50 1 9 4 2-1 9 9 2 THE JEWISH NEWS COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE EVOLUTION • The premiere issue contained full-page endorsements from leading personalities. 10 THE JEWISH NEWS COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE Fred Butzel, Rabbis Franklin and Hershman, Dora Ehrlich, Henry Wineman, Dr. Stephen Wise, Israel Goldstein (presi- dent of the Jewish National Fund), Eleanor Roosevelt and others. Its program and policy bold- ly stated that: "We promise to give our people the latest news and historical data concerning the Jews all over the world. We pledge to help build up the morale of the Jews in this war- torn world by fostering that spirit of brotherhood which will assure amity and good- will among all faiths of the United States, the world's greatest nation." The paper immediately an- nounced its principles through its articles. The front page of the first issue carried a photograph of Fred Butzel, "Michigan's First Citizen," as head of the Allied Jewish Campaign. Thus, the Cam- paign and The Jewish News began together. The top right corner carried the famous Minuteman emblem for Victory Stamps and Bonds, and the paper also included an article on "Our Sons in the War," and "Honor Roll of Our Men in the Ser- vice," which would become a regular feature for the dura- tion of the war. Each issue carried news of the Allied Jewish Campaign, the war, Palestine and inter- mittent struggles against American anti-Semitism. The Jewish News continued to assert with explicit clarity Mr. Slomovitz's Zionist values and his lifelong battle against anti-Semitism. It asserted, too, the patriotic sentiments of American Jews. At the same time, the ar- ticles received from the JTA on the murder of the Jews in Europe increased. As in vir- tually all English newspapers from 1942-44, and unlike the Yiddish press, articles on the catastrophe averaged 6-7 lines and reported that Slovakian Jews had lost their citizen- ship; or that one Jew in Kaunas had been shot trying to escape the ghetto; or that Jewish homes were marked with yellow stars. That Slovakian Jewry had been all but annihilated, or that the Jews of Kaunas systematically massacred did not yet reach the public. The scope of the Holocaust re- mained unimagined. Even after the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, a small article of six lines, received from the JTA in Stockholm, appeared on page 15 stating that the Nazis had begun "the extermination of 35,000 Jews in Warsaw." More substantive were the regular columns by William Shirer about the war, not the Holocaust, and the local ar- ticles by Mr. Slomovitz. The coverage grew, far out- distancing the other English papers and by the end of 1943, The Jewish News did report the slaughter of Jewish com- munities in Poland, Slovakia, Greece and Russia in more detailed and lengthy articles. That tragic news appeared juxtaposed to the regular photographs of Palestine and Jewish pioneers in action. By 1950, The Jewish News had maintained regular features like Danny Raskin's "Listening Post" and Boris Smolar's "Between You and Me." It had also clearly delineated some of its signifi- cant editorial principles. Education ranked among the more important of those issues. In 1927, while still with the Chronicle, Mr. Slomovitz and several of Detroit's Jewish educators, like Ber- nard Isaacs and Shloime Bercovich, had initiated Jew- ish Education Month to take place in the first month of autumn (Tishrei). In June, 1943, in the midst of congratulatory lists of religious school graduations and confirma- tions, The Jewish News ran Bernard Isaacs' editorial criticizing the status of Jewish education in Detroit. Mr. Isaacs did not disparage educational institutions, but Jewish parents who, he said, believed themselves exempt from learning and had become indifferent to their children's studies. He sounded a motif that would echo throughout the history of the newspaper — a call to educate and a challenge to parents to renew their Jewish commitment. In 1946, for example, Mr. Slomovitz introduced "Jewish Education Month 5705" by enjoining Jewish parents to "sincerely reaffirm faith in the indestructibility of Israel by restoring the Jewish schools to a place of prime im- portance in Jewish life." The goal of Education Month, he wrote a year later, was to restore "dignity for our children." In that article he deplored the educational situation of Detroit Jewish children, revealing that some two-thirds of them received no Jewish education. Along with Judge Theodore Levin, chair- man of Federation's Educa- tional Planning Commission, he urged parents to enroll their children in a Jewish school. There followed a list of names, addresses and telephone numbers for the United Hebrew Schools, the Jewish Folk School of the Far- band, the Poale Zion, Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute, Workmen's Circle Schools, Yeshiva Beth Yehudah and all the congregations as well as the two day shcools. Jewish education, then, became one of the ways The Jewish News fulfilled a service to the Jews of Detroit. But by far the strongest and most persistent editorial theme per- tained to Zionism. From its in- ception, the paper espoused the Zionist cause and its values. Each issue contained numerous photographs of Palestine and then of Israel. Public endorsements of the paper and Mr. Slomovitz came im- mediately from Zioninst leaders like Abba Hillel Silver and Dr. Chaim Weiz- mann, in 1942 the president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine. And when Israel became a state, the front page of The Jewish News carried a photograph of a pensive Dr. Weizmann, the provisional president of the infant state. "We Acclaim the Reborn State of Israel," read the banner headline. The first five pages, all written by Mr. Slomovitz, detailed how Detroit Jewry had also acclaimed the state. In 1956, as Israel faced another crisis, the stirring ar- ticles and photographs in The Jewish News, urging Detroit Jews to "be generous in your giving," produced palpable ef- fect as the Allied Jewish Cam- paign achieved its greatest success since 1948. One year later, in 1957, Philip and Anna Slomovitz traveled to Israel on a special assignment for The Jewish News and the Detroit Free Press. A collection of articles datelined from October through December 1957, most by Philip, appeared in a