20 Friday, March 14, 1986
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
PURELY COMMENTARY
.11•11 ■ 6.
Synagogues, Worshippers, Architecture And Drama
Continued from Page 2
throats, bashing their skulls with
heavy wooden mallets, or tying
them up with barbed wire and
throwing them in a river.
"The worst thing is that only
the Ustashas formed special chil-
dren's concentration camps." said
Miletic. "Even the Nazis didn't do
that."
Miletic, who spent eight years
digging up evidence of Ustasha
crimes, said 'children as young as
four days old were murdered.
Miletic, a consultant to the .
prosecutor in the Zagreb case, said
there was no doubt Artukovic was
personally responsible for the
deaths of as many as 700,000
people. He is formally charged
with the killings of 231,000. And
Miletic has sheaves of documents
purportedly signed by Artukovic
ordering the killings of Jews,
Communists and Serbs, and the
deportation of Jews to concentra-
tion camps.
There is.no limit to the search for evi-
dence in the prosecution of the guilty and
there shouldn't be. There 'are many Nazi
mass murderers who are seeking escape,
and if they succeed it will only be a signal
to the guilty to keep laughing at the pur-
suers. Even worse: it will weaken the aim
to prevent the recurrence of crimes akin to
Nazism. Bringing Artukovic to justice was
an agonizing effort, but it leads finally to
the warning that the "Never Again" aim
will not be abandoned,
.•
Amsterdam, Lekstraiit, interior to ark.
many factors: ritual, humanistic reactions,
. the architectural trends, everything con-
ceivable in studying faith and worshiper.
Such are the remarkable studies, the
contrasts in trends, the human responses!
Prof. Krinsky's is a specifically Jewish
book. It adds enchanting chapters to
Jewish historical records. It has an appeal
for Christian readers.
MIT Press, already acknowledged
with appreciation, renders a great service
as the producer of this most valuable book.
Notably illustrated, Prof. Krinsky's
assembled records remarkably combine to
provide readers and historians with a great
literary treasure. Prof. Krinsky's literary
achievement earns for her the gratitude of
all searchers for information regarding the '
faith and history of her people. ,
'Meaning of Synagogue'
—Offering "Some, thoughts on the
meaning of the synagogue," Carole
Herselle Krinsky writes in
Synagogues of EUrope:
"If the synagogue has expressed
special meanings at certain times, it
has also kept some stable meanings.
The synagogue does not have to be a
place of sacred mystery, but one where
earthbound men can meet. It is a place
of community, where aigewwants to be
part of a quorum* rather than a lone .
sinner concerned with his salvation.
The synagogue does not have to be
prominently situated in a town, as-
serting spiritual against secular
claims to power. It is, instead, a home
to the pious Jew, filled with those who
in their devotion transform even the
meanest building into a. house of as-
sembly, a house of learning, and a
house of prayer."
,
Murder Will Out:
Nazi Horrors Recorded
Murder will out. While the exposing of
Nazi criminals remains an endless obliga-
tion, facts about the mass murderers,
whether it was group action or by indi-
viduals, keeps emerging.
Indeed, there is no hiding or falsifying
facts. The expose of Kurt Waldheim proves
it. The approaching trial of John Demjan-
juk in Israel indicates that the search for
the Nazi criminals and their punishment
will be pursued in human ranks. In the last
30 years attempts had been made to bring
to justice Andrija Artukovic, who became
known as "the Butcher of the Balkans."
Even his associates in the Nazi crimes
were horrified by his savagery. He has fi-
nally been extradited and is now in Yugos-
lavia, where he faces death for his crimes.
It took three decades to secure action
against this mass killer of Yugoslays and
Jews, and he had the gall to defend himself.
His son, a California stockbroker, plans his
defense by enlisting the aid of American
lawyers. But the truth cannot-be_hidden.
In a report from Belgrade, published
by Kitty McKinsey in the Detroit Free
Press, Antun Miletic, a Belgrade historian,
described the activities of the Ustashas,
the Fascists who ruled the Nazi puppet
state of Croatia from 1941 to 1945. The
Free Press writer reported him stating that
"the only difference between the Nazis and
the Ustasbas was that the Ustashas did not
do experiments on humans like at Au-
schwitz and Dachau. They had more primi-
tive methods here — knives, mallets." Ac-
cording to the Free Press report:
Although the Nazis tried to
elevate their extermination of
what they deemed inferior races to
a science in meticulously run death
camps, the Ustashas often dis-
posed of enemies by slitting their
Wiese! The Highly
Regarded By Germans
As. Nobel Candidate
Elie Wiesel has earned the admiration
of many languages. He writes a great deal
in French and Mrs. Wiesel is his trans-
latoi. As his vast audiences know, he is an
inspiration in English and.jn Yiddish, and
has mastered other languages.
It is his spiritual forcefulness that has
given him an international image, and he
has been nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize.
This is not surprising. There is over-
whelming support for such a proposal. I:1 ut
Elie Wiesel
when leading Germans initiate a renewal
of the nomination it is news indeed.
The nomination was initiated by Bun-
destag deputies, including members of the
Christian Democratic Union-Christian
Social Union, the Social Democratic Party
and the Free Democratic Party.
Initiation of the proposal, recognizing
the merits of Elie Wiesel, who is chairman
of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council,
was in the form of a letter to the selections
committee in Oslo. The signatories in-
cluded Bundestag Vice President Heinz
Westphal ofethe SPD and Deputies Peter
Petersen (CDU) and Burkhard Hirgch
(SDP).
The signers of the nominating letter
called Wiesel a worthy candidate because
as a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchen-
wald he has been committed to reconcilia-
tion and understanding among peoples,
"acting on the firm belief that a second
Holocaust can only be prevented if the first
is not forgotten."
The very message from the Bundestag
deputies is an endorsement of the prevail-
ing and commanding view that the
Holocaust should not be forgotten.
Hopefully, as a fulfillment of this aim,
Elie Wiesel will earn the recognition for
which he is being nominated.
,
The London. Great Synagogue is pictured showing, the interior and' the ark.