5.-DEC-;
The Canadian English-Jewish Weekly
VOL xm
GARDENVALE, QUEBEC, NOVEMBER 20, 1959
No. 8
Was Journalist, World Zionist, Mayor Of Jerusalem
Gershon Agron, Mayor of Jerusalem and founder of The Jerusalem Post, died after a long illness. He was 65 years old. During the last forty years Mr. Agron had been a well known figure in World Zionist circles. Mayor of Israel's capital city since 1955, he had been again slated to head the Mapai party's list of candidates in the municipal elections.
A native of Mina in the Ukraine, Mr. Agron was taken to the United States by his family in 1906, when he was 13. He attended Temple University, says the New York Times, After serving on the editorial staffs of Jewish publications in Philadelphia and New York, he joined the Jewish Legion, formed to fight with the British in Palestine in World War I.
When the fighting ended Mr. Agron became a resident of Palestine. He had been a correspondent in Jerusalem and New York before he founded The Palestine Post in 1932. When Israel became a state in 1948, the newspaper's name was changed to The Jerusalem Post.
As editor of The Post, an English-language daily, Mr. Agron, as well as his staff, got used to dodging bullets in covering the news/Before partition, he kept up a running battle with the British and their censorship.
His newspaper plant was blown up by Arabs in 1948. A year later, during the siege of Jerusalem, when power failed, the staff resorted to the mimeograph machine, working by candlelight, A columnist, writing at home, borrowed a taper from the Old Crusader Church.
Daring the years between the Agroa traveled onist
Jews In South Urged To Take Stand On Rights
Southern Jewish leaders called on Jewish�cummuniltea�in the South to take "a positive stand" on race relations and law enforcement. These leaders said "immobilizing fears" had gripped Southern Jews because of the "violence against synagogues and increased distribution of anti-Semitic literature by hate mongers." They said that fears among Southern Jews arising from these factors "are not warranted."
Leader Calls Poland "Only Window" In Soviet Bloc Open To West
A. J. C. Study Lists Six Actions To Halt German Anti-Semitism
extensively on Zioni fie also was a delegate to several Zionist congresses. In 1927, as Jewish Congress investigator in Rumania, he charged that Rumanians were regularly attacking Jews with, impunity. -'.'.._
He went to the United States frequently to speak for the United Palestine Appeal, the Jewish Congress, the Zionist Congress, and Israel bond sales. He spoke at the meeting last winter of the National Committee for Labor Israel in the Commodore Hotel in New York.
Mr. Agron was director of information services of the Israeli Government from 1949 to 1951. His love for Jerusalem was as limitless as the energy he devoted to improving the Israeli sector of the Holy City, says the New York Times. During his term as mayor many parks were opened, the New City was pushed outward far beyond its original boundaries and miles of streets were cut
(Continued on Page Thirteen)
The leaders appealed to the Southern Jewish communities to engage in common efforts with "Christian groups in helping to solve race problems," says the New York Times. They said that such a joint effort "must at the same time lead to improvement of understanding between Christians and Jews in the South."
Drawing these conclusions were the chairmen of the six Southern regional boards of the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith, the oldest Jewish service organization. Their reports came at the recent three-day annual executive committee meeting of the League in New York. Since its establishment in 1913, the League, with national headquarters in New York, has been devoted to the improvement of intergroup relations.
The reports were presented by Samuel I. Rosenberg, of New Orleans; Paul Seiderman, of Miami, Florida; Robert Lipton, of Durham, N.C.; David Arenstein, of Richmond, Va.j Abe Goldstein, of Atlanta, Georgia; and Alfred Sal-linger, of Dallas, Texas.
Henry Edward Schultz, national chairman of the League and a member of the New York City Board of�Higher Education, emphasized that anti-Semitic activities "have had little effect upon traditional�friendly attitudes toward Jews in the Sooth. 84081-erners are dMfpkr not boyteff the
froducts offered rby the anti-eznitic * hate-mongers who are trying to exploit the racial situation," Mr. Schuttz asserted. He announced that^the League had; enlarged its staff and increased its services in the South.
