Ohio Jewish Chronicle, 1960-04-08

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Vol. 38. No. 15
FRIDAY, APRIL 8. I960
Dsvqttd fo Amartekh and Jawlih Meih
UJFC Begins Its '60 Campaign With $460,000 Pledged
The Advance Gifts Division of the United Jewish Fund and Council officially launched the 1960 campaign Tuesday evening, March 29 at the Winding Hollow Country Club with an announce¬ ment that $460,000 had been pledged.
KHRU REFUSES TO ANSWER QUESTIONS ON RUSSIAN JEWS
PARIS (JTA)—Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, prior to his departure from Paris for Moscow, refused to answer questions con¬ cerning the situation of Jews in the Soviet Union.
In a news conference lasting almost an hour and a half, many of the 1200 newsmen present fired various questions dealing with the attitude of the Soviet Government toward the 3,000,000 Jews living in tho U.S.S.B. Khrushchev re¬ fused to answer any of those queries.
The Soviet leader was also asked what response he Intends to make to a request for a meet¬ ing with Israel Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. "I have not received a demand for such a meeting," tie replied Asked how he would reply if such a request Were laid before him, he replied evasively: "If I got such a re¬ quest, I would  answer."
(Surprise was expressed in Jerusalem over Khrushchev's statement that he received no re¬ quest from Ben-Gurion for a meeting. It was pointed out that Ben-Gurlon advanced such a re¬ quest to the Soviet Ambassador to Israel, prior to the Premier's trip to WBishington and London. The Russian Ambassador, Mi¬ chael Bodrov, who Is on home leave now, is expected to return next month when, presumably, he will bring an answer to Ben- Gurion's reqiiest.)
Bitter Herbs — The Symbol Of German Passover
BY aAOL OABSON
(Special Correspondent of the Jewish Xelegniphlo Agency) (Oopyrigfat, IflfiO, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Inc)
EAST BEBUN-rUke Jewa everywhere else in tlie world, the Jews here, ioo, are preparing to observe Passover as this is being written. But there is a difference. Come with me and, perhaps, you will see what the difference is.
From West Berlin, there are two ways to reach the Communist haven. One could drive down the broad West Berlin avenue to the Brandenburg Gate and, after a momentary stop and a cursory look by the armed guards, cross over
to the East without challenge'.
IF TOU OOME by car, you find yourself on old Berlin's fam¬ ous Unter den Linden. Inunedi¬ ately, the difference betwe^m tbe West and East strikes you. The West had rebuilt many of Its ruins. Here they stand stark, naked, walls tumbled, rubble still plied high.
Tou drive past the old Embassy Row—past the ruined old Ameri¬ can Elmbassy, the former head¬ quarters ot the Frenqh, others. Only one of the Embassies haa been repaired, Mmodeled. And it looks grim. It Is the Soviet Em¬ bassy.
Here is famous Wilhelmstrasse, where Hitler's Chancellery stood. It is a vacant, levelled lot. Behind the lot, there la a mound of earth no moro than three or four feet in height. There stood the en¬ trance (o the bunker where Hitler and his Eva Braun committed suicide.
NKARBIT,   Goebbels   shot   his _/rUe, then himself—after they bad
poisoned their six children. Here Is another ruin. Goebbels had his Propaganda Ministry In this place. And here is the building where Hitler's long-time No. 2 man, Qoering, had held forth.
A little further on, you come to a broad avenue called Stalin- allee. Tall apartment houses, brand new, line this street for blocks. At last, you say to your¬ self, there are signs of new life. But no. Drive around the corner from Stallnailee. There stand the old, war-shattered ruins—unbuilt, uncared for, ugly, sickening. Stal¬ lnailee, you discover. Is a false front—a veritable. Communist- style "Potemkln Village."
This is too depressing. You drive back to the West—and, next day, try the other approach. You take the U-bahn—the subway. Tou were told to take tbe train marked "Pankow," get off at the stop called Senef elder Piatz. What beautiful, evocative nances! So that's where the Jevdsh synagogue is located? Pankow—the suburb of beautiful,  rich  villas,  wher«  the
Soviet conquerors had set up their headquarters in 1045. And that Square—a name meaning "beautiful  fields."
You get off at the right sta¬ tion. Dull; gray, drab tenements all around you. To get to Ryke- strasse No. 53, where the syna¬ gogue is located^ you follow other people across vacant lots, down cobbled streets of uiirelieved ugli¬ ness.
IN WEST BEXXXN, there are stores, there is life, there is goods in the windows, flowers In door¬ ways. Here—tired men and women hurrying home from their work, wrapped in clothing apparently warm enough but as drab'as their surroundings. You walk 15 min¬ utes—and in all that time, you have not seen more than two automobiles. Flowers? None. (You recall tiiat in the Great Memorial Ometery, built by the Russians to commemorate the 7001 soldiers lost In storming' Berlin, there were great piles of flowers. But when you bent down to touch—you found the flowers were of wax. False. Like the apartment fronts on Stallnailee.")
Thus you come to the syjia- gogue, the "Frledenstempel," Tem¬ ple of Freedom. Here, this night of Passover, a seder is to be held. No doubt the traditional four questions will be asked. "Mah Nishtaneh?" Four boys are being prepared In this synagogue for Bar Mitzvah; certainly at least one of them will "say" the Questions in Hebrew.
