'6410.4011114 .111 - 4.41.1.W THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 64 Friday, June 4, 1982 Case of Vanessa Redgrave and the Boston Symphony By REV. FRANKLIN LITTELL . National Institute on the Holocaust PHILADELPHIA — A slight victory for civility has recently been won in the withdrawal of an invitation to Vanessa Redgrave to star in Boston with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Red- grave is the anti-Semitic theater and movie star whose abuse of her platform as an Academy Award win- ner startled millions of TV viewers two years ago. The issue was not, of course, her opinions: the issue was her lack of an aesthetic sense, her lack of a sense of dignity and propriety. At the time, bubbleheads argued that one must dis- tinguish between her artis- tic talent and "political opinions." But no one could say why, since she failed to make such a distincition herself. As an anti-Semite and terrorist apologist, she put herself in the shoes of Leni Riefenstahl. Riefenstahl was one of the most gifted film impresarios of the 20th Century. She broke into a male monopoly. She di- rected "Triumph of the Will," certainly one of the most brilliant films of the early decades of movie- making. Is an artist who has The reference to First Amendment, consider prejudice. Consider the first ,1 ' "blacklisting" is deliber- threatening acts and con- paragraph for openers: ately dishonest. No "Blacklisting is back. spiracy to be matters of blacklist has been de- Joseph McCarthy lives. The "opinion." veloped by the Boston Only those sympathetic First Amendment flounders Symphony Orchestra. to the Communist or fascist .4ew Other portions of the Take the simplest political lines would call heo' ero- Bernheimer membership in a subver- point, if readers stop to Redgrave sermon are of sive, terrorist movement a think. The First Amend- the same level. How does matter of "opinion." Most of ment does not guarantee ,,,---' such a pitch get featured us can still distinguish be a contract with the Bos- r in the Los Angeles Times. tween opinions, expressed ton Symphony Or- Or the Philadelphia chestra. If it did, a long or not and overt actions. quirer and like newsp ist, __ That is what makes so queue of would-be musi- F ers? dismaying a column cal stars would stand at ,:i,': Vanessa Redgral. -: is not which appeared in the the head of an even an American citizen. To be Los Angeles Times de- longer queue of frus precise, the First Amend- fending Vanessa Red- trated poets demanding REV. LITTELL ment does not apply in her ,, < grave as "a superb ac- the accompaniment of less generalizations, un- case at all. What applies, tress who happens to be a the symphony. _ The First Amendment, as documented, unsubstan- were she a civil and decent - political activist with VANESSA REDGRAVE certainly tiated and finally re- guest, would be that com- made herself a political some extreme personal Bernheimer knows, simply prohibits the pudiated by all branches of plex of protections which prostitute, a talented views." apply to "strangers in the Redgrave is not unwel- intervention of Congress to government. propagandist for a sys- Yet, due to the moral land." tem of wickedness and come because she is a "polit- inhibit free expression. In murder (whether Third ical activist," as the writer recent years the Supreme cowardice of persons in very But she is not civil and Reich or PLO), to be implies: she is unwelcome Court has held, under the high places in the executive decent. She is a member of a judged solely on the basis because she is an anti- 14th Amendment's "due and legislative branches of disciplined band of ter- of technical talent? Semite and an apologist for process" clause, all govern- the federal government, Joe rorists, a propagandist for , terrorism. Neither are her ment agencies in check to McCarthy strutted the another terrorist move- Why shouldn't we then views "personal," as the protect individual freedom stage for several years in ment, and a vicious anti- dedicate schools of corn- writer implies: as a member of expression. The sym- America. And what he ac- Semite. That she is talented munication to Josef Goeb- of a disciplined Marxist sect phony is not a governmen- tually did, of course, was to is beside the point: so were, bels, assuredly the out- (Trotskyite), she shares tal agency, and no one has provide the Communists supremely in their own spe- standing propaganda tech- with her co-believers the prevented Redgrave from with the best "cover" they cialties, Stalin and Hitler nician of the first half of this proclamation that neither having her say on the street have had in America in 50 and Josef Goebbels. Redgrave does not belong century? years. After the McCarthy _ her theory nor praxis are corner. The reference to Joe years, it became practically in any featured position in Of course the issue is not "personal." The column defending McCarthy is deliberately impossible to get church America. She belongs, if we "opinions." Only the 19th Century legal fundamen- Redgrave, written by one demagogic. Decent Ameri- people or college people to had the laws suitable to de- talists, who would cover Martin Bernheimer, is full cans have a neuralgic re- deal realistically with fend republican principles every moral and political of such attempts. And sponse when they re- Communist penetration of and human rights in the obscenity with what the through it all there is a note member the black Irishman unions, campuses and even Age of Genocide and Ter- lawyers twist out of the of hysteria and an appeal to of Wisconsin and his reck- church agencies. rorism, in a British prison. . Dictator's Anti-Semitism Documented in 'Stalin's Secret War' Nikolai Tolstoy, scion of this mass murder is difficult both systems, found that at wrest the Crimea from the the famous Tolstoy family, to appreciate in human Ravensbruck Camp it was Soviet Union and to estab- an heir to the Leo Tolstoy terms. A