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THIS ISSUE 60 1 P

SERVING DETROIT'S JEWISH COMMUNITY

NOVEMBER 13, 1987 / 21 CHESHVAN 5748

Miss America 1945
Still Stands Tall

LILA ORBACH

Special to The Jewish News

caudal or no scandal,
Bess Myerson is still
Miss America, 1945.
The more than 1,000 people who
flocked to the Jewish Book Fair Mon-
day to hear Myerson plug her new
book, Miss America, 1945; Bess Myer-
son's Own Story, didn't seem the least
bit disappointed that the former beau-
ty queen remained mute on the sub-
ject of her federal indictment.
Myerson, charged with six counts
of conspiracy, mail fraud and bribery,
is quite verbose about the decade sur-
rounding her crowning in Atlantic Ci-
ty four decades ago, but silent about
her more recent love life and legal
battles, denying the charges made
against her.

S

The young-looking 63-year-old is
accused of giving a $19,000 job to the
daughter of a state Supreme Court
justice in order to induce the judge to
reduce the alimony and child-support
payments for her boyfriend, contrac-
tor Carl Capasso, who himself ran in-
to tax trouble and a four-year prison
term.
In the wake of the allegations,
Myerson resigned from her $83,000
position as New York's commissioner
of cultural affairs, a $133 million
agency that finances 32 major
cultural organizations (including the
New York Library system.)
But it wasn't the villainess of the
"Bess Mess" people had come to see
at the JCC. It was the poor beauty
from the West Bronx who grew up to
become the Queen Esther of the

Continued on Page 18

Detroit HMC Spurs
Holocaust Guide

DAVID HOLZEL

Staff Writer

F

orty-two years after Hitler's
downfall, the number of writ-
ten works on the Holocaust con-
tinues to mushroom. Growing too are
the so-called revisionist histories
which claim that the magnitude of
murder by the Nazis was exag-
gerated, or that the genocide was or-
chestrated by the Jews to foster
Israel's creation. Some claim that the
Holocaust never happened.
"Currently there is no single
source that answers questions on the
Holocaust in any definitive way;' ex-
plained Prof. Shelley Frisch of Colum-
bia University. "There are popular
works, scholarly works, but no

reference work."
The solution is an encyclopedia of
the Holocaust, according to Rabbi
Charles Rosenzveig, director of
Detroit's Holocaust Memorial Center.
Rabbi Rosenzveig and Prof. Guy
Stern, chairman of the HMC's aca-
demic advisory committee, proposed
the idea of sponsoring the compiling
of an encyclopedia to the HMC's ex-
. ecutive committee, which approved
the proposal.
Rabbi Rosenzveig said he is con-
fident the HMC's board will likewise
approve the project and has set the
wheels in motion for a one-volume
work of 1,000 pages, containing ar-
ticles summarizing all aspects of the
Holocaust, plus a comprehensive

Continued on Page 22

Don't
Call IV e
Totie

Can Murray Lender do for
Israeli exports what
he did for the bagel?

