Page 4 - The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, November 18, 1982
World-
Technion president
By DAVID BIRKAN
Pioneer kibbutzhlk Enzo Sereni died in Dacliau on Nov. 18, 1944. At age 39, he had climaxed a productive and restless life' with an act of desperate heroism for his people.
Sereni was born in Rome to a wealthy Jewish-Italian family prorninent in the highest affairs of state from the time it and other leading ^community families had supported Italy's independence movement in the mid-19th centui-y. Sereni's uncle, Angelo, was for rnany years president of both the Roman and Italian Jewish communities. The country was virtually free of anti-semitism.
As Enzo approached his bar mitzvah, the personal turbulence of adolescence for a boy who was already a prolific writer of stories, essays and poems was compounded by new influences in the community. Zionist spokesmen from Palestine, England and Russia coming to solicit funds from wealthy Italian families fascinated him with stoHes of a Jewish homeland.;
At 21, Enzo dutifully served his one year in the Italian army and immediately afterwards set Out for Palestine with his wife Ada and their newborn daughter. He started at an orange grove in Rehovot, trying to outwork veteran chalutzim, Yemenites and Arabs. To occupy his mind, he recited aloud cantos from Dante's Divine Comedy and other Italian authors.
Sereni pressed the Zionist authorities for land for a new kibbutz for some of his fellow workers. A 50-acre tract in the middle of gravelly bush-covered hills 2'/2,miles south.of Rehovot was allotted.
. Just before Passover in 1928, when Sereni was 23. two dismantled barracks were carted to the site in wagons, and the foundations of Givat Brenner were laid. Sereni helped its Lithuanian, Italian and German arrivals adapt to each other and to their new lifestyles.
From 1931-4. the "Zionist pimpernel," as he was called, set out to establish hechalutz (youth pioneer) groups in Germany and Italy. Under his leadership and the rising threat of Nazism, Zionism and aliya flourished. There were 15,000 hechalutz members, 3,800 of whonv were undergoing agncultural training. About 2,200 emigrated after..-1933.
With the.outbreak of World War II, he worked for the British organizing Italian-language propaganda. He also promoted Judaism and Zionisni among the communities and Jewish .soldiers' clubs in Cairo and . Alexandria, to his superiors! chagrin. Sent t6 gather intelligence in Baghdad, he took up smuggling Iraqi Jews into Palestine.
In 1943, he.relumed to his kibbutz, fbr his son's bar mitzyah. Upon hearing of the SS deportation of Rome's Jew's, Sereni rushed off to work for the Allies in a newly-Iiberat^ pari of Italyw He volunteered to parachute behind enemy lines to reconnoitre and ei^tablish contact with Fldrence, the next anticipated scene, of battle, and alert whatever Jews remained therie. In the jiiimp, a strong wind blew him directly into German hands.
After several weeks_in_a_PDW camp, Sereni was transferred to Dachau and executed.
Givat Brenner, named after a Hebrew novelist prominent in the first decades of the century, became the largest kibbutz in Israel.
Gtants available from Germany
NEW YORK
Orgahizations that provide shelter to Jewish yictims of Nazi persecution miay apply for grants : frdm a $2,000,000 Hardship Fund, it was announced here last week.
The Conference on Jewiish Material Claims Against Germany set up the fund with appropriations from the German federal government.
In principle, the claims coriference will only consider applications from organizations that have been established to provide-shelter to Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, or from organizations where a sub-
stantial number of their, beneficiaries are Jewish victims of Nazi persecutions.
Interested organiza^ tions may .file .applications (with 10 copies) by Jan. 31 addressed to. Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, 15 E. 26th St., Room 1901, New York, NY 10010.
C.J.N. Classifieds Really Do Work! !
MONTREAL — -People thought Josef Singer was crazy when he dreamed that one day aircraft would be built in Israel.
That was 1937.
Today, Singer,. the new president of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, has even bigger dreams —  he   Canada since becoming
wants to see Israel be^ come the leader of high technology in the world.
Singer was in Montreal — his first visit to
Presenting Technion award to Eugene Steams [second from right] are [fromleft] Eugene Riesman, Josef Singer and Jacob UUman. {Jack Markow photo]
It's not so
TORONTO —
The CTV television network denies that its Nov. 8 show. Bizarre, was anti-semitic.
Complaints reached The CJN about a Ku Klux Klan gambling casino sketch in which Jewish heads showed up
" in threes to denote a jackpot win on slot machines.
"It was certainly not the intent of the sketch to be anti-semitic," says Arthur Weinthal. a spokesman for the CTV.
"The show plays on the foolishness   of . stereo-
types and. everyone is picked on," he said.
Weinthal added that "nothing and no one is spared" in this show which, as the name suggests, makes outrageous fun of current events^
president — to speak at the annual board of directors meeting of the Canadian Technion Society. A former senior vice-president of Israel Aircraft Industry,. Singer joined the aeronautical engineering faculty of Technion in 1955 and has twice served as its dean.
Singer stresseid the role Technion has played in Israel's technological and industrial development. The university has graduated two-thirds of Israel's engineers, he said. That interrelationship will grow, he believes because "Israel needs Technion now more than ever."
Israel's technological superiority was amply . demonstrated during the Lebanon war, he said, and there is no limit to what the country can achieve in peacetime.
Companies like El-scint and Scitiex, as well as the Israel Aircraft Industry, are already competing "at the highest level" in international markets.
He pledged that as president he will strive to raise the level of excellence at Technion even higher, demanding higher standards from students, teachers and administrators. This task will not be easy; Singer recently received word that the government will reduce its subsidization of  Technion's budget
from 75.9% to 66.8%.[
He asked the Cai^^ dian Technion Societypvl "redouble its efforts" behalf of the uhiversity^^:^
The board of dkectolil^ agreed that a new n^^l tional project will b^| launched, the Canad;^| Faculty Centre, a facilit)^!!: needed by Technion'spp hundreds of professorsfS? and researchers. CTS'^I current project, the Can-|^:' ada Nuclear Engineering f^r Institute, is nearing com- p pletion.
At a dinner in the Ritz Carlton Hotel preceding the meeting, CTiS na-tional chairman of the pjf board, Eugene Stearns; iA'.' was  honored   for , his Wt, major contributions to 0> Technion. Stearns, who |P is also vice-chairman of the Techiiiori  interna- ftj; tional   board   of gov-ernors, was presented ^f; with the Albert Einstein ^ Award,   by Arnerican Technion  Society past president Jacob W. Ull- |i;K mann. It was the first time  this  award, the highest honor bestowed by the ATS, was present- ^|r: ed outside of the United H§ States. ■ S?'
NEW YORK —
With winter rapidly approaching, the American Joint Distribution Committee [JDC] has undertaken to play a key role in the refugee camps
in southern Lebanon. It has bought, 2,500 kerosene heating stoves and is stockpiling blankets and warm clothes contributed : by organizations in North America
-and Israel.
The supplies are being held in storage facilities near the camps, so that when the need arises, they can be distributed in a matter of hours.
In conjunction with the governments of Israel and Lebanon, JDC is exploring a variety of other approaches to make sure people in the camps will not suffer b-om the cold.
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