German prisoner not until the latter days of lish an outpost of American record of literary achieve- in Vorkuta learned that it their dying regime that the imperialism'; they 'planted' ments and historical re- was 'calculated that on the Nazis were able to catch up a Jewish husband on his search, adds to the expose of railways every sleeper cost with the Bolsheviks in daughter Svetlana; they • the Stalin crimes in "Sta- one dead man and that in brutality: 'Things were de- banded together under the Tin's Secret War" (Holt, the mines there were two dining to a Siberian level, guise of doctors for the pur- Rineh art and Winston), dead men for every yard dug and by the end of 1944 there pose of poisoning the Leader which is subtitled "A startl- underground'. Within a few was not a great deal of dif- of Peoples. ing expose of his crimes years an entire generation ference left between "However, Stalin's an- and tipathy to the Jews was not against the Russian of prisoners would be wiped Ravensbruck out, to be replaced by an- Karaganda.' " • people." What caused Stalin to Josef Stalin as dictator, as other. "In the sheer number of become the collaborator collaborator with Hitler in World War II, who still be- victims destroyed, the in the Hitler anti-Semitic lieved the Nazi Fuehrer to Soviet Union easily out- tactics? What was the be a staunch supporter, his distanced its ally of 1939- root of his hatred for fear that Russia would be 41. Dr. Julius Margolin, a Jews? How extensive conquered by the Nazis Zionist leader who was re- was this brutality? turned him against the leased after seven years in Tolstoy provides the Germans — that's when the the custody of gulag, wrote roots of their hatred: "It was probably inevita- great struggle began, with that Ilitlerism has been be- Stalin as the ally of the aten, while the Soviet ble that Stalin would come democratic nations, includ- camps continue to exist . . . to share his brother dictator Since they came into being, in Berlin's fear and hatred ing the U.S. In the course of his expose the Soviet camps have swal- of the 'universal Jew'. It was of the Stalin terror, Tolstoy lowed more people, have not so much a belief in the chronicles the anti- exacted more victims, than Jews' racial inferiority that Semitism of the brutal all other camps — Hitler's agitated Stalin's breast, as a JOSEF STALIN Soviet leader. and others — together, and conviction that he was The Stalinist anti- this lethal engine continues threatened by a vast conspi- Zionist crusade are to operate full-blast . . . An racy engineered by this the all-absorbing obsession especially outlined and at entire generation of strange and secretive it was to Hitler. His anti- Semitism, which can be the very outset Tolstoy Zionists has died in Soviet people. traced back to his early "Everywhere their hand quotes an eminent prisons, camps, and exile.' "A woman, who was un- was visible: they 'were try- youth, was a reflection of his Jewish leader, portray- fortunate enough to have ing to set up a Jewish state hatred for any group of ing the cruelties, thus: "The enormous scale of prolonged experience of in the Crimea in order to people who remained unas- similated, unatomized under his rule. "In Ronald Hingley's pithy apothegm, 'the ma- ture Stalin was not nar- rowly biased against any specific section of human- ity, for his sympathies were broadly and generously anti-human in general.' his "Nonetheless hatred lighted particu- larly heavily on this man's-land on the eastern broken and persecuted bank of the river Bug. They people. The fact that he had left behind them the publicly condenined whips and rifle-butts of anti-Semitism as a crime Heydrich's bullies, but how indicates the more they found themselves faced clearly that his own by a wall of NKVD frontier anti-Semitism stemmed troops, who opened fire with from genuine prejudice, machine-guns and released rather than an attempt to savage dogs on anyone at- elicit popularity from tempting to cross over. anti-Semitic sections of "During the bitter winter the populace. months great crowds of "Despite this, it was ob- Jews slept under the open served that popular anti- sky, wedged between the Semitism increased enor- lands of the allied con- mously during the period of querors. Their numbers Stalin's rule; partly in re- continued to dwindle as sponse to none too subtle many died of exposure and indications of approval from privation, whilst others in above, and partly as an irra- despair returned to the tional reaction to the appal- German zone, and so ulti- ling tribulations of the age. mately to the slaughter- "On the official level per- houses of Maidanek and secution of the Jews ranged Belsen .. . from the existence of a "At the end of the year secret 'quota' in public (i.e. (1939) Stalin sent virtually all) employment, warm greetings to Hitler, whereby strict limits were remarking that the set on the number of Jews friendship between the employable, and an out- peoples of the SoN right purge of Jews from Union and Nazi Germ universities in 1953, to the had every reason to imprisonment and torture solid lasting,- and of thousands of so-called cemented as it was by Zionists in the notorious blood. This was true camps of gulag. enough: the blood was Especially horrifying is that of thousands of the description of the perse- Poles and Jews. cution of Polish Jews when Tolstoy's "Stalin's Secret they fled into Russian terri- tory as escapees from Hit- War" is so revealing that it lerism, their plight was marks another chapter in equally terrifying. Here is a Holocaust literature, this portion of the record as pro- time linking the two most vided in the new Tolstoy terrifying sets of brutalities, the Hitlerites volume: "Over the winter of and the Stalinisl;s. It is a 1939-40 thousands of ter- volume of noteworthy sig- rifled Jews, fleeing from SS nificance in the study of the savagery, arrived in no- bestialities of World War II.