Benjamin R. Epstein, the executive director of the League, predicted that exclusion of Jews by college fraternities "will virtually disappear as an official practice" in two years. Mr. Epstein declared that twenty-five years ago a majority of the sixty-one major fraternities carried restrictive clauses in their constitutions. By 1948, he noted, only twenty-five had them. In 1955, the League could only find five, he said, reports the New York Times.
Mr. Epstein reported that local chapters of these five major fraternities, which he did not name, "have been given specific deadlines by college authorities to remove such clauses from their charters."
wMLfa^
cfi
An American Jewish leader de--clared in Washington that he had found Poland was the "only window" in the Soviet bloc open to the West. In Poland, he said, the Roman Catholic Church maintains a strong position and Polish authorities wage a "determined, fight" against anti-Semitism.
These statements were made by Jacob Blaustein, a member of the United States delegation to the tenth General Assembly of the United Nations, says the New York Times, who recently returned from a mission to Poland on invitation from the Polish Government and at the request of the State Department
Mr. Blaustein, a petroleum authority and industrialist from Baltimore, Maryland made public his findings at the opening session of the four-day American Jewish Committee at the Shoreham Hotel. He is a director and member of the executive committee of the American Oil Company and a member of the Department of Interior's National Petroleum Council.
He emphasized that a "most striking aspect" of differences of conditions in Poland, compared with other states in the Soviet orbit, "is the position of the Roman Catholic church." Mr. Blaustein said that "today it is almost unbelievable to see how a country, ruled by a Communist Government, is church-minded. The attendance in the churches is very large and religion is taught in government schools/' he noted.
Touching on the situation of Polish Jews, Mr. Blaustein, honorary president of the agency, said Jthe Polish Government was on a constant alert against any manifestations of anti-Semitism, adding that "at tbt atateat thro there appears to bfcjitttf discrimination with regard to employment"
Before the Hitler era* he declared, there were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland. "The latest estimates give the Jewish population at: about 32,000 including about 12,-000 repatriates whom Russia had been holding since the last world war."
He said that Polish authorities had advised him that they would prefer that Jews remain in the country since "they can be desirable and useful citizens," says the New York Times. However, Mr. Blaustein expressed belief that the Polish Government "will in no way oppose the continuation of the slow and orderly voluntary emigration of those who wish to leave."
Mr. Blaustein, said that the "Polish Government now realizes that what is needed is a diversification of production, greater re-orientation of the economy toward export, finding more favorable markets, particularly in non-Communist countries, and more foreign sources of raw materials."
The Polish Government, he went on, "is trying very hard" to become economically independent and feels that to do this "it must have econ-
aldJfom_the_JLJnited States � and licenses"'on some patented United States processes to build up its industries."
Of the current changes in the Polish-cabinet, Mr. Blaustein expressed the hope that the "positive developments in Poland would not suffer as a result" He pointed out that currently Poland's economy is dependent on Soviet raw material, particularly ore and oil. He warned that the Soviet Union could at will, for political and other reasons, "bring about almost the complete stoppage of Polish industry and the collapse of her economy."
Mr. Blaustein said that the Polish people were aware of the economic aid the United States was giving them, says the New York Times. Since its establishment in 1906, the American Jewish Committee has set as goals the combatting of bigotry *nd discrimination, safeguarding of civil and religious rights of Jews, and advancing of human rights for all.
�>..
Envoy Says Israel Too Strong For Arabs To Crash
Avraham Harraan, who recently arrived in the U.S. as Ambassador from Israel, said his country has grown so strong that it is unrealistic for the Arab nations of the Middle East to think that tb�y can destroy it.
" till hears wild talk from Arab qoartwi'a ta iripe oat. Israel," e said. "Anybody visiting Israel today will soon convince himself that this talk is even less realistic than it was eleven years ago." (Israel was created in May, 1948.) .. "The Middle-East is stillr un fortunately, an exception to a historic process which all men of good will hope will develop and gain strength," he said, reports the New York Herald Tribune. Mr. Harman said the Arabs would be more realistic if they consented to "direct communication" with Israel in an effort to settle differences.
