Declaring that “this is a proud day for the Fifth Army, the Jewish people and for the free world,” General Mark Clark, commander of American troops in Italy, today told worshippers in the Rome Synagogue that “for us who are fighting this bitter struggle, today’s services represent the fruit of what we are fig ting for, the promise of what the United Nations will bring to a liberated world.”
Gen. Clark’s address, which was read by Chaplain Aaron Paperman of the Fifth Army, was heard here over the facilities of the National Broadcasting Corporation in a program arranged with the cooperation of the American Jewish Committee.
“Under the Fascist and Nazi reign of terror the Jews in Italy were humbled and beaten, driven into hiding, forbidden to worship according to their beliefs and traditions,” Gen. Clark said. “Rome, little more than a month ago, was a city under the heel of a ruthless foreign master and enemy of liberty. Today – liberated by the Fifth Army – Rome is a free city and her people are free to worship as they choose. Freedom of religion, perhaps the greatest of the freedoms, has been restored to the eternal city. The world has cause to be thankful.”
Chief Rabbi Anton Zolli of Rome, who lived in hiding for nine months during the German occupation, delivered a “prayer of liberation” during the services in which he paid tribute to the American and Allied armies. “The brave American soldiers, like all the armies of the Allied Nations, are the expression, I dare say, the incarnation in our midst, of the ideal of liberty and justice for us, that are part of the European Jews that have suffered and that, in those countries that have not been yet freed, still suffer unutterably for the same ideal,” Rabbi Zolli stated. “You Right heroically and victoriously for the ideal of which we are the martyrs.”
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.
