PURELY COMMENTARY
Never Again
Continued from Page 2
Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws
of Occupation, Analysis of
Government Proposals for
Redress, in which he first
systematized the material under
the term genocide.
In 1946, Lemkin succeeded
in mobilizing suficient support
to have genocide put on the
agenda of the U.N. General
Assembly. The Economic and
Social Council invited him to
present a draft convention.
Assisted by Herbert V. Evatt, the
Australian president of the
General Assembly, he was able
to get that body to pass a resolu-
tion in December 1948 on the
adoption of the Convention for
the Prevention and Punishment
of Genocide.
Although he was not an of-
ficial of an international
organization, Lemkin never-
theless played an important role
through his forceful personal
insistence.
Whilekeeping alive the memory of
Kristallnacht with tributes to the vic-
tims and condemnations of the beasts
who committed the crimes, we dedicate
ourselves to the principles embodied in
the genocide act. We also pledge again
never to forget. The aim is never to
repeat the horrors on record as the most
inhuman in historic experiences.
The 50th anniversary of
Krsitallnacht is a time for serious
obligations. Mankind was on trial
together with the Germans at that
time. The "never again" and "never
forget" become international com-
mitments to human dignity.
Gorbachev Pushed
On Raoul Wallenberg
I
n a Wall Street Journal article
occasioned by the removal of Andrei
Gromyko from the presidency of the
Soviet Union, Bill Paul wrote a
challenge to the Soviet statesman now,
at last, to reveal the state of health of
Raoul Wallenberg. Wallenberg is believ-
ed to remain in a Soviet prison more
than 40 years after rescuing thousands
of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis.
In the appeal to Mikhail Gorbachev,
Paul emphasized that Gorbachev had to
tread lightly on the issue of whether
Wallenberg might still be alive "as
many witnesses have proclaimed over
the years." Paul wrote in his letter to
Gorbachev:
But I believe that you —
unlike Mr. Gromyko and the
heads of state he served, in-
cluding Josef Stalin — don't
think Mr. Wallenberg was a spy.
Your prime minister, Nikolai
Ryzhkov, said in a speech in
Stockholm a few months ago
that Mr. Wallenberg was a great
humanitarian.
From news reports, I know
you recently had a hand in con-
struction of a new monument to
Mr. Wallenberg in Budapest, the
city where he performed his
miracle. Your predecessors
. 40 . FRIDAY,..1VVEMBER. 4,.1988
Raoul Wallenberg
ordered the original monument
removed to a provincial phar-
macological college, where it
stands today without identify-
ing marks .. .
Please find Mr. Wallenberg,
Mr. Gorbachev. As his brother
noted in a speech in
Philadelphia one year ago,
Raoul Wallenberg may be
buried alive in your prison
system, a nameless inmate who
even you, Mr. Gorbachev, may
think died long ago.
Mr. Gorbachev, there's no
question your predecessors lied
about what happened to Mr.
Wallenberg. In 1947, then-Soviet
deputy foreign minister Andrei
Vyshinsky said that
"Wallenberg is not in the Soviet
Union," and that "he is
unknown to us:' But then, in an-
nouncing Mr. Wallenberg's
death in 1957, Mr. Gromyko said
Mr. Wallenberg had in fact been
a Soviet prisoner in 1947. So
why when Mr. Gromyko says, as
he did in 1957, that Mr.
Wallenberg died of a heart at-
tack, should we — or you —
believe him?
Recent press reports have
noted that you've already got
the KGB trying to find out what
happened to the victims of
Stalin's purges so that today the
victims' relatives might find
some inner peace. To find Mr.
Wallenberg, you might want to
start at the Blagoveshchenka
labor camp, where a new book
by Swedish author Kenne Fant
says Mr. Wallenberg was seen in
1986 by "a very trustworthy
source."
To millions of people, Raoul
Wallenberg is a hero, a
courageous humanitarian who
stared down the Nazis — who
were your enemy as ours, Mr.
Gorbachev ..
The point made here is of great im-
portance. Perhaps there will be another
Gorbachev gesture that will resolve the
Wallenberg secrecy in the USSR. Gor-
bachev has another duty to fulfill: that
of rehabilitating the Jewish poets,
authors, theatrical geniuses who were
massacred by Stalin.
Was Gromyko compassionate did
he merely follow orders, as so many in
his ranks always do? He may not have
been the vilest of anti-Semites and it
could be believed that he was helpful in
the Soviet's immediate recognition of
Israel's statehood immediately after
that act by President Truman.
