Box Folder 11 15 Sermons. 1947
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MS-763: Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman Collection, 1930-2004. Series E: Sermons, Speeches, and Writings, 1933-1959. Box Folder 11 15 Sermons. 1947. For more information on this collection, please see the finding aid on the American Jewish Archives website. 3101 Clifton Ave, Cincinnati, Ohio 45220 513.487.3000 AmericanJewishArchives.org ~ J<.,_... P7 -.... ~ V J;.f. V'1 £. _f~c.f': f rl~-::;-cr J)&rh ju. '6~ ,,wi. IL. (;!,,.JI .._.fl.... "W'-/1,.. ~v- :v-.-f!., ·~ f' ~ . ~ /\-J-1.;, N..-- ,.., ~~ Vl...:. th°"~ 1} ;~fc~ ,i;;,.__' -"? ~!<..> .L..-_ "'4AI\&.. ··(J..~,,_,J .. ,,,.,;.. "' c-rf --.Jr rl 4A. 't;, - a;t'- ~ - ~(. k ~ f. ?'( J-- --- W>. Pt,.. 6:,.Jl._ wJl_ "1/'' fk ~ ~ . T. 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W4'. 14-- . ~ ry- 1 rr> -7/Arj f,, f J~ ~ -fr> µ. of-- ,,,.;... ~ ,-..t.. ;Af., ~J,._ ~ ~ ~ kfi. - )..._ l°-1w..... £,.&'- r~ ~~ ,..,:. ;~ 1J-- . J~i/ ~ ~ p ;:;- rfo /,c ~ '4 M/ ~ ri- ,.,_,,..A/'. - -- (£) ~ /N-vsr ~ J..c. ~ W(- fr- ~ ,;._ ~ ........,_, ~> 4-d 77 ~ ~ '7 7& ~j k~ ,4..,,f< (lo + · 7k 1rv- ~ ~tn. ,,t; " ~ o~ ~a-~.__/).._ r /W"'jl ~ ~ ).A~ &-£ k~ ~ ~~ - ?>j ~ H _;!- ~ ~r/1.._ ~ r J 77 ;lo .h; ~;- µ_ ~ ~, ?'-' (Jl..J.Jl ~ ~M:4..._ SPviet fews Pr SPviet ffewr11'? by Jacob Lestschinsky s THERE a Jewish community in Soviet Russia, with distinct org:inic forms of communal life. l or are there only a large number of indi· reasons for this large number? vidual Jews? Do the Jews of Soviet Russia possess institu An estimated 200,000 Jewish sol tions, a press, a literature of their own in whatever language diers in the Red Army fell during the it may be? Is there a living bond between them and Jew war. About half a million Jews died in the Asiatic provinces ish communities elsewhere in the world? where twice that number were deported after evacuation These are the crucial questions in any appraisal of Russian from previous Polish and Roumanian regions as well as Jewry. They become all the more important because of th~ from the Soviet Ukraine and Soviet White Russia.. This increasing influence of the USSR on Poland, Roumania. leaves over three million Jews who were annihilated by the Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, which contain a Jewish Nazis with the active collaboration of the Ukrainians, population of some three quarters of a mill ion anJ whos~ Byelo-Russians, Lithuanians, Letts, Estonians and Rou communal J ife is likely to come more and more under manians. Communist control. It aow transpires that there was no evacuation by the Let us examine available facts regarding the Jews in Soviet authorities of Jew1 a.r few1 in order to save them Soviet Russia. from extermination. Only Jewish officials and skilled According to the census of January. 1939, 3,020,000 citi· laborers with their families were evacuated before the ad zens recorded their nationality as Jewish. We may safely vancing Germans, along with non-Jews of similar cate assume that approximately another quarter of a million Jews gories. But even these were not evacuated completely. Most listed their nationality as Russian or Ukrainian. There is no of the Jews of the Soviet Ukraine and Soviet White Russia religious or racial census in Russia. and especially of the former Polish districts, former Rou Since then the USSR has acquired large portions of manian districts, Lithuania and Latvia, remained on the Poland and Roumania and all of Lithuania, Latvia and spot and were subsequently murdered there. Estonia. Were all the Jews who once lived there alive The local non-Jewish population took a very active part today, the USSR would now have a population of some in the extermination of these Jews. .Among the collabo five and a half million Jews. But bow many Jews are rators of Hitler were many whose inbred anti-Semitism had there today in the USSR? Official Communist sources are not disappeared even after thirty years under the Hammer completely silent on the subject. On the basis of infor and Skkle. This is especially true of the Ukrainians. It is mation published in the Communist Yiddish newspaper, amazing that while in bourgeois France the Christian popu· Einigkeit, in Moscow, regarding the number of Jews in lation managed to rescue a full half of their Jewish