Large New York Rally in Times Square Marks Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

With a huge photographic reproduction of the granite monument on the Warsaw site of the former Warsaw Ghetto as a backdrop, Times Square, was the scene at noon today of an open-air rally commemorating the 22nd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The famous thoroughfare was renamed “Warsaw Ghetto Square” for this day, which corresponds with the Hebrew date of the 27th day of Nissan, proclaimed as the annual Day of Remembrance. The rally was held under the auspices of the Zionist Organization of America and co-sponsored by 30 other national and metropolitan Jewish organizations.

Principal speakers were Sen. Robert F. Kennedy; Mayor Robert F. Wagner, who read a proclamation designating the day as Warsaw Ghetto Day; Dr. Max Nussbaum, president of the Zionist Organization of America and chairman of the American Zionist Council; and Morris B. Abram, U. S. representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, who is president of the American Jewish Committee. The speakers dwelt on the glory of the 60,000 Jews, men, women and children, victims of the Nazi massacres in the Warsaw Ghetto, who were slaughtered by Nazi artillery, flame throwers and dynamite in their valiant resistance against their oppressors.

In his address, Sen. Kennedy, who twice visited the site of the Warsaw Ghetto, said: “We are here today to say that the 60,000 who died in the ghetto did not die in vain, for they have left us a rich heritage. Much of that heritage is in Israel. They directly helped to found the State of Israel. They will always be remembered by the millions to whom Israel is both a beacon and a refuge. But that heritage is not only in Israel, not only for Jews. All of us here–and all free men everywhere–share that heritage. In many ways the Ghetto was the beginning of the end of Hitler and the Nazis.”

Dr. Nussbaum, in his address, made a strong plea for U. S. ratification of the Genocide Convention adopted by the United Nations in 1948, outlawing the destruction “in whole or in part of national, racial, religious or ethnic groups.” Mr. Abram told the rally that destruction of the kind suffered by the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto a generation ago would be impossible today, because of 20 years of human rights progress. He said that courage of the kind shown in Warsaw serves as a shining light for generations to come.”