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A favorite summer ride at the time was taking the Bob-Lo boat at the foot of Woodward.

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pogrom in Romania. Many thousands of
other Jews were slightly wounded but didn’t
seek treatment as they feared reprisals.
Hundreds of Jews sought and were granted
shelter at the American consulate. Jews who
tried to escape to Hungary were machine-
gunned, as were others who tried to flee
in small boats. Criminals were released
from jail in Romania by Iron Guardists to
help butcher the Jews. The director of the
Zionist Organization in Bucharest and his 36
employees were beaten and hauled to a sub-
urban field, where they were murdered.

HANK IN ARMY
On the other side
of the ocean, many
Jews were following
the exploits of base-
ball superstar Hank
Greenberg. Over the
past four seasons,
Greenberg averaged
43 home runs and
148 runs-batted-in.
The morning after his
19th game in the 1941 Hank Greenberg
season, in which he hit
two home runs to help
beat the Yankees, Greenberg was inducted
into the U.S. Army.
On May 9, Greenberg dropped from
$50,000 yearly to an army salary of $21 per
month.
Less than a month later, Lou Gehrig, who
retired from baseball as a player two years
earlier and was diagnosed with amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis, died from the fatal neuro-
muscular disease that would bear his name.
The former superstar of the New York
Yankees was only 38.
Thursday, July 10, 1941, was a popular
night for Detroiters to gather around the
radio. The Bing Crosby Show hit the airwaves
at 8 p.m., followed by Rudy Vallee an hour

later, and Fred Waring and his band at 10.
The variety programs provided listeners
with a chance to hear the latest tunes of the
summer of ’41: “By the Light of the Silvery
Moon,” “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” “Deep in
the Heart of Texas” and “You Made Me Love
You.”
Reading the paper in a big, comfortable
chair within good hearing range of the radio
was how most Americans relaxed. The news-
papers that day didn’t have much coverage
of the happenings in Europe. There were
still plenty of human interest stories on the
All-Star baseball game that had been
played in Detroit’s Briggs Stadium two
days earlier. With Hank Greenberg
in an army uniform and not on the
field, the game didn’t have the interest
it would have had to the local Jewish
community.

SADISTIC SAVAGERY
Without thinking of events in
Europe, Jewish Americans could go
to bed humming the latest tunes.
Sleep wouldn’t come easily if fellow
Jews knew what was transpiring in
Jedwabne (Yadovneh), Poland, that
very same day. Some of the Jews in
the small town were clubbed to death by
shovels, hammers and boards. Others were
butchered with knives and axes. The rest
were forcibly herded into a barn and burned
alive. When the carnage of violence ended,
1,600 Jews, numbering about 60 percent of
the town’s population, had been murdered —
not by Nazis but by their former neighbors.
When the German killing squads arrived
in town to do their work, they were amazed
that most of their mission had already been
carried out — and with such savagery.
As the Germans occupied Lithuania in
the summer of 1941, sadistic gangs staged
a violent pogrom against the Jews. An esti-
mated 800 Jews were butchered with axes,

Sammy Cohen, the writer’s uncle, managed a Downtown newsstand.
He got married on Dec. 7, 1941, and was informed of the Pearl Harbor
attack by guests.

The Jebwabne massacre

knives, guns and other weapons. Many
were maimed, some decapitated and others
burned alive. By the first week of August,
almost 6,000 Jews were murdered on
Lithuanian soil.

NEW ZIONIST TEMPLE
After more than
42 years of leading
Temple Beth El, Rabbi
Leo Franklin notified
the board of his desire
to retire from active
ministry. Many Beth
El members hoped
that Rabbi Leon Fram,
associate rabbi and
Rabbi Leon Fram
director of education
for the past 16 years,
would replace Rabbi Franklin upon his
retirement.
However, Rabbi Fram supported causes
not popular with a some of the member-
ship. Fram championed Zionism and liberal
social causes and was in the forefront at a
mass meeting calling for the unionization of
auto workers. When it became clear that Dr.
B. Benedict Glazer, senior associate of New
York’s Temple Emanu-El, would be offered
Franklin’s position, some Beth El members,
including former president Morris Garvett,
held meetings to organize a new Reform
congregation with Fram as its spiritual
leader.

In the Aug. 1, 1941, edition, the Detroit
Jewish Chronicle reported on the birth of
Temple Israel.
“At an enthusiastic rally of the found-
ing members of the New Reform Jewish
Congregation held Monday night, August 4,
at Hotel Statler, the congregation decided to
adopt the name ‘Temple Israel.’
“The name was proposed by a committee
consisting of Mrs. Milford Stern, Roy Sarason,
Alexander Freeman, Rabbi Leon Fram and
Benjamin E. Jaffe, chairman.
“Morris Garvett, who presided over the
meeting, announced that the Rosh Hashanah
and Yom Kippur services of the new Temple
Israel would be held in the auditorium of
the Detroit Institute of Arts at John R. and
Farnsworth. The Succoth services will be held
in the smaller lecture hall of the Institute of
Arts.”
It was reported that a hundred new mem-
bers joined the congregation at the meeting,
swelling the total membership to 200. It
was also decided at the meeting that until a
building of their own could be built, religious
school classes would be held in the Hampton
public school on Warrington on the city’s
northwest side.

THE KILLING CONTINUES
On Aug. 10, 1941,
five weeks after
German soldiers
entered David-
Horodok, now
in Belarus, local
citizens assisted
the SS Nazi killing
squads in machine-
gunning 3,000
Jewish men and
The David-Horodok
burying the victims
memorial
in a mass grave.
Women and
children were herded into a barbed wire

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22 August 11 • 2016