neigh some sixty municipalities of European Russia, it appears bors, and while in Belgium and Holland additional thousands that this area today has a remaining Jewish population of of Jews were rescued with Christian help, in the Soviet at most 900,000. In those sixty municipalities, which countries hardly one percent of the Jewish population was include cities like Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Odessa. saved. Dniepropetrovsk, Minsk, Vilna, Kovno, Riga, Vitebsk, Tiie following is taken from the June 27, 1946 issue of Homel, Berdichev, Zhitomir, Lemberg and other large Jew Einigkeit, published in Moscow: We are told that in ish communities, there is an aggregate of some 800,000 Dniepropetrovsk (formerly Ekaterinoslav) there remained Jews. (I have always taken the largest figure given, al after the evacuation over 20,000 Jews who were slaughtered though frequently the same newspaper in later issues gave by the bestial Fascists. On the day when the heroic much lower figures.) There are very few Jews in th1: Red Army liberated Dniepropetrovsk, there were found provincial districts of European Russia, so that 100,000 is in the city some ten or fifteen Jewish inhabitants who were a generous figure. rescued through various accidents and especially thanks to According to information from the same source it may the assistance of nearby neighbors." be estimated that there are about five or six ht.indeed The city had a Christian population of several hundred thou.sand Jews in the Asiatic part of the USSR. In the thousand, even under German ocrupation. All they saved whole of the Soviet Union, then, there are no more than were ten to fifteen Jews. In countries where the Christians one and a half million Jews. sympathized with the Jews many more were saved, especially Thus nearly four million Jews have perished, including Jewish children. In Dniepropetrovsk not even Jewish chil over two million of former Polish, Roumanian, Lithuanian, dren survived. Latvian and Estonian domicile. What ace the probable This is not an isolated case. Fewer Jewish children were 244 , The NEW PALESTINE October 4. 1946 saved by non-Jews in the USSR thao even in Poland where ago observed the Sabbath and the holidays •1ented Syna the Germans found a favorable anti-Semitic atmosphere for gogues and spoke Yiddish, have greatly ~:.utgC\.. ~ring the their program of extermination. Nor was the guilt of local years of the war, for in the remote cities and towns f Siberia citizens merely passivity. Many Ukrainians and Byelo they lost their last feeble connections with Jewish traditidns Russians, like aiany Lithuanians and Utts, exceeded the and forms. Nazis in brutality, as is testified to by numerous letters in There was also a great increase in mixed marriages in the the Palestine Hebrew press from former Jewish officers and Asiatic provinces, where Jewish exiles constituted an insig soldiers in the Red Army and from Polish Jews returning nificant minority amid the surrounding population. The from Russia. deterrent influence of parents and relatives against inter marriage was usually absent in such places. ITH the decline in the total number of Jews, A. profound change has also taken place in Jewish eco Wthere has come a like decline in the position of nomic structure in Soviet Russia. The ratio of Jews iin the the Jewish population in Russia and in its opportunities for liberal professions and in officialdom was extremely high a distinctive Jewish communal life. When the Jews consti even before the war. Seventy percent of aU. gainfully em tuted about 40% of the Odessa population, over one-third ployed Jews in Leningrad and eighty percent in Moscow of the Kiev population, more than two-thirds of the Berdi were white collar workers and professionals, and only thirty chev population, the possibilities of a Jewish communal life percent and twenty percent respectively were manual labo~ and Jewish schools and institutions were far greater than ers. In the Ukraine and in White Russia, especially in the they are today when the ratio is cut to half or less. But we smaller communities, on the other hand, many Jews were are also confronted by a s·eries of forces as a result of the still employed in manual labor and many were clerks in war which have radically changed the complexion of Soviet government stores.