2 Friday, September 30, 1983

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Purely Commentary

Nicaragua and the Jews:
Anti-Semitic Charge Disputed

So much has been published that is accusatory of
Nicaragua that the rejection of the charge of anti-Semitism
must be granted serious consideration.
Both President Ronald Reagan and the Anti-
Defamation League of the Bnai Brith are accused of distort-
ing facts in an article "On Nicaragua's Jews" (New York
Times Op-Ed Page, Sept. 13) byllana DeBare, adminis-
trator of the U.S.-El Salvador Research and Information
Institute. Refutation of the charges is emphasized in the
first sentences of this article in which DeBare offers this
analysis of the charges:

BERKELEY, Calif. — The Reagan Administ-
ration has produced a new skeleton from the
Nicaraguan closet — anti-Semitism.
The Administration charges that most of
Nicaragua's Jews have been forced into exile,
that their property has been confiscated and their
synagogue desecrated. These allegations are
based on a May 1983 report by the Anti-
Defamation League of Bnai Brith. The report in
turn is based nearly entirely on the testimony of
two Nicaraguan exiles — Isaac Stavisky and his
father, Abraham Gorn, a collaborator with the
former dictator, Anastasio Somoza Debayle.
Conceding that the Sandinistas have close ties with
the PLO, and that "the Nicaraguan anger at Israeli support
for General. Somoza has been misdirected toward Jews,"
she denies that "the Sandinistas either before or after the
revolution carried out the systematic intimidation and rep-
ression described by the Reagan Administration."
This emphatic comment on the issue in the DeBare
article invites special attention:
In the late 1970s when the United States cut
off arms sales to General Somoza, Israel supplied
98 percent of the regime's weapons. Today, the
United States is reportedly using Israel as a "sur-
rogate" in supplying and training Central Ameri-
can armed forces.
Perhaps the charges of Nicaraguan anti-
Semitism are part of an attempt to head off con-

Disputes Over the Nicaraguan Attitudes Toward Israel
Demand Str;ct Truth Adherence, While the PLO Shares
in Accusations Demanding Equal Fairness from Accused

cern among American Jews about whether the
interests of Israel and the world's Jews are best
served by arming repressive governments such as
those of Guatemala and El Salvador.
Anti-Semitism is an affront to Jews and to
humanity — and, like all violations of human
rights, it has an important place in discussions of
foreign policy among Jews and among the public
at large.
Certainly, too, there is much to question and
criticize about the course that the Sandinista re-
volution has taken since coming to power in 1979.
But anti-Semitism is not a problem in Nicaragua.
To manipulate the issue for partisan political
ends does a disservice to Nicaragua and obscures
the need to confront anti-Semitism where it actu-
ally exists.

The DeBare accusations are too serious not to be
treated with fullest respect. Therefore, the details as she
defines them are vital to the issue. She declares:
The Jewish community in Nicaragua has al-
ways been small — at its height only some 50
families. Many arrived from Europe in the 1930s,
as the first of the Somoza dynasty seized power,
and built up businesses in Managua under the
protection of the Somoza family and its National
Guard.
With the overthrow of Anastasio Somoza in
1979, many Jews fled into exile, along with
thousands of other rich and influential people
close to the regime. The abandoned property of
some of these Jews was therefore confiscated
under the new government's laws. Other Jews
remained in the country, and today more than two
dozen Jewish-owned firms, including the coun-
try's largest electronics parts store, function un-
harassed.
The synagogue, destroyed in the 1972 ear-
thquake and later rebuilt, suffered minor damage
in a 1978 Sandinista bombing. Abandoned in
early 1979, it remained vacant after the insurrec-
tion. In 1981, the government relocated the re-
fugees squatting inside and in 1982 rented the

