YEAR IN REVIEW 5749 YEAR IN REVIEW
PAUL COWAN, the
48-year-old New York
journalist who chronicled
his own transition from
assimilated to deeply
involved Jew, died of
leukemia.
BARBARA
TUCHMAN, the
best selling author
whose historical
accounts of war
and the people
involved in it
earned her two
Pulitzer Prizes, died
at the age of 77.
• HOWARD SIMONS,
a Washington Post
editor who went
on to head the
prestigious
Niemann
Fellowship program
at Harvard, died of
cancer at 61. In
his last year, he
wrote a book,
ARYE DULZIN,
who represented
the old style of
leadership in
heading the Jewish
Agency and World
Zionist Organization
until being forced
out several years
ago, died in Israel
at 76.
Jewish Times,
chronicling the
experiences of
a variety of
American Jews.
heading West in the next
decade.
In all, it was a year of extraor-
dinary change regarding Soviet
Jewry, for not only were
thousands of Jews being allowed
to leave but there was a new
sense of openness within the
USSR. A Jewish cultural center
opened in Moscow, with Jewish
dignitaries from around the
world on hand; Aeroflot agreed,
in principle, on direct flights
from Moscow to 'Ibl Aviv; and
Israel Radio was allowed to be
broadcast.
The down side of this open-
ness was that anti-Semitic na-
tionalist groups within the
USSR were allowed to express
themselves, raising anxiety
among many Jews, who were
the target of ugly rhetoric.
Prayers At Auschwitz
Ugly rhetoric aimed at Jews
came from a different source
this year: the Catholic Church.
An emotional but relatively
minor issue — the appropriate-
ness of a convent on the
grounds of Auschwitz — became
an international cause that
seriously damaged Catholic-
Jewish relations. After Jewish
groups had protested the insen-
sitivity of maintaining a con-
vent on the death camp site, an
agreement between European
Jewish and Catholic leaders was
made, calling for the convent to
be moved and an interfaith
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
59