The speech at the banquet acknowledges the situation in Europe obliquely, but this editorial addresses it with surprising directness.  I included the whole page to give the editorial context.  The following article discusses “a Nazi regimental commander’s own report on his ‘success’ in massacring the Jews of Pinsk.” The diagonal article reports that the Auxiliary Bishop of New York “charged that the desecration of synagogues in New York City, which had almost become epidemic, was ‘exaggerated’ by ‘publicity agents’ who sought to ‘besmirch’ the Catholic minority…That the synagogue were desecrated is a matter of public record…Jewish boys were beaten up on the street of New York City, and one of these children was so seriously mutilated that he had to undergo plastic surgery. This, too, is a matter of police record.” And he final article celebrates Stephen S. Wise on his 70th birthday. Admired in his day he may have been, but time has not been kind to his legacy.

The Jewish Criterion, 3/17/1944, p. 6

The Homestead Congregation’s 50th Anniversary

CONGRATULATIONS to the Rodef Shalom Congregation of Homestead which plans to celebrate its 50th anniversary on Sunday, March 19. Fifty years is a goodly time in any institution’s life, and a half-century for a Jewish institution in these times is something to be doubly proud of. It gives a feeling of bedrock under the shifting sands of persecution and annihilation now flaming through the world. May the Homestead synagogue be one of many to survive many years beyond the inferno.