I OPINION YOU'RE COVERED With Our T•Shirt! Auschwitz Protest Continued from Page 12 Subscribe Today To The Jewish News And Receive A T-Shirt With Our Compliments! From the West Bank to West Bloomfield — and all points in between — The Jewish News covers your world. And with our T-shirt, we cover new subscribers, too. The T-shirt is durable, comfortable, easy to care for and attractive And it comes in an array of adults' and children's sizes. But most important, your new subscription will mean 52 information- packed weeks of The Jewish News, plus our special supplements, delivered every Friday to your mailbox. A $42.90 value for only $26! A great newspaper and a complimentary T-shirt await you for our low subscription rates. Just fill out the coupon below and return it to us. We'll fit you to a T! Jewish News T-Shirt Offer Yes! Start me on a subscription to The Jewish News for the period and amount circled below. Please send me the T-shirt. Please clip coupon and mail to: JEWISH NEWS T-SHIRT 27676 Franklin Road Southfield, Mich. 48034 NAME This offer is for new subscriptions only. Cur- rent subscribers may order the T-shirt for $4.75. Allow four weeks delivery. ADDRESS CITY (Circle One) (Circle One) ZIP 1 year: $26 2 years: $46 Out of State: $33 Enclosed $ ADULT EX. LG. ADULT LARGE ADULT MED. CHILD LARGE CHILD MED. CHILD SMALL J 1 14 STATE FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1989 again, this time kicking and punching us, and dragging us from the area. Their leader yelled "Heil Hitler!" Nuns peered through the convent windows as we were beaten. A white-haired parish priest looked on from beyond the fence. A Polish seminarian cried, "Rip off their skull- caps! Drag them out!" Uniformed and plainclothes police watched without in- tervening. As we were hauled away, dogs were set loose to patrol the area. Statements expressing outrage at the attack against us have been heard from many quarters. The State Department, the Israel Foreign Ministry, and Jewish organizations have all joined in condemning the attack. Janek Kuron, a Solidarity leader, told us: "I can only speak in my own name, but I think that my friends will agree with me if I say I feel very much ashamed as a Pole for what happened to you." His statement, published on the front page of the Solidar- ity newspaper Gazetta Wyborcza, was particularly courageous in the light of the close ties between Solidarity and the Church. Even the Polish press agency (PAP), which ori- ginally reported that we had "come to attack the nuns," reversed its position and apologized. At a meeting with Janusz Solecki, deputy general of PAP, he admitted that no reporter had been present at Auschwitz the day we were beaten. Most recently, the Polish Deputy Foreign Minister, Jan Majewski told Mordechai Palzur, Israel's representative to Poland, that because of the latest "incidents" at the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz, his government has decided to intervene to ensure its quick removal. The only voice that has not yet been heard is the voice of the Vatican. There is a prece- dent for such silence. "When our brothers and sisters met their deaths in Auschwitz," said Markus Pardes, former president of the Cooidinating Committee of Jewish Organi- zations in Belgium, "they were surrounded by a total silence on the part of the world and a very significant silence on the part of the Church. We cannot tolerate that prayers should take place, even in the best inten- tions, in this place, from those who could have, at the right time, raised their voice for our brothers and sisters and who did not do so." The image of Jews being beaten at Auschwitz, in the very place in which, not so long ago, millions of Jews were beaten, tortured, and gassed, evokes in Jews today flashbacks of memory painful in their immediacy and intensity. Didn't the world learn something after all from Auschwitz? Especially the Poles? Especially the Church? And most especially the nuns who came to Auschwitz to, of all things, pray? We did not come to Auschwitz to be beaten. We came — and shall continue to come — to demand that the convent be removed, that the nuns leave, and that the cross erected on ground that, tragically, has become sacred to' us, be removed. Let the nuns who say they are pray- ing for those who died at Auschwitz, pray elsewhere. Let them cease praying for the Jews who were murdered there Those who died as Jews should be left to rest in peace as Jews. ❑ Rabbi Weiss is rabbi of The Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, New York and assistant professor of Judaic Studies at Stern College in New York. NEWS JNF Reports Fewer Fires Jerusalem (JTA) — There have been fewer and lest devastating forest fires in 1989 in Israel than in 1988, but not because the number of arson attempts has declined. Moshe Rivlin, world chair- man of the Jewish National Fund, said the relatively low toll of destroyed forests is the result of JNF fire prevention. In particular, Rivlin notes, JNF enlisted the counsel of the United States Forest Ser- vice. The result has been bet- ter equipment, better preparedness and much bet- ter cooperation between JNF and all the various authorities in Israel that col- lectively contribute to fire- prevention or control. "We man 41 fire lookout posts 24 hours a day, and we have 30-odd fire-fighting teams on alert around the clock. Some are mobile patrols; others are stationary teams who are ready to res- pond to an emergency call in- stantly," Rivlin said. The JNF has also been coor- dinating prevention efforts with the IDF, the Nature Reserves Authority and the Society for the Protection of Nature. .