By Philip
Slomovitz

building — still unclaimed — to the Association of
Sandinista Children. The building remains in ex-
cellent condition, and the government is willing to
return it to the Jewish community.
Today, only about 13 Jewish families remain
in Nicaragua. They themselves describe the de-
cline of their community as the result not of San-
dinista hostility but rather of decades of assimila-
tion and intermarriage combined with the emig-
ration of Jews close to the Somoza regime.
Yet President Reagan and the ADL have cho-
sen to make an issue of the shrinking community.
In July, faced with increasing criticism of the
show of naval force off Nicaragua's coasts, Presi-
dent Reagan met publicly with Mr. Stavisky. A
White House briefing paper issued at that meeting
focuses on Nicaraguan anti-Semitism, and the
White House public relations staff now routinely
refers to Sandinista persecution of "Jews, Protes-
tants and Catholics."
The Administration's new concern for
Nicaraguan Jews contrasts sharply with its si-
lence about the fate of Jews under Argentina's
right-wing military. In 1981, amid accounts of
special persecution of Jewish prisoners and the
open circulation of anti-Semitic propaganda in
Argentina, the Administration chose to criticize
not the anti-Semites but their victim — Jacobo
Timerman, author and former publisher of the
daily La Opinion.
No matter how few the residents in Nicaragua, truth
must predominate and factual distortions treated as inex-
cusable. If a national Jewish organization, one with such
great respect, errs, the misstatements should be corrected.
There still remains the PLO involvement and the in-
flaming of hatred against Israel. This certainly has a rela-
tionship to anti-Semitism. But Nicaragua is not alone in
this regard and many governments are exercising pre-
judices by kowtowing to Israel's enemies.
Nevertheless, if the anti-Semitic charge is exagger-
ated and if Nicaragua is not extreme in the treatment of
Jews as charged both at the White House and by ADL, then
the record should be corrected. History cannot be confused
with half-truths and distortions.

Germans Revive an Interest in Their Exiled Literati

By VICTOR BIENSTOCK

But after World War II,
MIAMI — A half-century she complained, the Ger-
after the Nazi regime mans showed no interest in
sought to destroy the Ger- getting down to the "long
man literary and intellec- overdue investigation of
tual tradition by driving its this phenomenon of
most illustrious practition- German-Jewish coexis-
ers — most of them Jews — tence. There has not, since
into exile, there is a growing the Second World War, been
desire in Germany today to as much as a desire to find
learn who those exiles were out how those who lived
among us and were either
and what they had to say.
As some of the exiles murdered or expelled may
realized at the time, once have differed from us."
they had crossed the borders
Dr. Heuer wrote that
of Germany their message three years ago. Since then,
would no longer be heard there have been many evi-
there, but they continued to dences of a strong revival of
work and write and today, a interest in German literary
new generation of Germans circles in what the emigres
seeks to reach out to them. — Jewish and non-Jewish
And as they learn what anti-Nazis — had to say
the great Germans of a when they could no longer
half-century ago had to say, exist in Germany and were
they learn of another aspect either driven into exile or
of the past — of the "special deliberately chose that
relationship" between course.
German and Jew of which
Dr. Heuer is a unique per-
Chancellor Helmut Kohl sonality; although she is not
spoke when he announced Jewish, she has spent the
the postponement of his last 17 - years as director of
scheduled September visit Bibliographica Judaica in
to Israel. This relationship Frankfurt in a project to
is in the role of the Jew in identify and classify the
German literature and Jewish contribution to
thought.
German literature from the
"In those (pre-Hitler) mid-Eighteenth Century
years," wrote Dr. Renate days of Moses Mendelssohn
Heuer, director of the to 1933 when the Nazis
Bibliographic Judaica of forced the Jews into exile.
Frankfurt, "the Jews felt She has identified more
German culture to be than 50,000 Jews who have
their own. They took over written in the German lan-
and keenly appreciated guage and has published
German treasures and the first volume of a register
values. They also trans- of Jewish writers in the
mitted the riches of their German language.
Contemporary German
own ancient culture in
writers and critics are
German."

