Unless there is a last-minute intervention, the sculptor Menlikoff, who used to be a dishwasher in a Chicago cafeteria, must leave England under the Aliens Act, although he fought for three and a half years in the British army under Lord Allenby.
Menlikoff is a Palestinian subject. By blood he is half Jewish and half Russian. In his little studio in Hampstead are several studies on which he has worked feverishly for a London exhibition. His “Exodus,” a bronze and gold panel depicting the flight of the ancient Hebrews from Egypt, is now in New York.
“JEWISH RENAISSANCE”
“The Jewish renaissance is a thing of the present and it will be more and more a thing of the future,” he told a Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent. “If the Jews are left in Palestine under British protection, a tremendous renaissance will result.
“The Jews will soon be able to give a cultural lead to the whole world. You would be astounded to know that so tiny a community can turn out as much and as fine stuff as it does.”
Menlikoff has had a romantic career since his birth in Bessarabia. His family wanted him to become a physician, but he had inclinations toward art instead. He went to Vienna to study what he preferred to learn, undergoing severe privations.
Then he went to the United States, where he had jobs as a train conductor, a dishwasher and a coal miner.
FINDS BIBLE INSPIRING
“The Jews are living all the time under the shadow of the Bible,” he said. “The poet looks to the songs of Solomon and knows that nothing can be written like that. The narrator knows that the story of Ruth is the finest short story in the world.
“I, as a sculptor, always look to Ezekiel, the wonderful sculptural way in which he describes his visions.”
He declared he was certain London could become the cultural center of the world, adding reproachfully:
“But it should encourage the artist and the student more.”
The Home Office held out some hope that Menlikoff will not be forced to depart England at once.
AN EXPERIMENT IN GOODWILL
The Southwestern Star, English daily, reports the following experiment to stimulate goodwill among Jewish and Christian children in London:
With the purpose of encouraging good feeling between Jews and Christians, H. P. Bloom, of the Super Cinema, Yorkroad, Battersea, gave a tea to eighty children drawn in equal numbers from the two communities.
Forty Jewish children, selected from those attending the Hebrew religion classes at the South West London Associate Synagogue, Bolingbroke – grove, attended at the cinema under the conductorship of the Rev. I. L. Aarons (the minister), Mr. Clayman (the religious instructor), and Mr. J. Kutner (the synagogue secretary).
Forty children of Christian parentage were chosen by the odist Church, Bridgeroad West, ministers of the Battersea Meth-and Battersea Baptist Chapel.
A LESSON FOR HERR DOKTOR GOEBBELS
The Cinema, a professional publication in London, addresses the following letter to Dr. Goebbels in the form of an editorial:
When you, of your bounty expel and banish from your midst the finest brains in your industry, just because they are non-Aryans, when you let racial and religious inhibitions play havoc with your aesthetic ideals, you deserve all you get.
You can’t dismiss the brains of your film industry and expect to preserve the integrity of that industry. A concentration of non-Aryan zealots or Nazi marionettes may ensure that the national characteristics of your films shall be above suspicion. But they are no assurance that the said films will in fact be films. You can’t run a railway engine by passing over the driver’s ability provided he goes to the right chapel.
BRITISH SETTLERS TO BE FIRST IN CYPRUS
The Near East and India reveals why the British administration issued the law prohibiting aliens from buying land in Cyprus. The paper says:
The Egyptian papers announced that 25,000 Jewish immigrants were about to seek Cypriot hospitality. Perhaps, in view of such an immigration, the government has just passed a law that requires aliens to obtain the approval of the governor before they are allowed to buy land. British settlers have recently arrived in Cyprus from places as distant as Java and the Nilgiri Hills in Southern India. Before purchasing land, they should check the areas shown on the official title deeds.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
