sharon Will Tell His Side
Of Events In Lebanon War
rIbl Aviv (JTA) — Ariel Sharon has
received official permission to make
public his version of the Lebanon war
in an address to a forum of senior
Pulitzer's
Israel Defense Force officers and
`Jewishness'
Defense establishment figures next
In the Purely Commentary in the month, Al Hamishmar reported last
May 22 issue on the Pulitzer Prize week.
awarded to David K. Shipler for his
Sharon, who was Defense
Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirit in the Minister during the war and is now
Promised Land (N.Y. Times Books), the Minister of Commerce and Industry,
opinion was expressed that Joseph intends to answer criticism voiced by
Pulitzer was not to be considered a Jew Generals Avigdor Ben-Gal and Amir
because his mother was not Jewish.
In the April 1987 issue of American Drori. They spoke at a seminar at Tel
Jewish Archives, which was issued to its Aviv University's Center for Strategic
readers this month, Andras Csillag, a Studies on the occasion of the fifth an-
teacher of English and history in Szeg- niversary of the Lebanon War.
ed, Hungary, made a study of the
Sharon has been accused by many
background of the Pulitzer family. In of engineering the IDF's invasion of
his article entitled "Joseph Pulitzer's Lebanon in June 1982 without infor-
Roots In Europe: A Genealogical ming Prime Minister Menachem
History," he stated:
Begin and the rest of the Cabinet of
The religion and the na-
his full objectives. Last year, he
tionality of Joseph Pulitzer's
brought a libel suit in the U.S. against
parents are crucial questions in
Time magazine which had reported
judging his background.
that Sharon encouraged the family of
Several of even the most signifi-
Lebanese President-elect Bashir
cant monographs and
Gemayel to avenge his assassination.
biographies on him, including
According
to Time, that resulted in
the German Lexikon des Juden-
the massacre of Palestinians in the
tums, accept as a fact the view
Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by
published by Ireland and Seitz,
members of the Christian Phalangist
and widespread in America,
that Joseph's father was a
militia. While the American court
Hungarian Jew, and his mother,
found the story was false, it did not
Ariel Sharon
find Time guilty of libel and it did not
award Sharon punitive damages.
The controversial general is con-
sidering libel suit against Israeli jour-
nalist David Halevy, who now lives in
the U.S., Hadashot reported. Halevy
and an American co-author have writ-
ten a book about Lt. Col. Oliver
North, who was fired from the Na-
tional Security Council last year. Ac-
cording to the authors, North met
with Sharon, who allegedly revealed
secret plans for the IDF to attack the
Syrian army. Sharon has denied their
account.