International Action Against Anti-semitism Asked by Underground Leader

One of the first concerns of any international authority set up after the war must be action against anti-Semitism, in the opinion of Prof. Chaim Perelman, of the department of Logic and Philosophy of Brussels university. Prof. Perelman, who was for two years chief of the underground activity of Comite De Defense des Juifs, which was part of the “White Army” in Belgium’s Front Independence, is certain that Germany’s four-year propaganda occupation of the open mind has left widespread anti-Semitism where none existed before.

“Anti-Semitism is now the center of anti-democratic propaganda all ever the world,” Prof. Perelman told the correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “You haven’t preach fascism without being interned, you can’t attack the Allies without being interned, but you can speak freely against the Jews. So the whole of internal racist propaganda is funnelled through the channels of anti-Semitism. This gives them opening for post-war attempts to win, in ideology, what they lose on the battlefield. I believe the only way to combat anti-Semitism is by an international effort, an by international law.”

Prof. Perelman, a young, energetic man who shows no signs of the years of nerve wrecking underground struggle, as a key figure in the secreting and sustenance of over 100,000 Jews, said that “every Jew saved was saved by a Belgian, and for every Jew saved there was at least one Belgian in danger. Many were caught, and suffered for the help they gave; yet they never stopped helping us,” he pointed out. Many Belgian civilian agencies also helped; among them, the Belgian Children’s’ Institute, directed by Mle. Yvonna Nevejan. Through her, many Jewish children were hidden, and funds for their maintenance were secured.

During its entire period of activity, the Jewish underground committee headed by Prof. Perelman spent some 35,000,000 francs. Of this sum, 7,000,000 came from the joint Distribution Committee through Switzerland, by underground contacts. Of the remainder, much was borrowed from banks and institutions; 15,000,000 francs were received from the Belgian Government.

The dangerous work of saving Jews was not carried on without human less. In 1943, the Gestapo caught a young Zionist leader named Berenson, a leader in the Jewish Community who was successfully hidden throughout the occupation, Berenson, after being severely beaten, was taken to the city hall where the Gestapo intended to force in to point out the people who had worked with him in the fabrication of false identity cards for Jews. He managed to get out of their hands for a moment, and leaped to his death from a second floor stairway lending. Dr. Ura Lifschitz, a noted local physician, when arrested, overpowered and shot his Gestapo guard, only to be caught again, a few months later, and executed.