94 Friday, October 26, 1984 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS FOLLOW-UP ■ 111111111111111111111111 1 West Germans are reminded of their Nazi past BY VICTOR M. BIENSTOCK Special to The Jewish News Much as they would like to be able to ignore it, the people of West Germany are not being permitted to forget their long his- tory of anti-Semitism which reached its apogee in the Hitler regime and the Holocaust. Events and anniversaries follow in rapid succession on their calendar these days which forcefully remind them of the past they cannot es- cape. NEWS South African minister to visit Israel holy sites Jerusalem (JTA) — Foreign Minister Pik Botha of South Af- rica is scheduled to visit Israel next month but Israeli officials said that the visit will be a private one in which he will see holy sites. Although the visit is not con- sidered official, Botha is expected to meet with Deputy Premier and Foreign MInister Yitzhak Shamir. In the 1960s, Israel developed extensive agricultural aid pro- grams in Africa, but most Black African nations severed diploma- tic relations under Arab pressure during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Zaire and Liberia have since renewed ties. Ex-student arrested in frat house fire Bloomington, Ind. — A former Indiana University student was arrested Monday in connection with a fire that killed one student and injured 30 at the predomin- antly Jewish Zeta Beta Tau fraternity house on the univer- sity's campus last weekend. Jerry Scott Zook, 23, of In- dianapolis, apparently started the fire Sunday after getting into sev:- eral fights at the fraternity house, according to Ronald J. Waicukauski, the Monroe County prosecuter. Authorities said anti-Semitism was not a factor in the incident. Israel D. Edelman, 19, of Richmond, Ind., died of smoke in- halation suffered during the blaze. Workers, artisans exhibit planned Tel Aviv — The Beth Hatefut- soth, the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora is collecting material on the topic "Jewish Workers and Artisans in the Diaspora in the 19th and 20th Centuries." drawings, Photographs, sketches, documents and pam- phlets are being sought. Items should be accompanied by a brief description of the material and the date of the period it describes. Materials will be returned if re- quested. Items should be sent to the museum at its Tel Aviv Univer- sity Campus, P.O.B. 39359, Tel Aviv, 61392, Israel. Frankurt-am-Main, tradi- tionally the home of liberalism in Germany, is currently being wracked by an angry dispute over a Fassbinder play, "Garbage, the City and Death" which has been denounced as anti-Semitic. The manager of the theater in which the play was revived after being closed down eight years ago, has been dismissed but the con- troversy continues with some par- tisans claiming that the anti- Semitic issue was only a smoke- screen to conceal the fact that the play was suppressed because it was actually a condemnation of the ruling political cliques in Frankfurt and their management of the city. One of the characters in the play is a Jewish real estate speculator and landlord who says in one speech: "It makes no dif- ference to me whether children cry or old and sick suffer. Is my soul accountable for decisions reached by others that I merely carry out at the profit I need to be able to afford what I need?" Another character speaks thus: "He sucks us dry, the Jew. Drinks our blood and puts us in the wrong because he is a Jew and we're to blame." Jean Amery, the critic who first identified anti-Zionism as a new form of "respectable anti- Semitism," had no doubts. He said of Fassbinder's play when it was first produced that "this work of literature would not be worth bothering with were it not for the figure of the rich Jew as anti- hero." The treatment of the Jews dur- ing the Nazi regime continues to LOCAL NEWS LeVine Institute on Aging co-hosts Alzheimer's event The Levine Institute on Aging of the Jewish Home for Aged will be a co-sponsor of a national con- ference, "Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia: Prospects and Perspec- tives," Nov. 9-11 at Wayne State University's school of medicine. Other .co-sponsors are the de- partment of psychiatry at WSU and the Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association. Researchers, scientists and family practitioners will be among the guest speakers. The Nov. 9 program will focus on key breakthroughs in research and scientific knowledge. Direct care and treatment issues will be the Nov. 10 theme and the impact of Alzheimer's disease on the family will be discussed Nov. 11. There is a registration fee. For information, call the local Al- zheimer's office, 540-2373. Professor named Dr. Harvey Gotliffe has been appointed associate professor of journalism at Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant. He will head the magazine jour- nalism program. surface as the subject of debate and communal soul-searching at almost every religious and cul- tural conclave in West Germany. It was raised in July at the 88th Roman Catholic assembly in Munich. A historian, Prof. Rudolf Lill, of Passau, accused the Roman Catholic Church of partial blame for the anti-Semitism of the Third Reich because of its traditional anti-Judaism. The debate that arose, according to Georg Bauer of Die Welt, centered on the ques- tion whether Cardinal Bertram of Breslau should not have led the church into opposition to the per- secution of the Jews or whether he was correct in his belief that Hit- ler would have crushed the church as an organization if it had vigor- ously