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Friday, October 7, 1966
f»*» Fear
Soviets Downgrade
Jewish Martyrdom
WASHINGTON—The massacre
at Babi Yar—the most horrifying
single act of anti-Semitic barbar
ism by the Nazi invaders of So
viet Russia—happened 25 years
ago last week. Perhaps as many
as 100,000 Jews were systemati
cally machine-gunned and buried
in a mass grave in what was then
a ravine outside Kiev in a per
iod of two days.
The S. S. later used the site
of the massacre to execute cap
tured Russian Ukrainian workers
and soldiers. But the massive ex
termination of Kiev’s Jewish pop
ulation that took place there on
September 29 and 30, 1941 —
wholesale murder unequalled for
efficiency by even the gas cham
bers of Auschwitz or Treblinka—
marks Babi Yar as the scene of
a singularly bitter Jewish trag
edy.
The events at Babi Yar and
the evident effort of Soviet auth
orities to obscure its Jewish sig
nificance are reported in a fact
sheet released by the B’nai B’rith
International Council.
The study, prepared by Dr.
William Korey, director of the
Council's United Nations Bureau,
reports that Soviet officials,
prodded by the insistence of
many Russian intellectuals and
the widespread popularity of
Yevgenii Yevtushenko’s poem
“Babi Yar,” are planning a mem
orial at Babi Yar.
But the memorial, the study
noted, is likely to ignore Babi
Yar as a particularly poignant
symbol of Jewish martyrdom.
Instead, it will be dedicated to
“Soviet citizens, Russians, Uk
rainians and Jews” who died
there.
The B’nai B’rith fact sheet re
calls that on September 26, 1941,
Kiev Jews were directed to as
semble three days later at a
major road junction in the city—
ostensibly to be resettled else
where.
Instead, they were marched in
columns to Babi Yar, lined up
naked at the bottom of the rav
ine, and shot. Their bodies were
then covered with dirt and the
next column of victims brought
forward. The executions were di
rected by S. S. Col. Poul Blobel,
head of the Einsatzgruppe C.
Extermination Command 4, who
was convicted by the Nuremberg
Tribunal and executed for mass
murder in 1951.
After the war, plans were spor
adically projected for a monu
ment at Babi Yar as a symbol of
Nazi genocide. These were dis
carded when the Government in
tensified its anti-cosmopolitan
campaign—one containing strong
anti-Semitic overtones.
It was poet Yevtushenko who
in 1961 jolted the literary world
and rekindled the issue with his
dramatic and moving poem. A
year later, Dmitri Shostakovich
included “Babi Yar” among five
Yevtushenko poems which were
the source for the musical and
choral setting of his “13th Sym
phony.”
The international recognition
given these works encouraged
demands for a Babi Yar mem
orial. For three years, the issue
was unmentioned by Soviet of
ficials or in the Soviet press. But
early this year an exhibition of
more than 200 designs and some
30 large-scale detailed plans for
a memorial was held in Kiev.
The particular Jewish signifi
cance of Babi Yar was ignored.
According to reports, a Jewish
architect who had submitted a
design bearing a Yiddish inscrip
tion, was asked to withdraw it
and resubmit another without the
wording.
A MILESTONE—
Los Angeles
“Messenger”
70th Year
NEW YORK (WUP) — The
B’nai B’rith Messenger, one of
America’s outstanding English-
Jewish publications with head
quarters in Los Angeles, this
month entered its 70th year of
continuous publication as a vital
medium of global news as its af
fects the world Jewish commun
ity and Israel. Locally, it has kept
stride with the phenomenal
growth of the great West Coast
city.
The special Rosh Hashanah
70th Anniversary Issue of the
“Messenger” contained glowing
tributes from the editors and
publishers of all the dailies in Los-
Angeles and from outstanding
public figures.
Joseph Joenah Cummins is the
editor-publisher of the widely-
circulated publication. Theodore
I. Sandler, a veteran ewspaper-
man, is the managing editor.
Plan More Exports
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel’s
Trade and Industry Minister,
Haim Zadok, gave basic approval
today to a plan to enable Israeli
industry to compete more effect
ively in world markets which
Ministry sources today called “a
revolution in industrial plan
ning.”
Under the plan, Israel’s in
dustrial effort will be concentrat
ed on no more than 20 to 25
industries which will be expand
ed to the size necessary to enable
them to engage in such world
competition.