But what will be the answers? Who will give them? The spiritual leader. Rabbi Martin Rlsenburger, that pathetic, scared man who holds his job at the will of the Communist bosses? And what will he tell the youths? 'What can he tell them?
CAN HE TELL them that the 1000 Jews in Blast Berlin—and approximately 800 others in the rest of Bast Germany—are not really a conununlty but only a dying branch of Jewry?
Can he tell them that their fathers—men engaged In small businesses, petty traders, are merely holding on, waiting for the day when, inevitably, the Com¬ munist regime will close down their UtUe shops, expropriate their miserable goods, decide that they must help the Communist Father- land by becoming miners, or brick-makers, or perhaps by being exiled to some remote, German¬ ized  "Birobljdan?"
Can these youths be told, open¬ ly, that, despite the fact that tKeir parents are the few who had chosen to remain when they could have left Eaat Berlin a few yeara ago—that these remnants have no future whatever ahead of them?
THEBE IS WINE on the seder table in Blast Berlin—wine grown In Bulgaria. There are matzoth— Imported from Czechoslovakia. But is there a Jewish life here—¦ or are these signs of Passover only the patheUc reminders of a past?
Something else, traditional. Is on the table. The bitter herbs. Can the youths be toid that the only thing real here is the vege¬ table symbolic of utter grief?"
Have not these youths seen the rultis where Hitler, Goerlng and Goebbels had held forth? And have they not—these children born here since the Soviet "libera- tlon"—grown up In streets that are more reminiscent of Franz Kafka than of the lively surrpund- inga in which their cousins—the cousins they never see—live across the line. In West Berlin.?
HOW CAN anyone at this seder utter such words? Guarding the gates to the Frledenstempel is the general secretariat office of the "Volkadlenst," a Communist organization. Around the corner is a police precihct.
No. No one darea tell these boys the truth. The visitor sees the answer. He believes—he is sure— that some o^ the elders of this sad congregation also perceive. The answer is on the table where the seder Is laid. It is the bitter herb.
One symbol becomes the answer to ail four questions. But no one in the Frledenstempel dares speak. The "Volksdienst" is there. And the police piecinot.
Hatzoth are on the table, and purple wine is in the goblets. But in the hearts of these people —it Is not Passover. It is "tisha b'ab."
Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman, executive vice president of tho United Jewish Appeal, the inajor beneficiary of the UJFC, spoke be¬ fore the leaders and top, contr^u- tors of the campaign. More than 70 percent of the gifts announced that night represented wide ranges of increases.
THOSE PRESENT h.eard  ft
presentation by Rabbi Friedman, who reminded the group tbat Columbus and the other Jewish communities of America had dtfne an outstanding feat In rescuing and rehabilitating hundreds d thousands of Jews. Since 1948 almost a million Jews were helped to Israel and S00,000 to other lands. American Jewry gave them courage and the means to start new lives in freedom and dignity. Two out of every three persons brought to Israel have been Inte¬ grated. Many have moved from the relief to the tax rolls. Rabbi Friedman stated that throughout the centuries Jews have withstood persecution, malignment, disgrace and the efforts to eliminate them but It has been the indomlnatable character of the Jew to face up to this, to persevere and to flourish. Tbe destruction of 6,000,000 Jews in the German holocamft, thougrh cataclysmic in nature, has only made the remaining Jews stronger in their will to survive.
Israel has opened Its gates to the wandering, persecuted, home¬ less Jew. She alone has offered a haven for the thousanda who seek new lives, new opportunltlea Rab¬ bi Friedman explained that Israel could not be a haven for these Jews, our people, without the spe^ clal help of a generous American Jewry to aid these people to get on their feet and to become heal¬ thy, emotionally sound, and eco- nomically  productive   citizens.
THERE AKE 400,000 Jen% in Israel who need housing, farm and business equipment, the tools to build, vocational training and a variety of means to move them on to the road of recovery, reha¬ bilitation, economic self-suffi¬ ciency. One out of every three Immigrants who have come to Israel currently need this help.
During the past several yearft there has been one crises after another to contend with. And while these crises presented them¬ selves the health, welfare and economic needs of the oagobog flow of Immigration continued to mount. This year. Rabbi Fried¬ man stated, we have an opportun¬ ity to reduce the problem substainr tcoatlnaed  on pass 4)     ..
Finds Young Jews Closer To Israel
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The younger Jewish children in Amer¬ ica, comprising the third an4 fourth generations, are closer to Israel than their immigrant fore¬ fathers were. Prime Minister Oa- vId  Ben-Gurion   declared  here.
Bcri-Gurion spoke at the annual meeting of the Bible Research Society here. Referring to obser¬ vations he made on his recent trips to the United States and Ehigiand, he stated that "tho lov^ for Israel I found among millions of Jews in the United States and England is one of the wonders of Jewiah history," '
An announcement was niac!» at the meeting that th« Jewi8ta.Kft-> tional Fund has donated to'{ite society a tract of land in this oHjf for the construction of a "fiovtjt of the Bible.'" The lan4 la a^ie'- the border of Old Jerusa(«^/ whloh la under Jordanian jurt^r diction.
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