To the Editor:

I feel that in Michael Novak’s article, “In Memoriam: Henry M. Jackson” [January], too little mention was made of Senator Jackson’s great support of Jewish causes, particularly in regard to Israel. I remember vividly how he once told me of his personal feeling of shock and horror when, as a young soldier, he was among the first to liberate concentration camps in Germany at the end of World War II. He thought that it was his Norwegian background which strengthened his resolve right then and there to do something, throughout his life, to help rehabilitate the survivors of the Holocaust. I felt that there was in him something of an echo of Ibsen’s staunch-hearted characters who often championed truth and justice against all odds and against society’s own perceptions. . . .

Among the greatest monuments to his foresightedness and leadership was no doubt his fight for the East-West Trade and Freedom of Emigration Amendment, which helped open the Soviet Union’s gates to Jewish emigration. Another such monument was his single-handed, successful effort to line up a majority of the Senate pledged to oppose the AWACS sale to Saudi Arabia. (That it took unusual and often unorthodox methods to erode that majority was in itself testimony to the strength of Senator Jackson’s convictions and the respect in which he was held in the Senate.) The fact that industry in his own home state would have benefited from the AWACS sale underlined more than anything else that “Scoop” Jackson followed conviction and not expediency. His constituency was not limited to the state of Washington—it was wherever justice and truth were at home. That is no doubt the reason he could so generously identify with Israel.

Manfred R. Lehmann
New York City

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