later on his exile, recalled
that he and most of the
other emigres regarded
their exile as "an historical
excursion; everyone waited
for the storm to pass."
There was general
agreement, says Manfred
Rigner, writing of the era
in a Cologne newspaper,
that the emigres contin-
ued to write "with their
faces toward Germany,"
meaning that they still
wrote in exile for their
LION FEUCHTWANGER
former readers. But
seeking to learn more many of them doubted
about the generation of whether their words got
exiled writers and this through.
He recalls that Bruno
interest is reflected in the
growing number of Frank shared the belief that
books and articles de- the emigres were cut off and
voted to the literature of had a character in his novel,
the era. The interest ex- "The Passport," ask, "Why
tends to the personal should foreigners be in-
lives of the writers in terested in us if our own
country isn't?"
exile.
-
The great Thomas Mann
Hans-Albert Walter has
already begun publication shared these doubts. "It is a
of a six-volume presenta- strange experience," he
tion of German literature in wrote in his diaries, "to
exile. Hardly a week goes by notice how your own coun-
without publication of a try moves away from you
newspaper article or a study when you are abroad, as if it
on some aspect of the lives will never return."
One of the places where
and achievements of the
emigre writers. Some of the many of the exiles congre-
recent studies provide reve- gated to wait for the Nazi
aling insights into the storm to pass was the
French resort town of
thinking of the emigres.
Many of them did not be- Sanary-sur-Mer on the
lieve their exile would be of Mediterranean coast, a
long duration. Oskar Maria 20-minute drive east from
Graf believed that the Toulon. Here Lion
"fanatic" (Hitler) would Feuchtwanger became the
only "last a few months" center of a large group of
and he anticipated an early German exiles. For several
years, this little village, in
return home.
Alfred Doblin, reflecting the words of Ludwig Mar-

cuse, one of those who took
refuge there, was "the capi-
tal city of German litera-
ture."
Thomas Mann was one
of the exiles to find
sanctuary in Sanary-
sur-Mer and wrote about
his days there which he
described as the happiest
era in the early years of
his exile.
"Ernst Bloch and Bruno
Frank, Alfred Kantorowicz
and Alfred Kerr, Hermann
Kesten and Arthur Koes-
tler, Franz Werfel and
Friedrich Wolf were regular
visitors to Sanary from the
mid-1930s," writes Gerd
Korinthenberg who made a
pilgrimage to the village
this year to discover what
he could about that tran-
sient repository of German
literature. "Some stayed for
weeks or months, others for
years," he reported.
Lion Feuchtwanger had a
veritable mansion, the Villa
Valmer, where he received
literary personalities from
all over the world. Thomas
Mann had a modest house
nearby. Franz Werfer and
his wife occupied the little
grey mill tower. When the
Nazi armies broke through
into France, the Werfels es-
caped across the Pyrenees
into Spain.
It was in the garden of
Feuchtwanger's mansion
that representatives of
emigres gathered in 1934 to
draft the first calls for a
popular front of socialists
and Communists in emigra-
tion.

His years in Sanary
were among
Feuchtwanger's most
productive. More so than
most of the German
writers, he had acquired
a worldwide audience
and his books, banned of
course in Germany, had
tremendous audiences in
the United States, Britain
and elsewhere in the Free
World.
It was in Sanary, in 1933,
in a few months, that
Feuchtwanger wroter his
novel, "The Oppermanns,"
which remains to this day
the best analysis of the
means by which the Nazis
systematically uprooted the
great German cultural and
literary tradition. It was a
prescient forecast of the
path the Nazis would follow.
In his pilgrimage to Sa-
nary, Korinthenberg found
few traces of the village's
forgotten literary glory. The
few residents who remem-
bered the era knew little
and cared less about the
glory "the Boches" — as
they referred to the exiles,
Jews and non-Jews alike —
had brought to Sanary-
sur-Mer.

There were no traces left
of the fleeting span in
which, according to Mar-
cuse, "much of the best in
German literature was to be
found in Sanary. The vil-
lage was a full-scale
Romanishes Cafe," a refer-
ence to the cafe in Berlin's
Kurfuerstendamm which
was a haunt of writers in
pre-Hitler times.