Opinion
From the JC archive: November 2, 1956
The Suez crisis, a schoolgirl’s experiment and a synagogue stowaway
October 29, 2021 14:30
2 min read
The Suez crisis, a schoolgirl’s experiment and a synagogue stowaway
October 29, 2021 14:30
Israelis on ultimatum line
While British and French troops are poised in readiness to occupy key points in the Canal Zone following the Allied bomber offensive on military targets in Egypt, the Israeli forces, which struck across the Egyptian border on Monday, are reported to have taken up positions on the “ Ultimatum line” ten miles from Suez, and to have sealed off the Gaza Strip. Israeli sources today claimed that 1,000 Egyptians had been killed, wounded, or captured. The Egyptian Navy has suffered heavy casualties — an Egyptian frigate was sunk by a British cruiser off Suez on Wednesday and an Egyptian destroyer, the Ibrahim El Awol, surrendered to the Israelis outside Haifa Bay with her crew of 250 after she had shelled the Haifa Bay area and been attacked by Israeli warships and aircraft.
The fruits of prejudice
The indignity to which a 16-yearold non-Jewish girl was subjected by her friends and schoolmates when she posed as a Jewish girl has been disclosed. The girl, Karen Deslandes, of Berkley, Michigan, saw a revival of the film called Gentleman’s Agreement which tells the story of magazine-writer who posed for six months to study the problem of antisemitism. Miss Deslandes said that she thought it far-fetched that a Jewish-sounding name should make its owner unwanted. “I thought things like that just do not happen any more.” But she decided to see for herself. Her father had recently given her a charm bracelet, and when schoolmates asked what the attachments represented, she simply told them that they were “Jewish symbols.” “ I said nothing else.” she commented. "I am of Scottish and French ancestry and attend Berkley Protestant Church. But many of my friends immediately assumed that I was Jewish. For six weeks I let them think so. It was a different world. Girls who had long been friendly suddenly became cold and aloof. My social life suffered. People just ‘forgot’ to invite me to affairs. There was no one to walk home with from school, and when there was stray companionship it was strained.”
After six weeks she told one of her teachers. He spoke to the school officials, who were at first astonished and then understanding. Together they decided to arrange a full school assembly. She then told her schoolmates about her six weeks as a Jewish girl. She reported what the reaction had been and spoke of the gratuitous barbs directed, against herself and her family. When she had finished her speech, her friends and schoolmates gathered round her asking: “But I did not do those horrible things, did I?”
Stowaway in ship's synagogue
When the Queen Elizabeth docked at Southampton from New York, on Monday night, an elderly bearded American rabbi and a Jewish theological student, both from Chicago— who desired to remain anonymous—- tried unsuccessfully to persuade Curtard officials to accept a bond from them, in favour of Elizer Perr (aged 18), a Jewish student of New York. The next day. when Perr appeared before the Southampton Magistrates, he admitted to being a stowaway in the liner and was gaoled for 14 days. With three dollars in his pocket, the magistrates were told that he had hidden for five days in the ship's synagogue where he was supplied with food by a friend. Perr told the Court that there were some passengers in the liner who had offered to pay his fare, but be had not heard what had happened about it. "I was supposed to leave America soon anyway,” he added. Immigration officers have refused Perr permission to stay here and when he has served his sentence he will be taken back to America on the next available Cunard ship.