THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Friday, May 4, 1984 17 ■ 111•1 ■ NOW AT first. Therefore, the lessons of the Holocaust are very simple: "If you think it's coming, don't run around giving lectures at univer- sities about it. If you really think the Holocaust is coming, go to Israel and fight the last fight where you can ac- tually fight it with guns. You can't mount the Warsaw Ghetto in South- field. "If, however, you don't believe that American society is quite that ..then you have a stake in keeping moderate, revisionist and inclusive, so that no major element in American society gets sufficiently angry to feel dispossessed and take to the streets. Because if any major element in America feels sufficiently --E,‘F,Fiegss angry, you aren't going to repress it by calling the cops. There just aren't enough cops. I ONE HOUR PHOTO "Early warning systems? There are no such animals. I believe that all of the so-called normal lessons from the Holocaust are for the birds. Nazism isn't going to appear in America, if it ever does, with a guy who looks suspiciously like Hitler and other guys wearing, if not brown shirts, green shirts. It's going to ap- pear in a differnt guise. ) URC• • 5 X 7 ENLARGEMENT If America ever really turns rancid, it's going to do so in the name of some kind of populism; maybe an alliance of rednecks and blacks. Any- thing is possible." 11, WITH EVERY ROLL PROCESSED IL 11 (good with this coupon through May 18th) ms.m...1...1 EN OM 1•I •• •• MI IN MO ME MN NO ME I VISIT OUR PRINT GALLERY AND GET Florida U. professor out front on Jewish issues. and Israel 20% OFF ON ALL CUSTOM FRAMING WE NOW HAVE A FILM DROP BOX FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE BY GIL SEDAN Miami (JTA) — One usu- ally does not look for adven- ture in the background of a university dean. That's usually saved for novelists. But Dr. Ralph Lowens- tein, dean of the College of Journalism and Communi- cations at the University of Florida, is a novelist — and one of the few Americans to have served as a combat soldier in Israel's War of In- dependence 36 years ago. His students would find it hard to believe. The dean of one of the largest schools of journalism in the United States looks 10 years younger than his 54 years. And a lot of wars have passed by the boards since 1948. However, Lowenstein has always been on a fast track. At the age of 24, he was the holder of two uni- versity degrees and a vete- ran of two armies during two wars. After service in Israel, he also served in the U.S. Army during the Ko- rean War. A native of Danville, Va., Lowenstein joined the Is- raeli army in Paris after his freshman year at Columbia University. At 18, he was the youngest American in the army when he arrived on a DP ship from Marseil- les in July 1948. Ten days after arriving in Haifa and being smuggled ashore past U.S. obserVers, Lowenstein went into combat with the 79th Armored Regiment as lf-track driver. entral to whatever I am or will be," Lowerstein says, "is that Israeli experience. As a very young man, I had the opportunity to put my life on the line for an ideal I believed in deeply. Nothing else in life could ever be more challenging." He adds: "I never really considered that I had done a lot for Israel. Rather, Israel had done a lot for me. Israel had given me a feeling of worth, and a feeling of con- - Ot fidence. These were to stay with me the rest of my life." Lowenstein returned to the United States in 1949, graduated with his Colum- bia class by going to school in the summers, and then received a master's degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He was later to get a Ph.D. in journalism from the University of Mis- souri. After working as a re- porter in Virginia and Texas, he became a jour- nalism professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. Later he was on the faculty at the University of Missouri, and was a visiting professor at Tel Aviv Uni- versity from,1967 to 1968. He has been dean at the Florida university for the past eight years. - Lowenstein still has those old feelings of worth and confidence. His students have won the National In- tercollegiate Writing Championship for six con- secutive years, and his col- lege was recently voted one of the seven best journalism schools in the nation by the Associated Press Managing Editors. Unlike many Jewish fa- culty members, Lowenstein has a strong Jewish iden- tity. He is adviser to the Jewish Student Union at the university of Florida, and for many years was chairman of the faculty advisory committee for the school's Center for Jewish Studies. He serves on the state Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, and received the State of Israel's 30th Anniversary Medal for his leadership in the United Jewish Appeal. If someone is needed to step forward and demand that Jewish students be permitted absences on the Jewish holidays, it is likely to b9 Lowenstein. If there is a hostile anti-Israel letter in the newspaper, it is usually Lowenstein who writes the answer. If one needs a classroom lecture on Israel, or a person to debate a pro- Arab speaker, again it's going to be Lowenstein. "There are 236 million Americans out there fight- ing for their own interests," Lowenstein says. "Very few of them care about Israel. If they did, the six million Jews in this country would not have to be so single- minded about Israel. But since they aren't, we are — and I need make no excuses for it. The survival of Israel is more important to me than any other issue on the American political scene." Lowenstein's two chil- dren attended Israeli public schools during his year as a visiting professor in Israel, and his daughter later attended the Hebrew Uni- versity. Both children are now married and are attor- neys in Miami. His wife, Bronia, is also a "small-town" Jew. Hers was the only Jewish family in a town of 200 persons in New Mexico. Bronia has been a Hadassah leader in the three cities in which the Lowensteins have lived. Lowenstein wrote a novel in 1966 loosely based on his experience as a soldier for Israel. Entitled "Bring My Sons From Far," it later went into two paperback editions entitled "A Time of War." Yeshiva U. law center planned New York — A grant from the United Hospital Fund of New York has been awarded to Yeshiva Uni- versity's Benjamin N. Car- dozo School of Law to plan a Center for Law and Health Policy. FL? ' -■ 29316 NORTHWESTERN HWY. JUST N. 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