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COMMENT
Take the
14011dale
Feet First!
Footloose keeps you dancing through Holiday
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Save 20% on our entire stock
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Offer good now through Dec. 31, 1988
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FOOTWIARC
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OMENt
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6221 Orchard Lake Rd., W. Bloomfield, MI 48322
(313) 737-2266
Hours:
M, T, W, Sat. / 9:30 am - 6 pm
Th, F / 9:30 am - 9 pm
Sun. / 12 - 5 pm
FREE! FUN! SAVINGS!
Party Friday, Dec. 2 — Celebrate the Grand Opening of Fitnesse and Powerhouse
next to each other. Snacks, friends, music and dancing. 8 p.m. to Midnight. First
50 people receive free classes in January and February
Free Classes , and Workout Saturday, Dec. 3 — Saturday the workouts of both Fitnesse
and Powerhouse (Farmington Hills locations only) are free! 8 o.m.-6 p.m. You'll
be hooked on the best weight lifting and aerobics in town!
Everyone saves on future workouts — We're offering big savings on cards and
series Nov. 18-Jan. 1.
New* people save at Fitnesse —
10 classes for $10 ... plus $10 off your next
regular priced series!
Win a One Year Unlimited Series — Drawing at the Friday night party — you must
be present to win.
t itc)
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l t i , et
IL f
Exercise Company
GYM.
Ili
USA
737-4422
851-3488
31225 Orchard Lake Rd. at 14 Mile
Farmington Hills
•
Hunter's Square
at
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Hills Only
Party and FREE classes
.
New people have never been to Fitnesse before, have attended 6 or less classes or have not attended class for 8 or more months.
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Entire Oceanfront Block 37th to 38th Sts. Miami Beach
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80
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1988
You can prevent
mental retardation
Contact the Association
for Retarded Citizens for
free information.
Jewish Association for Retarded Citizens
11288 W. 12 Mile Rd., Southfield, MI 48016
(313) 551-1650
Help build
Association for Retarded Citizens
Let Soviet Jewish
Refugees Into U.S. Now
MICAH NAFTALIN
Special to The Jewish News
T
he words spoken by
the West German par-
liamentarian on the
occasion of the 50th anniver-
sary of Kristallnacht, and the
hail storm of rhetoric in
response, are instructive not
only to the importance of
post-Holocaust sensitivity.
Ironically, the issue offers an
added dimension at this mo-
ment because the lessons
need to be applied at once to
a contemporary analogue con-
cerning Soviet Jews. While a
West German official resigns,
here at home we are in
danger of recreating the
potentially disastrous insen-
sitivities of the Nazi era.
Tbday, thousands of Soviet
citizens, many of them Jews,
who have received emigration
permission from the Soviets,
are backed up in a processing
bottleneck at the U.S. Em-
bassy in Moscow. Even worse,
scores — and soon to be hun-
dreds, and then thousands —
of Soviet Jews are being
"refused" applications for
refugee status and transit to
the United States because of
a budget-driven, insensitive,
and dangerous change in the
policies of the Justice Depart-
ment's Immigration and
Naturalization Service.
INS is not merely stringing
out the processing, which
would be bad enough. Its in-
terviewers are actually quiz-
zing every Soviet Jew who ar-
rives in Rome to determine
whether, in the words of the
statute, they had a "well-
founded fear of persecution"
by a Soviet regime that — as
every civilized nation on
earth has determined — con-
tinues its historic pattern of
state-sponsored anti-
Semitism and cultural
genocide Incredibly, they are
not only asking; they are
deciding, in an alarming
number of cases, that there
was no such fear.
As the national director of
an organization that works
directly with the Soviet
Jewish refusenik community
every day, I believe that no
one who reads the daily
dispatches from Jews inside
the Soviet Union can deny the
scope of repression of Jews to-
day — physical as well as
rhetorical. And, as the former
deputy and acting director of
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Council, it is impossible for
me to ignore the obvious
parallels that this emerging
crisis bears to the world's in-
sensitivity to the signal
milestones along the path of
the "abandonment of the
Jews" in the 1930s and 1940s.
In recent days, there were
pious words about remember-
ing the lesson of Kristall-
nacht: that the world stood
mute in the presence of a
watershed pogrom. There is a
pogromist atmosphere in
Russia today. When I was in
Moscow in June, I was shown
a leaflet that was one of many
posted all over the House of
Culture "Yanza" on the day
the Jewish Cultural Associa-
tion was to have held a
meeting. In translation, it
began "Russian Patriots!
How long can we put up with
dirty Jews, who have brazen-
ly infiltrated our socie-
ty. . .Why do we great and
beautiful, wise Slays see the
Yids among us as normal
phenomena?" It was signed,
"Russia for Russians. Death
to the Yids."
The incident of turning
away from our shores the
Jews on the ship "St. Louis"
was, perhaps, the most horri-
fying example of American
insensitivity. But for me, one
of the worst of all examples of
international hypocrisy was
the appalling Bermuda Con-
ference, in which diplomats
and bureaucrats from allied
nations, including ours, met
for days in an impotent,
cynical and inconclusive
discussion of how not to open
up borders to Jewish refugees.
The meeting took place as the
Warsaw Ghetto was under
siege, and that tragedy was
never even mentioned in the
course of the conference.
lbday, high government of-
ficials — at State, Justice and
the White House — are
debating. How are we going to
handle the increased levels of
Jewish refugees from the
Soviet Union, refugees we
had not budgeted for? Do we
need more allocations? Will
we need a supplemental ap-
propriations measure next
spring when the funds run
out? Should we reduce the
cost of benefits per refugee to
spread out the funds? Should
the Jewish community pay a
greater part of the cost
through increased private
philanthropy? But these are
all questions for tomorrow.
lbday's question is: what
about those fearful, an-
guished Jewish refugees who
now fear they will be turned
away from our shores by the
INS? So far, the answer seems
to be, not without precedent,
to victimize the objects of