IUP FRONT Federation Will Study Midrasha 'Miss Daisy' Drives Uhry To The Top DAVID HOLZEL ELIZABETH KAPLAN Staff Writer Staff Writer C 1 Capone and "Hootenanny Saturday Night" helped pave the way, but Alfred Uhry's career wouldn't be what it is today if it hadn't been for his grandmother. The grandmother is Daisy of "Driving Miss Daisy:' Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning play now being per- formed at the Music Hall Center. Bas- ed on relations between his Jewish grandmother and her black chauffeur, "Driving Miss Daisy" is a story that goes back more than 30 years. By the time he was 12, Uhry said, he already wanted to write a story about his grandmother's family. Uhry was raised in Atlanta. His forefathers immigrated in the 1840s from Eastern Europe to Philadelphia, and later to the South in search of bet- ter schools. They settled in Noonan, Ga., which Uhry called "a fine old Southern town," and later moved to Atlanta. In the meantime, they didn't all lead a quiet, obscure life. "My great-uncle was a blockade runner during the Civil War," Uhry said, "just like Rhett Butler?' Uhry was more interested in books than blockades. "As a child, I would read all these long novels and do all this research;' he said in an in- terview from his New York home. "Of course, I didn't really know what I was doing?' By the time he was in fifth grade, Uhry had started his own newspaper, Continued on Page 22 ommunity protest over the virtual closure of the Mid- rasha Library in Southfield has prompted the Jewish Welfare Federation's culture and education division to look into the funding re- quirements and operations of the library. But protesters say the Jewish community leadership is moving too slowly in its investigation and could doom the library. The United Hebrew Schools, which funds the library, faces a . $120,000 budget shortfall this year. Recently, UHS cut back library hours to eight per week as a cost-cutting measure. Leaders of the drive to save the library say funding responsibility must be transferred from UHS to the Federation. Over a six-week period, library supporters collected 1,500 signatures on a petition. The petition calls for the postponement of the cutbacks — which have since gone into effect — and the transfer of financing to Federation auspices. Petitioners want the facility to be recognized as the library of the Detroit Jewish com- munity, not merely an arm of UHS. Protesters also have received statements of support from 10 area Conservative rabbis, the Jewish Library Association, the Labor Zionist Alliance and the UHS Woman's Auxiliary, according to Judy Loebl, who spearheaded the drive. A Construction has begun on a 150-unit building at Oak Park's Jewish Federation Apartments. A ground-breaking ceremony will be held at 10 a.m. Oct. 9. Residency applications will not be accepted until spring, with occupancy scheduled for autumn 1989. Loebl and other protesters met last month with UHS and Federation officials. Last week, a Federation com- mittee was appointed to investigate the issue. The study will be conducted by Irwin Alterman of the Federation culture and education division. He is also a member of the UHS board of trustees. Alterman said he will check the amount of use the library gets, "how many hours the library needs to be open to reasonably serve the users, how many hours does it take to catalogue and keep the library up, and how does it differ from other Jewish libraries." United Hebrew Schools President Jerry Knoppow said that library ac- tivity is continuing, despite the reduc- ed hours. Librarian Sarah Bell disputed Knoppow, saying UHS has not sup- plied any funds for the library and that book purchases have been halted and periodical subscriptions are not being renewed. "As we speak the library starts to deteriorate," said Loebl, vice presi- dent of the Jewish Library Associa- tion. "We're frustrated. You can have all the fact-finding you want, but it doesn't help the library?' She explained that books and periodicals must continuously be pur- chased for the collection to remain up to date. That is no longer being done, she said. Allan Nachman, chairman of the culture and education division, responded that the alternative to close study of the library's needs would be "a knee-jerk decision. That's Continued on Page 22 ROUND UP Nazi Criminals Denaturalized Washington (JTA) - Two Nazi war criminals living in the United States, Stefan Reger and Juris Kauls, were ordered denaturalized by two different judges last week. Reger, 63, of Yardville, N.J., was denaturalized by U.S. District Court Judge Clarkson Fisher in Newark N.J., on the basis of his ser- vice as an SS guard at the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) Con- centration Camp between 1943 and 1945. Kauls, 75, of Sun City, Ariz., was denaturalized by U.S. District Court Judge Robet Bloomfield in Phoenix by a default judgment based on Kauls' failure to respond to government charges that he served at a Nazi concentra- tion camp in Latvia during World War II, and concealed that service from federal im- migration officials. 414 Telephoned Dial-A-Shofar Tuesday evening, after the second day of Rosh Hashanah, Troy Jewish Con- gregation had recorded 414 telephone calls to its record- ed notes of the shofar on its of- fice answering machine. The recording by Dr. Marc Lindy will be placed on the synagogue's answering machine again next week for shut-ins to hear the sounds of the shofar at the end of Yom Kippur on Wednesday evening. The dial-a-shofar telephone number is 643-6520. Arabs Ask Weil To Be Mediator Brussels (JTA) — The Arab League has approached Simone Well several times recently to act as mediator between the Palestine Libera- tion Organization and Israel, sources said. They said that Weil, leader of the Liberal group in the Strasbourg-based Parliament of Europe, disclosed these ap- proaches last week at a meeting of the group in Aarhus, Denmark. Weil, a French Jew and Auschwitz survivor, is a former president of the 12-nation parliament and a former French cabinet minister. She reportedly told her colleagues in Aarhus she would not reject a mediating role, but thinks the timing is inappropriate. Weil has strongly opposed the invitation European socialists extended to PLO chief Yassir Arafat to visit the parliament in Strasbourg next week. Egyptians Seize Israeli Boat Tel Aviv (JTA) — Israeli of- ficials expressed disapproval last week of the Egyptian coast guard's move to ram and seize an Israeli excursion boat in the Gulf of Eilat. The Foreign Ministry is awaiting further details of the incident before deciding how Israel will respond. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said the incident was not the sort of thing that should occur between friend- ly nations and was "complete- ly unnecessary." Information indicates that the seizure was an indepen- dent initiative, not coor- dinated with authorities in Cairo. The Maya, with 35 Israeli passengers and crew aboard, was intercepted by the Egyptian patrol ship, rammed and towed to the Egyptian coast guard station on Coral Island in the gulf. THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 5