Thousands Mark 30th Anniversary of Heroic Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

New Yorkers today solemnly observed the 30th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, mourned the six million Jewish victims of the Nazi holocaust and vowed never to forget that black chapter in human history. An estimated 500 persons gathered in Times Square–renamed “Warsaw Ghetto Square” for the day by proclamation of Mayor John V. Lindsay –for memorial services held under the auspices of the Zionist Organization of America and more than 50 sponsoring local and national organizations.

Close to 10,000 assembled in Temple Emanuel for memorial services addressed by Sen. Jacob K. Javits, the largest single commemoration of the Ghetto anniversary –ever held in the U.S. At both services, proclamations were read from President Nixon and Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller designating April 29 both a national and a state day of remembrance for the Ghetto fighters and the victims of Nazism.

Javits, in his remarks, said that Senate ratification of the United Nations Genocide Convention, which has been awaiting action for 23 years, would be a “tangible and substantive act of commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.” He said he anticipated that the Convention would be favorably reported by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and would be voted on this summer,”Those who survived the Nazi holocaust know full well the meaning of genocide,” Javits said.

Ratification of the Convention was also urged by Herman L. Weisman, president of the ZOA, who addressed the memorial gathering in Times Square. He said ratification was one of two worthy goals American Jews are called on to support. The second, he said, was alleviation of the plight of Soviet Jewry.

‘NO RIGHT TO FORGIVE OR FORGET’

Rockefeller’s Warsaw Ghetto proclamation, read at Times Square by N.Y. State Attorney General Louis J. Lefkowitz, said: “It is fitting that all New Yorkers in recalling that heroic and bloody uprising, remember too the millions of people, most of them of Jewish faith, who were massacred by the Nazis during World War II.”

Abram Salomon, chairman of the National Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Anniversary Committee, said that “The Jewish people have no right to forgive or forget the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the holocaust and we shall not let the world forget.”

Salomon accused Polish authorities, today of attempting to “rewrite history with regard to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and other Jewish resistance against the oppressor.” He said the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland “is being forced to become the instrument of official political propaganda and is being pressured to present the revolt, not as a Jewish revolt but as an episode in general Polish resistance to German occupation.”

Former Congressman Emanuel Celler told the Times Square audience that “The Warsaw Ghetto reminds us that we must rescue Jews in Russia and never cease our efforts until the last Jew who desires to emigrate can do so.” Mrs. Charlotte Jacobson, chairman of the American section of the World Zionist Organization, observed that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the slaughter of millions of Jews might have been averted had the Jewish State, founded in 1948, been in existence eight or ten years earlier “and there was a country of their own to which Jews could have gone by the very right of their Jewishness.”

ANOTHER WAII MUST BE ERASED

Jacob Stein, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said that “The most fitting tribute which American Jews today can pay to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto is to see that in the name of those Jews who stood against the wall in Warsaw we exert every effort so that those who today stand with their backs against another wall –the wall of the political borders of the Soviet Union, who are being destroyed not by bullets of steel but by those weapons which tear out the soul and spirit of man–that political wall, that barrier to freedom of man be erased.”

The services at Temple Emanuel were opened with an invocation by Rev. Dr. Nathan Perilman, rabbi of Temple Emanuel. The 60 voice Zamir Chorale and the tenor, Mikhail Alexandrovich who recently arrived in Israel from the Soviet Union, chanted the traditional,”El Mole Machamim” and sang selected songs of the Warsaw Ghetto. The ceremonies were held under the auspices of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Organization in conjunction with other groups.

Benjamin Meed, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and chairman of the United Commemoration Committee, observed that “The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was perhaps the most heroic act of resistance to oppression and hatred in the history of mankind. The world must remember the heinous crimes committed during the holocaust, and just as importantly, we must remember the heroism of the gallant martyrs in their courageous battle for freedom.”