#passover 5705

[paulinedorchester]

Passover, 1945: There's still a war on

From Hannen Swaffer's column in The People's issue of May 6th (just two days before V-E Day):

(Images ©The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.)

[paulinedorchester]

Passover, 1945: Topicality remains easy to find

Letter to the editor of the Evening News (Edinburgh), published on March 24th:

On March 28th, the Manchester Evening News offered this:

And on the same day, there was this in the Belfast News-Letter:

(Images ©The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.)

[paulinedorchester]

Passover, 1945: There are still troops serving in England, and they still need your support

(Above, from The Jewish Chronicle, February 23rd.)

And they received support across the country:

(From the March 2nd, 9th, and 16th issues of The JC.)

There was also much coverage in the general press (the following 6 images are ©The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.) From the Bury Free Press, April 6th:

And from the Market Harborough Advertiser, April 8th:

(Rabbi Louis Milgrom was born in Poland in 1909 and came to the U.S. in 1921. In 1930 he graduated from the Lewis Institute, in Chicago (which merged with the Armour Institute in 1941 to form the Illinois Institute of Technology, where my father taught for nearly three decades). He received his ordination four years later from Hebrew Theological College, which at that time was also located in Chicago and is now in Skokie. This, combined with his wartime membership in the Rabbinical Council of America, tells us that he was Orthodox. Prior to joining up in 1943 he worked for the Joliet Jewish Federation, in Chicago's southwest suburbs. After the war he directed the Hillel chapter serving the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and later taught at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He also seems to have undergone a change in his theological outlook: when he died in 2004, the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly took out an obituary for him. Such a shift was fairly unusual then and even more so now.)

The time lag in the reporting above can probably be attributed to a weekly publication schedule. In Plymouth, the Western Morning News was on top of things on March 29th:

And events in Birmingham received up-to-the-minute attention from three local dailies (top to bottom, the Birmingham Post, March 27th, the Evening Despatch, March 28th, and the Birmingham Gazette, March 29th):

Meanwhile, The Jewish Chronicle published the following letter of thanks on March 23rd:

[paulinedorchester]

Passover, 1945: In the U.K., some evacuees still haven't been able to go home.

(From The Jewish Chronicle, February 2nd, 1945.)

[paulinedorchester]

Passover, 1945: On the air

Above, from the Chicago Sun, March 24th. As important as this was, it wasn't the only thing to listen to during Passover, as another Chicago publication, The Sentinel, noted in its March 29th issue:

The Eternal Light began during the previous summer. As far as I'm aware, it was the first regularly-scheduled English-language Jewish program in broadcasting history. It expanded to television in 1952 and continued production until 1989. The music director, Milton Katims, later became conductor of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, a position he held for 22 years

Those were national programs. Strictly local was this Indianapolis broadcast, noted in the Indiana Jewish Post & Opinion on March 23rd:

Meanwhile, in the U.K., the Home Service carried something familiar: a 15-minute broadcast featuring the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, a cantor, and a choir, announced in the March 23rd issue of Radio Times.

Unfortunately, none of it was carried on the Forces Programme.

Here is some of what Dr. Hertz said, as transcribed in The Jewish Chronicle for April 6th:

[paulinedorchester]

Passover, 1945

The biggest story, unsurprisingly, was what was happening in Germany. I've found so much that I can't include everything here.

The photo above was printed in the Chicago Times on April 6th, 1945 (and I'm sorry the scan is so bad). I haven't been able to find any information about where in Germany it was taken. Perhaps it was the same event covered in this item, which appeared in the Southern Jewish Weekly (Jacksonville, Florida; it had become a monthly for the duration) on April 1st:

Regardless, Schloss Rheydt, in München-Gladbach (now Mönchengladbach), which a month earlier had witnessed a Purim celebration, now became the site of a seder. Here's the fullest account I found, from the Chicago Tribune for March 31st:

Joseph Shalom Shubow (1899-1969) was born in Lithuania and grew up in the U.S. beginning in 1908. An alumnus of Harvard University, he received his ordination from the Jewish Institute of Religion, which indicates that he was a Reform rabbi (but perhaps with a greater openness to traditional practices than someone trained at Hebrew Union College, which would have stood him in good stead as a chaplain). Prior to his induction in 1943 he served Temple B'nai Moshe, in Brighton, Massachusetts, and returned to them after the war. However, he was still in the Army in late 1945, by which time he had been awarded the Bronze Star.

As in previous years, supplies for these seders had to be organized well in advance, as noted in this item from the Chicago Times for March 16th:

Of course, Germany wasn't the only place where Allied troops needed support, nor were those troops the only people who needed help, as noted in this clipping from The Jewish Chronicle (London) for January 26th:

And food — for Passover or otherwise — wasn't the only thing that was needed. These photos appeared on March 1st in The Sentinel (Chicago):

And this is from the B'nai B'rith Messenger (Los Angeles) of March 23rd:

[paulinedorchester]

Passover, 1945: A summary of military observances in Europe, printed in the Indiana Jewish Post & Opinion on April 6th.

I'm pretty sure that I've already written about most of the chaplains named here, with the notable exception of the one referred to here as "Wolf Plaut." Under his preferred moniker of W. Gunther Plaut, he went on to an extraordinary career of service and leadership in Reform Judaism in the U.S. and Canada.

Meyer Levin was the Jewish Telegraphic Agency's star reporter at this time. He, too, went on to an important, if at times turbulent, career.

[paulinedorchester]

Cover of The Sentinel (Chicago) for March 29th, 1945. The illustration is taken from the Offenbacher Haggadah, published in Germany in 1927.