I was next to Gromyko for a few
minutes at the United Nations about an
hour before Israel's statehood was pro-
claimed. Gromyko had just arrived at
the U.N. accompanied by Bernard
Baruch after both had been on a fishing
trip. We then learned that Baruch had
just received guarantees from Latin
American countries that they would be
in favor of the Zionist cause in the ap-
proaching historic vote. Perhaps the
USSR vote also was guaranteed in that
fashion.
Perhaps it should be noted that An-
thony Eden had just passed me at the
entrance to the UN assembly hall. The
British vote by Eden and his associates
was against Zionism and Jewish
statehood.
In the matters relating to Israel and
the USSR it is necessary at this time
to mention the Russian vote at the UN
aligning the Soviets with the Arab bloc
seeking to oust Israel from the world
organization. Israel's enemies lost
again, for the seventh annual time in
this animosity. The Soviet represen-
tative voted hypocritically with Israel's
enemies, seeking to expel Israel from
the UN.
The appeal to Gorbachev to correct
the injustice in the tragic Wallenberg
case already has a record of universal
involvement. It would have been a more
hopeful attempt if approval and
cooperation for the Bill Paul plea could
have enlistment within the USSR.
Meanwhile, it must be given acclaim
wherever it is sounded.
'Dent° Blood Libel
Document Preserved
Y
eshiva University Museum in
New York has obtained a rare
document about one of the most
notorious blood libel accusations in the
long record of that outrageous charge
against Jews.
It is the Trento document, named
for the town in northern Italy where
Jews were accused of the ritual murder
of "Simone of Trento who was beatified
and the sanctification later was erased
by the Vatican, thereby serving as an
official Church denial of the accusation.
It was Easter of 1475 that the
charge was made that the Jews of Tren-
to used the blood of the Infant Simon
of Trento for Matzos for Passover.
The 500-year-old manuscript was
bought for $176,000 by Ludwig and
Erica Jesselson and was presented to
the university's museum. Mr. Jesselson
is a director and officer of Yeshiva
University, and Mrs. Jesselson is chair-
man of the Yeshiva University
Museum. The museum is endowed by
the Jesselsons.
Tracing the background of the Tren-
to Document in a story about the
Jesselson gift in the New York Times,
Richard F. Shepard gave this account of
the 15th century outrage:
The history of the Trento
Manuscript in the centuries bet-
ween its writing and its subse-
quent appearance a half-
century ago at auction in Lon-
don is not fully known.
Although it is believed to have
been in a private collection for
part of that time, one of the
chores ahead for researchers
will be to fill the gaps in its
background.
Recently, Pearl Berger, the
Benjamin Gottesman Librarian
and Dean of Libraries at
Yeshiva University, showed the
volume to a visitor.
"It has been preserved for
510 years," she said. "It is on
paper made of rag cloth, which
was made without chemicals
that make later paper
deteriorate, and that is why the
oldest books are in the finest
condition. The vellum binding
was put on in 1615."
Within that binding is an ac-
count of legal proceedings
whose fictions were not official-
ly reversed by the Vatican until
1965. The small Jewish com-
munity in Trento — apparently
German-speaking, as were
others involved in the case, ac-
cording to Mrs. Berger — had
settled in the town by the begin-
ning of the 14th century and by
1475 had a synagogue, a house
of study and three other houses
for a Jewish population of about
30 people.
Shortly before Easter in that
year and after fiery Lenten ser-
mons by a Franciscan, Bernar-
dino da Feltre, against the Jews
and ritual killings, the body of
a Christian infant named Simon
was, it was charged, found near
the house of the Jewish com-
munity's leader. As a result,
every man, woman and child in
the Jewish community was ar-
rested. The document attests to
the "confessions" of 17 Jews
after 15 days of torture.
One of the Jews died in
prison, six were burned at the
stake and two who had con-
verted to Christianity received
what was considered the more
benevolent penalty of death by
strangulation. A papal emissary
who came to investigate the
charges and contradicted the
verdict was driven out of town
by the people of Trento.
A year later, with the ap-
proval of Pope Sixtus IV, whose
own papal court justified the
proceedings with a document
that is in the introduction to the
manuscript, five more Jews
were executed and four women
were converted to Christianity.
Jewish property was con-
fiscated and Jews were banish-
ed from Trento, a banishment
that lasted through the 18th
century.
The infant, Simon of Trento,
was beatified because of the
belief that he had been ritually
murdered, and this sanctifica-
tion remained in force until