Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 5 September 1947 — Page 7

Friday, September 5, 1947

THE NATIONAL JEWISH POST

The Story 18 Months Later: How Long Shall We Rot Here?

Jewltih Teleffraphlf Agenrj By UEKAIJ) FRANK T HAVE just completed a 2,700-mile tour of the X Jewish DP camps of Germany and Austria, accompanying the Anglo-American Committee on Palestine. Eighteen months ago, accompanying the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine, I made virtually the same tour, investigating conditions in virtually the same camps. Eighteen months ago there were about 100,000 Jewish displaced persons in the camps of Germany and Austria. Today the figure has increased to 225,000. In ot rtain areas we found men and women living at a level slightly above the animal. Perhaps the most horrifying were those at the Rothschild Hospital, in Vienna, which has served as a processing center for more than 100,000 Jewish refugees. Today it is a camp, a dammed-up black hole into which men and women pour endlessly but from

which there is no exit. At this writing 4,200 persons are jammed into a building whose normal capacity is 1,000. Jews from Rumania, driven by fear of pogrom and famine, are pouring into Viennr at the rate of 1,000 and more a week. The result is an incredible seething mass of humanity. Dr. Otto Wolken, the physician in charge, who was camp prison doctor at Dachau, is beside himself. Four thousand people: 14 toilets. He has X-rayed at random 2,000 men, women and children: 1,000 cases of arrested tuberculosis, 380 cases of active tuberculosis. Forty per cent of those he has examined suffer from malnutrition. I asked him what the physical condition of these people was. “Catastrophic,” he replied. And these, he points out, “are the strong, for the weak died on the way.” You pause and ask one man, "When do you expect to reach Palestine?” "Soon,” he says: "Maybe in a few weeks.” "How?* He stares at you. “By

foot,” he says. ‘‘What can keep a Jew from Palestine? By foot, by train, by boat—we shall go.” It is difficult to get to Palestine, you say. “Yes,” he replies (and by now you are the center of 75 to 100 men and women almost frantic in their desire to make you understand) "but we have crossed more difficult borders. We shall cross this one, too.” "You work your way through the jammed corridors, climb three flights to the attic. Here, amid the chimney-bricks and the rafters, is a confused world of humanity—men and women, children and infants, two and three to a cot, people lying between cots, women trying to sleep, face down on their arms to shut out the daylight, boys of 16 and 18 sitting listlessly on their bags, girls in petticoats and wrapper staring at you. One flares up suddenly, ‘We are the young people. How long shall we rot here?" *

STIRRING LETTERS GIVE YISHUV’S REACTION TO EVENTS

Sandstrom is a staunch friend of strom? Will his conscience hurt of his friends. Or will he have Um stroyer of noble tradition, did him when he is forced to turn courage of his conviction and pe« that wound hurt Judge Sand- his thumb down on the victim (Continued on next page)

(Continued from preceding page)

HATIKVAH, rising from a great throng of youthful hearts pressed together on the crowded deck of the ex-President Garfield, filled the night air with the sobs of the strollers and listeners on the Rothschild Boulevard, perhaps also every home in Eretz Israel. God! can you imagine that Hatikvah on the boat, in the air, in the hearts of praying fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers. It was a fierce outburst of hope of a people pilloried and tortured to death as no other people in the long and bloody history of man on earth. It was an outcry from the depth of an abyss which threatens to engulf the living with the millions already dead. As I type these lines, the sounds of that outcry of hope in the midst of r*'- 'V and destruction confine >te in my innermo 11 hear them for the ix. days on earth. I suppose many shall hear them, many whose days are still all before them. I d onot know how many could sleep that night knowing that 4554 of our rescued brothers and sisters and their babies and children were roaming the dark waters where pirates are bound to pounce on them to lead them captive to new hell holes amidst barbed wires and deadly typhus. The morning papers brought the news that there would be another broadcast from the Exodus 1947 at 7:30 a. m. Life begins here before six and we waited with baited breath for news from the Exodus 1947. "We have been intercepted in international waters. Seventeen miles outside the territorial waters. Five destroy-

ers and a cruiser are upon us. A destroyer rammed one side of our ship. Waters are coming in fast through the hole. The pumps are working hard. The British boarded our ship with tear gas bombs. One dead. Five dying. Twenty seriously wounded. Over one hundred lightly wounded. The waters are coming In faster than the pumps can get them out. Stand by for further broadcasts.” Do The British Feel Shame? After endless minutes, the broadcast from the Exodus 1947 started again: “The captain and the crew are working hard. The pumps are working. The incoming waters are under control. In half an hour we shall be out of danger.” We thought of the “Struma” and the “Patria.” We visualized the 655 children and babies on the deck of the Exodus 1947 and the 1017 youths, the 1282 women and 1600 men who have escaped the gas chambers and crematoria of the Nazis to face the proud cruiser Ajax which one won a brilliant victory over the Graf Spee. A great and noble British ship sending its crew to capture and even destroy the Jewish survivors of Nazi brutality! . . . Judge Sandstrom and Gospodin Simich came to Haifa, another pair of impotent onlookers. They would not go to the DP camps in Europe and they would not go to Cyprus, so the DPs and Cyprus came to them—another trick of fate, and who will fathom its devious machinations? the British. Did the deep wound in the side of the rescue boat, a wound inflicted by a British de-

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"Excellent! The first time in the experience of this writer that anti-Semitism has been handled openly. A film to be praised, praised again, and seen by all!" —N.Y. Post

'A very, very excellent film! <-A thrilling murder mystery in which anti-Semitism in all its ugliness is brought to lightl" —Jewish Day • • •

TOBERT YOUNG ROBERT MITCHUM ROBERT RYAN ,

GLORIA GRAMME • PAUL KELLY SAM LEVENE Produced by ADRIAN SCOTT Oirectetf by EDWARD DMYTRYK S<nw rt* ty IMS PAXTON

"A forthright attack on antiSemitism. One of the year's best films!" —Newsweek • e e "Boldly comes out and names a canker which infects democ-racy—anti-Semitism. Hardhitting!" —N. Y. Times • • e "A breath-taking movie...dealing openly and frankly with the plague of anti-Semitism!" — Jewish Journal B • • "Movie of the Weekl Deals frankly with an important issue: anti-Semitism. A grade- . A thriller!" —life Magazinn • • • "Keys the problem of race hatred into an unusual murder story...as grimly realistic as a brass-knuckled punch in the jowl** —N. Y. Herald Tribune

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