New York Meeting for Warsaw Ghetto Martyrs Held Despite Bomb Threat

An anonymous bomb threat did not prevent the observance of the 20th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, at Carnegie Hall. The commemoration was sponsored by 30 national and local Jewish organizations under the chairmanship of former Senator Herbert H. Lehman.

While the thousands who crowded the hall were listening to the speakers, an anonymous person telephoned the Carnegie Hall office and warned, in English, that “a bomb has just been planted in the building.” A police emergency squad was immediately summoned and started a search of the building. By that time the program was almost over. The police found no trace of any bomb.

The meeting was addressed by Senator Jacob K. Javits, Philip M. Klutznick, former U.S. representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, and Katriel Katz, Israel’s Consul General in New York. President Kennedy, in a message read at the meeting, said: “I am pleased to extend my greetings to all those gathered to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Just as many before them did, the people of the Warsaw Ghetto affirmed that a few men who honor their freedom can speak for all men; that the only genuine choice in the history of man is not between living and dying but between seeking or not seeking the right. It is a measure of their courage that the brutality they opposed will be remembered only in the light of their sacrifice.”

U.S. CRITICIZED FOR FAILING TO RATIFY THE GENOCIDE PACT

Mr. Klutznick, in his address, criticized the American failure to ratify the Genocide Convention outlawing mass-killing of innocent people. “The twentieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising,” he said, “is the appropriate moment for a great and good nation like ours to turn away from its reluctance and to ratify an international convention dedicated to the resolve that the tragedy of Warsaw shall not again blot the face of the universe.”

Senator Javits called on the Kennedy Administration to “refuse any further foreign aid” to Egypt unless President Nasser stops his military preparation against Israel, including the use of German scientists for the production of jet aircraft and rockets. “There is no room here for a hands-off policy or for waiting to see how it comes out,” he declared.

Ambassador Katz described the Ghetto uprising as “a direct link in the chain of Jewish heroism, bravery and martyrdom, stretching from the oppression of the Biblical Pharaoh in Egypt to the fierce struggle to set up a Jewish State pledged to the survival of the Jewish nation.”

Mr. Katz, who formerly served as Israel Ambassador to Poland, said the Ghetto uprising “was meant to arouse the conscience of the world against the systematic murdering of the Jews of Poland and those brought to Poland from several lands for the so-called ‘Final Solution.'” He added: “Though the world heard of the revolt, it did not react. If it had come to their rescue, one-third of a million Jews still left in Poland, and all the Jews of Hungary, would have survived the total holocaust.”

JEWISH WORKERS PAY SOLEMN TRIBUTE TO WARSAW GHETTO FIGHTERS

Thousands of Jewish workers in New York last night expressed their deep respect and admiration for the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto. At a procession of thousands on Riverside Drive and at an overflow assemblage at Statler-Hilton Hotel they solemnly declared: We will never forget the Nazi slaughterers of six million of our flesh and blood.

The chief speakers at the meeting at the Statler-Hilton were the legendary Vladke, symbol of the intrepid fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto; Senator Javits; and Max Brauer, representing the West German Social-Democratic Party. Chairman of the gathering was Jacob Zuckerman, president of the Workmen’s Circle. The meeting was also addressed by Benjamin Tabachinsky, executive secretary of the Jewish Labor Committee.

At another memorial meeting today, the Polish Ambassador to the United States, Edward Drozniak, said that Jewish equality in Poland today was “a living fact.” He lauded the heroism of the Jewish ghetto fighters.

The American executive of the World Federation of Polish Jews today expressed “sharp protest” against the Polish Embassy in Washington for delaying to the very last day the issuance of visas to its delegation to the Warsaw Ghetto observances, thus “practically making it impossible for the delegation to participate in the observances in Warsaw.”

Major American newspapers throughout the country today featured the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising through editorials and news articles, many of them of a historical nature. The New York Times, in an editorial entitled “Heroes of the Ghetto,” declared: “Wherever men of any nation or creed respect courage in face of inhumanity, the fight of the few in the Warsaw ghetto will not be forgotten.” The New York Herald Tribune devoted the front page of one of its major. Sunday edition sections to articles and photographs entitled “In Memoriam: Horror of a Ghetto’s Death.”