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Hitler's 100th Birthday:
Remember Or Forget?
LAWRENCE GROSSMAN
Special to The Jewish News
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128
FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1989
pril 20 marks the
100th birthday of
Adolf Hitler. Should
his evil memory be allowed to
recede quietly form the minds
of mankind, or are there
things that Jews should
ponder on this day, and bring
to the attention of the world?
A case can be made that
Hitler and his works are by
now so remote that the
centenary of his birth should
be of little more than anti-
quarian interest.
Forty-four years after the
downfall of his fearsome-em-
pire, neither German govern-
ment — East or West — re-
tains any recognizable Nazi
vestige: one is communist,
the other democratic.
The pseudoscientific racism
and virulent anti-Semitism
that Hitler promoted are in
disrepute among educated
people around the world.
Even the Cold War between
the United States and the
Soviet Union that was spawn-
ed by Hitler's war seems to be
disappearing in the era of
glasnost. And before long, on-
ly senior citizens will
remember the Hitler years;
others will have to rely on
books, movies and Holocaust
memorials.
Yet there is good reason for
not ignoring Hitler's birthday
this year. The evils that he
personified, while perhaps
changed in form, have not
disappeared. They may, in-
deed, even be spreading.
Anti-Semitic incidents are
on the upsurge in the United
States. The well-publicized
burning of Torah scrolls in
Brooklyn last fall was just the
tip of the iceberg.
This trend is not just a mat-
ter of misguided teen-agers
out for thrills. Organized
gangs of Skinheads now
operating in most American
cities harass and beat up
blacks and other minorities,
not just • Jews. And the fact
that a Ku Klux Klan leader
ran first in an election for the
Louisiana legislature is cause
for foreboding.
In Europe, widespread anx-
iety over the influx of foreign
laborers has provided an op-
portunity for right-wing
political forces to regroup.
Earlier this year, the
Republican Party in West
Berlin, under the leadership
Lawrence Grossman is
director of publications for
the American Jewish
Committee.
of a former SS officer, won 7.5
percent of the vote on an anti-
foreigner, ultranationalist
platform.
In Austria, revelations
about President Kurt Wald-
heim's Nazi past seem to have
made him more, not less,
popular among his fellow
citizens.
Much more dangerous,
however, is the work of cer-
tain reputable mainstream
scholars, especially in Ger-
many, who minimize the
destruction of European
Jewry by denying that it
resulted from any concerted
Nazi plan, or by suggesting
that the Germans may have
had some justification for ac-
ting against the Jews.
But surely, the most
distressing remnant of
Hitlerism in 1989 is the in-
tense pressure that is being
exerted on the State of Israel,
both in the administered ter-
ritories and in the interna-
tional community.
Israel's very creation in
1948 was intended to provide
Jews with a homeland so that
future potential Hitlers
would not be able to menace
them.
Israel also symbolizes the
defeat of Hitler by testifying
to the ultimate triumph of the
Jews over him and his
followers. And while all peo-
ple of good will wish to see the
Palestinian problem solved
fairly, Jews must make it
clear to the world that any
weakening of the State of
Israel, any doubt cast on its
legitimacy, carries the work of
Hitler forward.
Recalling Hitler's birth 100
years ago, then, is not just an
exercise in historical recollec-
tion. By alerting us to certain
dangers, it can also help us
set a Jewish agenda for the
present and the future. D
NEWS
Allies Extend
Neo-Nazi Ban
Bonn (JTA) — The Western
Allied Powers who have
governed West Berlin since
the end of World War II
renewed a ban on the ac-
tivities of the National
Democratic Party, a right-
wing group widely believed to
be neo-Nazi.
The NPD, as it is known,
can operate legally in the rest
of West Germany as a right-
wing party.
In the Frankfurt municipal
elections last month, the
.
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