The American Hebrew
October 31, 1919: page 582
The Crucifixion of Jews Must Stop!
By Martin H. Glynn
(Former Governor of the State of N.Y.)
From across the sea six million men and women call to us
for help, and eight hundred thousand little children cry for
bread.
These children, these men and women are our
fellow-members of the human family, with the same claim on
life as we, the same susceptibility to the winter's cold,
the same propensity to death before the fangs of hunger.
Within them reside the illimitable possibilities for the
advancement of the human race as naturally would reside in
six million human beings. We may not be their keepers but
we ought to be their helpers.
In the face of death, in the throes of starvation there
is no place for mental distinctions of creed, no place for
physical differentiations of race. In this catastrophe, when
six million human beings are being whirled toward the grave
by a cruel and relentless fate, only the most idealistic
promptings of human nature should sway the heart and move
the hand.
Six million men and women are dying from lack of the
necessaries of life; eight hundred thousand children cry for
bread. And this fate is upon them through no fault of their
own, through no transgression of the laws of God or man; but
through the awful tyranny of war and a bigoted lust for
Jewish blood.
In this threatened holocaust of human life, forgotten are
the niceties of philosophical distinction, forgotten are the
differences of historical interpretation; and the
determination to help the helpless, to shelter the homeless,
to clothe the naked and to feed the hungry becomes a
religion at whose altar men of every race can worship and
women of every creed can kneel. In this calamity the
temporalities of man's fashionings fall away before the
eternal verities of life, and we awaken to the fact that
from the hands of one God we all come and before the
tribunal of one God we all must stand on the day of final
reckoning. And when that reckoning comes mere profession of
lips will not weigh a pennyweight; but deeds, mere
intangible deeds, deeds that dry the tear of sorrow and
allay the pain of anguish, deeds that with the spirit of the
Good Samaritan pour oil and wine in wounds and find
sustenance and shelter for the suffering and the stricken,
will outweigh all the stars in the heavens, all the waters
in the seas, all the rocks and metals in all the celestian
globes that revolve in the firmament around us.
Race is a matter of accident; creed, partly a matter of
inheritance, partly a matter of environment, partly one's
method of ratiocination; but our physical wants and
corporeal needs are implanted in all of us by the hand of
God, and the man or woman who can, and will not, hear the
cry of the starving; who can, and will not, take heed of the
wail of the dying; who can, and will not, stretch forth a
helping hand to those who sink beneath the waves of
adversity is an assassin of nature's finest instincts, a
traitor to the cause of the human family and an abjurer of
the natural law written upon the tablets of every human
heart by the finger of God himself.
And so in the spirit that turned the poor widow's votive
offering of copper into silver, and the silver into gold
when placed upon God's altar, the people of this country are
called upon to sanctify their money by giving $35,000,000 in
the name of the humanity of Moses to six million famished
men and women.
Six million men and women are dying -- eight hundred
thousand little children are crying for bread.
And why?
Because of a war to lay Autocracy in the dust and give
Democracy the sceptre of the Just.
And in that war for democracy 200,000 Jewish lads from
the United States fought beneath the Stars and Stripes. In
the 77th Division alone there were 14,000 of them, and in
Argonne Forest this division captured 54 German guns.This
shows that at Argonne the Jewish boys from the United States
fought for democracy as Joshua fought against the Amalekites
on the plains of Abraham. In an address on the so-called
"Lost Battalion," led by Colonel Whittlesey of Pittsfield,
Major-General Alexander shows the fighting stuff these
Jewish boys were made of. In some way or another
Whittlesey's command was surrounded. They were short of
rations. They tried to get word back to the rear telling of
their plight. They tried and they tried, but their men never
got through. Paralysis and stupefaction and despair were in
the air. And when the hour was darkest and all seemed lost,
a soldier lad stepped forward, and said to Col. Whittlesey:
"I will try to get through." He tried, he was wounded, he
had to creep and crawl, but he got through.To-day he wears
the Distinguished Service Cross and his name is
Abraham Krotoshansky.
Because of this war for Democracy six million Jewsh men
and women are starving across the seas; eight hundred
thousand Jewish babies are crying for bread.
(Continued from page 582)
In the name of Abraham Krotoshinsky who saved the "Lost
Battalion," in the name of the one hundred and ninety-nine
thousand and nine hundred and ninety-nine other Jewish boys
who fought for Democracy beneath the Stars and Stripes won't
you give copper, or silver, or gold, to keep life in the
heart of these men and these women; to keep blood in the
bodies of these babies?
The Jew Has Helped Everybody But The Jew.
In the world war the Jew has helped everybody but the
Jew. "Over there" he helped in camp, in council and in
conflict. "Over here" he helped the Red Cross, the Y.M.C.A.,
the Knights of Columbus, the Masons, the Salvation Army and
everybody else. So now is the time for everybody to help the
Jew, and God knows now is the time he needs it.
From out of the gloom of this war every other race, save
one or two, has snatched a ray of sunshine. But amid the
encircling gloom there is no light for the Jew "to lead thou
me on." The war is over for everyone, but the Jew. The knife
is still at his throat and an unreasoning and unreasonable
century-old lust for Jewish blood opens his veins. The Jew
in Roumania, Poland and Ukrainia is being made the scapegoat
of the war. Since the armistice has been signed thousands of
Jews in Ukrainia have been offered up as living sacrifices
to diabolical greed and fanatical passion -- their throats
cut, their bodies rended limb from limb by assassin bands
and rabid soldiery. In the city of Proskunoff one day a few
weeks ago the dawn saw the door of every house wherein lived
a Jew marked as a shambles for slaughter. For four days,
from sunrise to sunset, fanatics plied the dagger like
demons from hell, stopping only to eat with hands adrip with
the blood of Jewishvictims. They killed the men; they were
less merciful to women. These they violated, and then they
killed. From a purpose to a fury, from a fury to a habit ran
this killing of the Jews, until within four days the streets
of Proskunoff ran red with blood like gutters of a slaughter
house, until its homes became a morgue for thousands of
slaughtered human beings whose gaping wounds cried out for
vengeance and whose eyes had turned to stone at the horrors
they had seen. As Hon. Simon W. Rosendale, aptly
paraphrasing Bobby Burns' thought, in his speech not long
ago, said it is the age-old story of "man's inhumanity to
man that makes countless thousands mourn." For as it has
been at Proskunoff, so has it been in a hundred other
places.The bloody tale hath repetition ad nauseum. It
is the same tear-stained story -- the same old stain upon
the escutcheon of humanity. Verily, Byron was right when he
wrote:
Tribes of the wandering feet and weary
breast
Whither shall ye flee to be at rest?
The wild dove hath her nest, the fox his cave,
Mankind their countries, Israel but the grave.
[Illegible] to a place in the sun, and the
crucifixion of Jews must stop. We repeat the war is over
for everybody, but the Jew. Like Isaac the knife is at his
throat, but unlike Isaac no power seems able to stop the
steel from thirsting for his blood. But some power the world
must raise up to prevent this decimation of a deserving
race. For the peace of the world a League of Nations let us
have by all means; but for the Humanity of the World, to
give justice to the Jew and other oppressed peoples on
earth, let us have a Truce of God! -- Albany Times
Union.