Ford Meets with Holocaust Survivors

President Ford today told a group of 10 survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising that “as long as I am President, I will not allow anything to happen to the State of Israel.” The leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Organization (WAGRO) had been invited to the White House to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the freeing of Europe from Nazi tyranny.

The survivors, led by Benjamin Meed, president of WAGRO, presented the President with a “Memorandum for History” that called on the United States to “remain ever vigilant in the defense of freedom and human dignity wherever it stands endangered” so that the tragedy of the Holocaust “never happen again,” They also urged Ford to “insure Israel’s survival as the homeland we didn’t have when the world rejected us and as the homeland we wish to have in the future.”

The group met at the headquarters here of B’nai B’rith International prior to meeting with Ford “to be among Jews as we prepare to carry one thought to the White House: don’t forget what happened,” Meed said. During that meeting the group appealed to Poland to preserve the Jewish cemeteries and remaining synagogues, asking that the Polish government “not let Hitler make good the ‘final solution’ for Poland.”

In response, the First Secretary of the Polish Embassy, Wieslaw Bednarczuk, who had been invited by B’nai B’rith to hear the survivors, said that the Jewish sites are being renovated and that records of the lost Jewish communities are open for study by international scholars.

Meed reported that the meeting with Ford had been scheduled for eight minutes but lasted 15 minutes. The survivors were introduced to Ford by Sen, Jacob K, Javits (R, NY) and Rep, Benjamin Gilman (D, NY).