— An estimated 10,000 people gathered at Temple Emanu-El today, inside the sanctuary and outside on Fifth Avenue, in a somber ceremony marking Yom Ha’Shoah and the 38th anniversary of the Waraw Ghetto uprising.
Speaker after speaker warned that there is a resurgence of anti-Semitism around the world, assailed the revisionist historians who claim that the Holocaust is a hoax, and pointed out the differences between the 1930s when there was no Jewish State and the 1980s when the State of Israel exists.
Yehuda Blum, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, declared, “Anti-Semites today see as their prime target the State of Israel…the beacon and the banner of Jews everywhere. And in slandering the State of Israel, anti-Semites have as their target Jews everywhere.”
The cancer of anti-Semitism was not eradicated at the end of World War II, Blum emphasized. “But there is an essential difference between now and then. The 1980’s are not the 1940’s. Still less are they the 1930’s. The State of Israel exists. It will not stand by idly and let the actions of anti-Semites pass without demur. Israel will live up to its responsibilities for the fate of Jews everywhere.”
Blum said “The United Nations continues to serve as a platform for international anti-Semitism indeed, I would even dare to say it has been perverted into one of the world centers of anti-Semitism not just in its new guise but also in its classical form.” He cited the Soviet bloc and Arab representatives benefitting from diplomatic immunity when making outright attacks on the Jewish religion.
RESURGENCE OF ANTI-SEMITISM
Addressing the gathering, sponsored by the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Organization (WAGRO), Samuel Pisar, author and survivor of Auschwitz, said, “The resurgence of anti-Semitism, whether against Israel or in the diaspora, whether in France, which has many Jews, or in Poland, which has none left, is a barometer, a measure of the fever that is gripping the world once again.”
Pisar added that when hard times arise, like unemployment, or inflation, the scapegoats are always the Jews. Then come other minority groups, immigrants, intellectuals, “until an entire society is engulfed by the poison.” This, Pisar said, “is how Europe collapsed forty years ago.”
Benjamin Meed, president of WAGRO, in his opening remarks spoke of witnesses to the Holocaust and noted that many of them have died. “With each death, the legacy is diminished,” he declared. But Meed added:
“Since our liberation, we have tried to teach the world, to get it to listen. The uniforms, the photographs, the ruins of the death camps, the numbers tattooed on our forearms, horrible as they are offer only a glimpse of the true horrors of those terrible times. We have tried to show them to the world, sometimes in vain. Perhaps now at the end of our lives, we can still tell humanity… never to forgive… never to forget… and never to let such destruction happen again.”
Some members of the audience wept as Kaddish was recited by Hirsh Altusky and hundreds of commemorative candles were lit by survivors of the Holocaust in memory of the six million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis.
REAGAN CITES INSPIRATION OF UPRISING
In a message to the gathering, President Reagan said that the historic uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto will be an inspiration to freedom loving people forever. “I know there are no words which can erase that memory from your minds nor from your hearts. But we can join together as brothers and sisters in the family of men and pray for those who died during one of the most tragic episodes in the history of humankind,” the message read.
Premier Menachem Begin of Israel, in a message, cited the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as a moral victory in the face of “despair, the supremacy of the spirit over animal cruelty, the assertion of Jewish freedom in the face of bestial tyranny.” He continued:
“With the last vestige of Jewish national strength, the few fought against the many for freedom, moved by a silent oath that Israel must be free and independent forever so that a Holocaust of our people will never ever happen again. That Jewish blood will never be shed again with impunity.”
President Yitzhak Navon of Israel, in a message sent to Meed, stated: “I send from Jerusalem a whole nation’s fellow feelings and the hope that never forgetting the wounds of our loss, we will jointly build a meaningful new life in the name of our martyrs, notably in the State of Israel which aspires to give expression to the historic and cultural legacy of our bereaved people.
U.S. SOLDIERS, ALLIES SALUTED
A Deed of Gratitude was presented to Secretary of the Army John Marsh, on behalf of the survivors of the Holocaust. The Deed stated, in part: “We would like to salute the courageous American soldiers and their allies who fought and those who died in the struggle for freedom. It was they who uncovered the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi death camps and crematories, and it was they who paid with their lives so that we might be able to assemble here today.”
Diane Wyshogrod-Zlotogorski, a second generation Holocaust survivor, told the audience: “We will not be silent when there are those who say that the Holocaust never happened, as though the numbers branded upon your arms, and the memories seared into your hearts are mass hallucinations. “Wyshogrod-Zlotogorski said “we must strengthen our Jewish values and let our culture be a living memorial. We must fill the 364 days between each commemoration with the spirit of that Jewishness, that Yiddishkeit, by which our grandparents lived and for which they ultimately died.”
Edward Koch, Mayor of New York, proclaimed today “Warsaw Ghetto Commemoration Day.” He said: “This is a time of renewal and commitment to carry on the struggle for human dignity, peace and justice for Jews in their homeland of Israel and throughout the World.” In commemorating the day, Koch appealed to “all our citizens to reflect upon the sacrifice of the Warsaw Ghetto Freedom Fighters.”
As part of the Statewide Holocaust memorial observances, Governor Hugh Carey proclaimed April 26-May 3 as “Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust,” In issuing his proclamation, he declared” “We should continually rededicate ourselves to the principle of equal justice for all people and remain eternally vigilant against all tyranny, recognizing that bigotry provides a breeding ground for tyranny to flourish.”
Carey also said he would seek legislative approval for a $125,000 appropriation for the State Department of Education to develop a curriculum on the Holocaust for use in schools throughout New York State. In related actions, the Governor proclaimed May 3 as “Warsaw Ghetto Day” and May 9 as “Israel Independence Day.”
CALLS ATTENTION TO JEWISH RESISTANCE
At a mass memorial service last Thursday night at the Part East Synagogue, in commemoration of the 36th year since the liberation of the death camps, kalman Sultanik, president of the American Federation of Polish Jews, assailed the “self-styled historians who indicted the Holocaust victims for their alleged timidity” and charged them with being “sadly ignorant of the life of East European Jewry before the Holocaust.”
Sultanik, a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, told the audience at the Federation-sponsored service: “The time has come to reject once and for all the myth that there was little or no Jewish resistance to the Nazi mass killings, for the sake of historical truth and the dignity and honor of the martyrs.” He said that most of the “self-styled historians overlook the armed uprisings in the ghettos, the courageous resistance of the underground guerrilla fighters, who included all sectors of East European Jewry, Orthodox and so-called progressives alike.”
Rabbi Arthur Schneier, spiritual leader of the Park East Synagogue and president of the World Jewish Congress-American Section, told the audience which was comprised mostly of Holocaust survivors that world Jewry must learn never to relax its vigilance against the forces now seeking to perpetrate another Holocaust against Israel and the Jewish people. He declared: “We will not permit ourselves to be placed in the position of the Christian community of Lebanon, a community that is systematically being annihilated by Syrian forces, while the civilized world stands by and does not intervene to end the genocide.”
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.