championed human rights. These holding the latter view recalled the murder of Canon Bernhard Lichtenberg, dean of the Berlin Cathedral, after he had publicly condemned the Novem- ber 1938 torching of the synagogues. One speaker quoted the noted Jesuit historian, Lud- wig Volk, as deploring the fact that another Bishop von Galen had not arisen to defend the Jews. Van Galen, the Munster pre- late, aroused intense Nazi anger early in the Hitler regime when he publicly denounced the euthanasia program and de- manded that those responsible for carrying it out be tried as murder- ers. In Bayreuth, at this year's an- nual festival honoring the com- poser Richard Wagner whose vio- lent anti-Semitism was a major inspiration to Adolf Hitler, the city-owned Wagner Museum opened a special exhibit on "Wagner and the Jews." It was located in the flower- strewn house in which Wagner had lived and worked. The flow- ers, Manfred Eger, director of the museum, told Henry Kamm of the New York Times, were "a rever- ance for those Jewish Wagner singers of the Bayreuth Festival and for those Jewish Wagner scholars who died in the concen- tration camps." The exhibit in- cludes pictures of the Bayreuth . OBITUARIES Lawrence Einhorn Lawrence L. Einhorn, retired president of Merchants Tobacco and Candy Co., died Oct. 10 at age 70. Born in Hungary, Mr. Einhorn was a founding member of Adat Shalom Synagogue, and a member of Perfection Lodge of the Masons, National Association of Food Brokers and a past board member of the Michigan Candy Distributors. He was in business for 50 years. He retired five years ago. He leaves his wife, Sally; a son, Brian; a daughter, Mrs. Robert (Frances) Wolf; a brother, Joseph of California; two sisters, Mrs. Leopold (Olga) Hirsch and Mrs. Max (Rose) Gittelman of Florida; and four grandchildren. Jewish singers who died in the camps and a picture of Hitler, as well, being feted at the theater. Under the Hitler picture is the caption: "There is no doubt that Wagner's writings reinforced Hit- ler in his hatred of the Jews." Kamm interviewed Wolfgang Wagner, the composer's only sur- viving grandson, and quoted him as saying that he sympathized with the exhibit, but had nothing to do with it. It may be symptomatic of the intense desire of many Germans to shut their eyes to vestiges of the near past that it was not until Kamm asked the city fathers why the house next to Wagner's still displayed a memorial plaque hon- oring Hoiiston Stewart Chamber- lain, Wagner's son-in-law, that it was removed. Chamberlain, an Englishman and a rabid anti-Semite, ex- panded Gobineau's racial theory into the theory of "Nordic Supre- macy" which gave a "scientific" coloration to the anti-Semitic ra- cial theories later applied by Hit- ler. Symptomatic, too, of the Ger- man reluctance to dwell on that aspect of the past was Kamm's re- port on the German reaction to the exhibit. "Mr. Eger," he noted, "said the show had provoked no public reaction in its first week. On three occasions, German vis- itors were seen walking through the exhibit quickly without mak- ing comments. Only American and Dutch tourists were seen to be studying the exhibits carefully." The Family of the Late IDA STEIN BARON Announces the unveil- ing of a monument in her memory at 11 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 4, at Beth Tefilo Emanuel Cemetery. Rabbi Spectre and Cantor Vieder will officiate. Relatives and friends are asked to attend. PEARL SPINNER Who passed away Oct. 28, 1979. Loved and re- membered by her hus- band, Morris; daughter, Bobbie; son, Marshall; and family. This year is the 100th anniver- sary of the birth of Leon Feuchtwanger, the German- Jewish novelist and dramatist who became, in exile, one of the Nazi regime's most effective foes. Feuchtwanger had been neg- lected in Germany in the years after World War II and some lead- ing German critics asserted that he had lost his ability to com- municate with the German people in the German language. Their views have been belied by the widespread interest in the German-Jewish writer evidenced in the spate of articles that have been appearing in connection with his birthday in July and the mounting sales of a recent edition of his novel, Erfolg (Success) which first appeared in 1930. "Now, 100 years after his birth," wrote one critic, "Lion Feuchtwanger has again been re- stored to the popularity that is his due." The republication of the avail- able writings of Erich Muhsam, the German Jewish anarchist who was killed in the Oranien-: burg concentration camp 50 years ago, prompted the national daily, Die Zeit, to print a lengthy review of his life- and works. "As a Jewish intellectual, man of letters, cabaret artist and jour- nalist," Henry Pross wrote, "he was the very opposite of the Nazi ideal. Yet he could hardly have been more German in so many ways: his sensitivity, his idealism and his obduracy." The Family of the Late LOUIS ISAACS Announces the unveil- ing of a monument in his memory at 11 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 28, at Adat Shalom Memorial Park. Rabbi Gorrelick will officiate. Relatives and friends are asked to attend. The Family of the Late ALLAN FINNK Announces the unveil- ing of a monument in his memory at 1 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 4, at Hebrew Memo- rial Park. Rabbi Dannel Schwartz will officiate. Relatives and friends are asked to attend. The Family of the Late SAMUEL PEARLSTEIN Acknowledges with grateful appreciation the many kind expressions of sympathy extended by relatives and friends during the family's recent be- reavement.