Behind UN Scenes — by David Horowitz
Assembly Opens
Under War-Clouds
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UNITED NATIONS (WUP) —
The 21st UN General Assembly
opened its regular session in a
most irregular posture. Its gar
gantuan agenda contains some 94
items, but the one item which
is not on its program dominates
the session like a celestial eclipse
—the Vietnam war!
It is against this background
that a peculiar phenomenon oc
curred. Unanimously and with
out rival, the Assembly elected
as its President a man who —
flying in the face of all headline
matching — decided to call this
session “the Assembly of Reason.”
He is the Ambassador to the UN
from Afghanistan, Abdul Rahman
Pazhwak, a dark, debonair and
handsome diplomat, known best
for his concept of reasonable and
rational diplomacy. For years his
role at the UN has been summed
up as a conciliator, harmonizer
and peace-maker.
Pazhwak’s keynote speech sur
prised some of its peculiar flashes
of cautious commentary which
stopped statesmen in their tracks
with a strange and subtle appeal.
Many delegates had to read the
speech again in order to catch the
full import of its message.
Why the puzzle?
For the self-same reason that
many in the early days of the
American revolution were aston
ished but could not quite grasp
the writings of Thomas Paine’s
Common Sense and Appeal to
Reason.
Pazhwak first and foremost
struck a note of optimism in an
atmosphere of gloom, much of it,
ironically, had been generated by
the UN’s best friend, Secretary
General U Thant, who struck out
heavily at the Big Powers and
the weaknesses of the world or
ganization. Without entering into
controversy, Pazhwak recalled
the amazing achievements of the
UN and concluded that “progress
and not perfection” should be the
yardstick of any assessment.
He welcomed constructive crit-
ticism but wisely divided the
critics into two categories—those,
wishing to resort to unilateral
power, who say “the UN is pow
erless"; and those, seeking Utop
ias overnight, who say it is “not
effective.” In a world suffering
from the turmoil of cataclysmic
change, he noted that the UN had
played a great stabilizing role “to
keep the violence of change from
becoming the violence of self-
deatruction.’ The world organiza
tion, he stressed, constituted a
moral foroe and the sole inter
national hope of mankind.
Perhaps the most important
point Pazhwak raised was that
the clashes today are very dif
ferent from those of the early
years of the UN. Since the found
ing of the organization, a grand
consensus had been achieved on
major principles governing the
nature of peace, the dangers of the
nuclear age, the importance of
disarmament, the death of colon
ialism, the grand acceptance of
the principles of human rights.
What the world was fighting for
now, he said, stems from the
clash when accepted principles
come into conflict with “the sur
gery” of implementation and the
special selfish interests of nations
and groups.
“Reason,” he stated, dictates
that, having accepted certain
principles, reasonable men should
not seek to stem the tide of what
he termed “these imperatives of
our age.”
As to the issue of Vietnam—
he flung open all doors, including
his own as President of the As
sembly, for peace-feelers in a
war “that is wrong and in which
no one involved can be quite
right."
The Afghan diplomat warned
against a war of the races, and
a war of the poor against the rich
nations.
Thus he said men might call
this “the Assembly of Reason,”
for reason also dictates that, in
trying to solve international prob
lems on an international level, it
is logical that the only global or
ganization should be moulded
into a “stronger United Nations.”
Apparently in Pazhwak we see
how the mechanics of the UN
works. Afghanistan is a country
without battalions, tanks or
bombers. In terms of fire-power,
it enjoys no rating. But when a
world is bogged down in con
fusion it was able to produce a
son who was able to mobilize the
one weapon of man which is his
surpreme power but which to
date he has used so unskillfully
—the supreme weapon of reason.
It remains to be seen whether
“reason” will triumph during this
Assembly, reason applied not
only to the global issues but also
to such questions as the Middle
East Involving the Arab-Israel
dispute, and in this, it is to be
hoped, Pazhwak, an Asian close
to the Arabs, will be the first
to follow his own counsel.
Israeli Settlers
Come from West
TEL AVIV (JTA)—An aver
age of 8,000 persons are settling
in Israel annually from Western
countries in what has become a
steady influx of such newcom
ers, Aryeh L. Pincus, chairman
of the Jewish Agency executive,
said here.
Speaking at a meeting of the
Mapai central committee on
Aliyah and relations with non-
Israel Jewry, he also reported
that the number of such immi
grants leaving Israel and return
ing to their countries of origin
did not exceed 10 to 15 per cent.
He declared that, during the
decline in large scale immigra
tion to Israel, efforts must be
made to increase immigration
from Western countries. He add
ed that this could be facilitated
by a radical change “in the way
of thinking by Israelis vis a vis
the Diaspora.”
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