M
...
,?s
g...
Circle
Of
Thanks
Franklin Bank's Affinity Program
The business community has
been very good to us. We
want to give back to the
community with a
reward to JARC
for the good
BUSINESS
work it does for
so many.
OWNERS
The "Circle Of •
Thanks" program
is our way of
thanking you and
JARC for honoring
us with your business
banking.
jarc
Affinity
Program
Franklin
Bank
Direct dollars to JARC by
directing your business to us. Open
your business checking account today and
we will make an automatic donation to JARC
in your name. JARC must be mentioned when
account is opened.*
Call Julie Rollins
248.358.6493
Franklin Bank
V*35'
12/31
1999
20
Thank you Metro Detroit Business Community...and thank
you JARC for making such a difference to so many.
New accounts only, transferring account balances not permitted. Contribution based on activated
account's third month balance. Certain high volume cash and coin accounts such as food stores,
beauty salons and vending companies are excluded from this program (call for details.)
reaction. Following the leader-
ship of the Jewish Welfare
Federation (founded in 1926),
Detroit Jews, like Jews in most
parts of the western world, had
reacted to antisemitic rhetoric
and activities with rational
responses or with silence.
This virtual avalanche of anti-
semitic activity spurred the Jewish
Community Council, officially
founded in 1936, along with the
Anti-Defamation League, the
League of Human Rights and
B'nai B'rith to follow Philip
Hebrew school children arrive at the JCC at
Slomovitz's lead and take public
Curtis and Meyers in 194.9.
action to combat those vitupera-
tive attacks on Jews. They con-
Coughlin, that "Christian character is
fronted
their antagonists — challenged
the true basis of real Americanism."
them
to
debates and defied them to
Americanism, therefore, by definition
offer
proof
of Jewish conspiracies and of
excluded Jews. And, in 1944, Rev.
Jewish
communism.
"They threatened
Smith declared that "if someone will
lawsuits,
boycotts,
exposes
and spoke
figure out the best way to handle the
out
in
open
meetings
and
in
newspa-
Jews, he will go down in history as
pers.
the wisest person in all the centuries."
Along with
threats from
groups like the
Silver Shirts, who
fashioned them-
selves after the
0
Nazi SS, and the
Ku Klux Klan,
such rhetoric
0
burned into the
minds and hearts
2
of Detroit's Jews.
The Great
Depression corn-
bined with the rise
and triumph of
Nazism to cause
A rally was held at Central High School in Detroit in celebra-
distress, fear,
tion of Israel's independence on May 16, 1948.
despair, even terror
in Jews everywhere.
On the threshold of war and the
Most Jews considered Hitler a tempo-
Holocaust,
Detroit's Federation
rary phenomenon; most had little idea
seemed
to
anticipate
the horrors to
how difficult life was becoming for
fund-raising
cam-
come
in
its
1939
German Jews; none had the slightest
paign. But European Jewry would
inkling that genocide was in the mak-
soon be out of reach, beyond rescue
ing. With the voices of hatred increas-
in many respects, when the Germans
ing at home, led by Father Coughlin,
would
implement the `_`Final Solution"
attention naturally focused on
in
earnest
in 1941.
America.
Detroit
Jewry
tended to believe that
The '30s would determine the
once
in
the
war,
Americans
would
course of responses to anti-Jewish
oppose
antisemitism
as
part
of their
rhetoric and action not in the Old
opposition to Nazi Germany. Yet the
World, but here, in Royal Oak or on
results of a government survey showed
Eight Mile Road at the Crystal
antisemitism
had increased after the
Swimming Pool that brazenly forbade
Japanese
bombing
of Pearl Harbor.
Jews from swimming there.
In
the
end,
after
throwing them-
Jews in Detroit feared Monday
selves
wholeheartedly
into the war
mornings, uncertain how their co-
effort,
World
War
II
changed
Jewish
workers had received Father
lives
and
consciousness
in
two
funda-
Coughlin's Sunday broadcast. There
mental ways: the profound alteration
was no consensus about the proper
-