Taking Issue With “Armageddon”

Mr. Donat’s moving defense of the Jewish underground in Poland [“Armageddon,” DISSENT, Spring 1963] comes as a timely answer to the attacks which have been levelled at the political and moral stance of European Jews during the Hitler period. Unfortunately he mixes truth with assumptions, and both with an emotionalism which leads him from defense to attack. Some of his attacks are deplorable, and some gratuitous.

The reparations which Germany pays to Israel have always been understood to be restitution of material losses; no one ever suggested that they should repay the loss of life and happiness, or that they could restore criminals to honor. To say that “the Chancellor has attempted morally to disarm the v...