M-T
The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, November 17,1983 - Page 9
World-National
By
DAVIDBIRKAN
''Little Doctor*' Yechezkel Atlas was killed Nov. 21,1942. He was one of the earliest and best known of Jewish partisan commanders, challenging Nazi might at its peak from the forests of Byelomssia.
Born in 1910 near Lodz, Atlas was forced by Poland's quota system to leave the country to study medicine, He returned in 1939 with his MD degree from the University of Bologna — just in time for the German invasion.
He, his parents, and 17-year-old sister joined the thousands of other Jews fleeing east to Soviet-occupied Poland. The family settled in Kozlowszyzna, in the Slonim district. There he began to practice medicine, in an unsettled atmosphere rendered more uncertain every day by horrible accounts of torture and genocide brought in by the constant stream of refugees.
The massive German drive eastward that begun June 22,1941, trapped close to 2 million Jews. Their speedy destruction was the aim of SS Einsatzgruppen units accompanying the regular German troops. The SS recruited local anti-semites in the Ukraine, Lithuania and Latyia to terrorize and destroy every Jewish community, however small.
Ghettoization techniqnes perfected In nearly two years of occupation in Poland were augmented by a new ferociousness and abandon. No Jews were to be spared. The killing ground extended the height of Europe, from the Black Sea in the south to the Baltic in the north, and across almost half the continent's length, from eastern Poland to the Volga River.
Atlas' district fell early, its communities sealed off into ghettos awaiting their fate. In May, 1942, the Jews of Kbzlowszcyzna were herded into the marketplace and shot by an SS-commanded Lithuanian squad. Atlas alone was spared, sent to be the physician for a nearby village.
On July 24, hundreds of Jews were murdered in the Dereczyn ghetto 30 km. away. The few survivors and several other stragglers formed the nucleus of a Jewish partisan band that Atlas organized. They left for the forest.
The group was forced to bide its time as the Soviet partisan command deliberated on its untried fighting potential. Atlas begged permission to go into action. Finally, in August, he led an attack on Dereczyn. In a show of bravery amazing both Soviets and Nazis, the Jews drove out the Germans and seized the town. On the mass grave of Dereczyn's Jews, they executed 44 policemen before retiring with fresh arms and equipment.
It was one of the first major victories for the entire partisan movement. The former despairing ragged refugees were now a disciplined military unit, in high Russian boots, leather knapsacks, and Dereczyn's best small arms.
Several dayslater, against great odds, Atlas' unit destroyed a bridge 20 km. away used by the Germans to transport military equipment eastward. A week later — after having to wrangle the necessary munitions from the Soviets — Atlas conducted the region's first train derailment.
Atlas' attack on his former home town, Kozlowszyzna, was repulsed by a strong and alerted German garrison, but not before he and another partisan, Elijah Kowansky, swam across the river and back under a hail of bullets to overtake and kill two fleeing Ukrainian guards.
He managed to steal into town under the noses of the Germans one night to recite the kaddish over its mass grave.
The Germans expanded their garrison in Ruda, a town in the centre of the forest, and launched punitive sorties to curtail partisan activity. On Oct. 8, Atlas' unit drove them out, and gathered the arins, equipment, clothing and food necessary to suri/ive the rapidly approaching winter. They continued to ambush Nazi troops, intercept supply convoys and derail trains.
With fresh reserves and troops from the Eastern Front, the .Germans launched an all-out assault in the forest on Nov. 21. Among the many casualties was Atlas. He spent his dying breath imploring his men to keep fighting.
Atlas was posthumously honored as a Hero of the Soviet Union, the USSR's highest award for bravery in combat.
Two Jewish institutes afferted
Calgary ends day ^^s^ contracts
By
PATRICIA RUCKER
In the wake of municipal school board elections fought over the issue of religious schools in the public system, the Calgaiy Public School Board has voted 7-2 to terminate board contracts with two Jewish day schools and two branches of a mainline Protestant school.
Under the Alberta Schools Act, which was hailed as landmark legislation by groups across the country which support public funding for independent religious schools, alternative schools can affiliate with a public school board, and receive funding on the same basis as any other public school.
(Religious instruction remains the responsi-
bility — educationally and financially — of the parents.)
The Calgary^ Hebrew School and the I. L. Peretz School have been affiliated with the Calgary public board since 1976. More recently,^ Logos, a Christian school, affiliated and expanded rapidly.
Gerry Burden, newly elected chairman of the Calgary board of trustees, told The CJN fai a telephone interview that it was the expansion of the Christian school, coupled with applications from an Islaniic group, that sparked opposition to the concept of funding for religious schools.
"The basic platform is that this sort of thing could not continue in a pubHc system because it would  become totally
fragmented," Burden said.
Burden expressed some sympathy for the plight of the Jewish schools,^ but pointed out that, "to be consistent, they hav^to go too . . . it's unfortunate."
But, in an ironic twist, Jews in Calgary may start paying school taxes to the Calgary Separate School Board, a Catholic board, in response to the public board's decision.
Calgary lawyer Joseph Spier, a past president of both the Calgary Jewish Community Council and the Calgary Hebrew School, estimated the potential financial loss to the public board as "substantial."
Under the Alberta School Act of 1970, Spier said, taxpayers who are neither Protestant nor Catholic have the right to
direct their taxes to either the public or the separate board.
Corporations are considered to have no religion. Dr. Stuart Ross, president of the Calgary Hebrew School Society, told The CJN by phone that he has received several offers from non-Jewish firms to switeh their taxes to the Catholic board.
Switdiing taxes
" Calgarians have a lot of pride in how they deal with minorities," he said.
Another option being considered by the Jewish schools is to petition the province to set up a Jewish school board.
A1923 decision by the
judicial committee of the Privy Council, on appeal from the Supreme Court
of Canada, gives provinces the right to set up publicly supported boards for iibn-Chris-tians. Spier said.
A third option, which Spier felt was unlikely to succeed, was to mount a challenge under Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which will prohibit discrimination on the basis of, among other things, religion and national or ethnic origin.
That section does not become operative until the spring of 1985.
Spier also suggested that the two Jewish day schools could condder reapplying at some future date on the ^in-ciple that they are cultural schools.
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