Mr. Harman spoke, for the first time since he was appointed Ambassador to the United States, before 600 members of the American Zionist Council at a meeting at the Hotel Commodore, in New York. Listed by Mr. Harman as achievements in strengthening Israel were: An increase in economic production and export of goods and services. Alleviation of the overcrowded school situation, leaving the formation service of the Zionist education qualitatively. Advances in the field of scientific research necessary to economic development and to lifting the "cultural standard" of Israel.
Free Germany has made "immense progress in stamping out anti-Semitism, but much more remains to be done, the American -Jewish�Congress~~Tep<5rtect ~~~ Hf Washington. Rabbi Joachim Prinz, of Newark, N.J., expelled from his post in Berlin for anti-Nazi sermons during the Hitler regime, and Wilhelm G. Grewe, German Ambassador to the United States, spoke at a joint press conference.
Dr. Prinz presented Dr. Grewe with the first copy of a sixty-three-page study by the American Jewish Congress entitled "The German Dilemma � An Appraisal of Anti-Semitism, Ultra-Nationalism, and Democracy in West Germany," says the New York Herald Tribune. The study recommends six actions by the German government to halt the growth of anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism, as follows:
1) Bar further infiltration of ex-Nazis .into official positions; 2) punish anti-Jewish hoodlums and hatemongers swiftly: 3) speed action on individual indemnification claims; 4) expand efforts to combat ultra-nationalist propaganda; 6) strengthen programs to document Nazi persecutions and produce democratic values; 6) launch a comprehensive education program among youth, emphasizing a knowledge of the Nazi past and encouraging devotion to freedom, equality and human dignity.
Dr. Prinz praised the former President of Germany, Dr.
dor Heuss, and the newly-inaugurated President, Dr. Heinrich Leubke, for recognizing that the problem of anti-Semitism and ultra-nationalism is "of the~high-est importance to Germany, in political and educational as well as in moral terms."
Ambassador Grewe said: "We would be rendering a disservice to Germany if we were to deny the existence of attitudes left over from Nazi times. We are convinced that the overwhelming majority of the German people are on the right path, on the path of sanity. I hope you will understand that, therefore, we no longer call the problem at hand a dilemma.
"I can't be more specific than Chancellor Adenauer has been in his most recent statement, addressed to an American fellow-organization of yours, when he said: " 'The Federal Republic is waging an uncompromising battle against anti-Semitism in courts, press, radio, and private associations.'"
The American Jewish Congress study declares that "there can hardly be doubt that the present leaders of the West German Republic sincerely aspire to have their country take a secure place in the community of free nations", says the New York Herald Tribune, but adds: "Nevertheless, West Germany has not yet exerted every effort to eliminate nationalism, militarism and anti-Semitism from the life of the nation."
THIS CHANUKAH BEFORE
YOU BUY ANY PIANO TBTOIGANT
>VHE1NTZMAJV >>
Reddand S*K>ppfm Centre (Town of Mt. Royal)
-"�l 31�
FIRST IN CANADA
Tails Mfg. Co.
Specializing m Talism
For
Bar-Mitzvahs and Weddings
Rayon, Silk and Wool Prayer
Shawls.
When you buy a Talis Ask Only for This
N. Khaiin
840 WiMman, Montreal T�l. CR. 2-1887
Tfl 7TJP Dfofl Tfr
The Canadian Jewish Review is still the only
Jewish publication in Canada printed in any language
reaching the Jewish community which is not sponsored by
a group or an organization and which Is able to claim
membership in the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
motoring majesty
for montrealers
from MID-TOWN
Buying a Cadillac is your most satisfying experience. Wise Montrealers make this
investment aFMidrTown . . .
TOWN
where the service is expert and reliable, and where the attention you receive is courteous and efficient Better buy your next Cadillac at Mid-Town.
MOTORS 1395 Dorchester Street W. (at BUk�p) UN. <-*Hl