THE JEWISH NEWS
SERVING DETROIT'S JEWISH COMMUNITY
THIS ISSUE 60(
Lubavitch Vow
To Keep Battling
SUSAN GRANT
Staff Writer
L
ubavitch Foundation
will not give up on
plans to build an edu-
cational and religious
retreat along West Maple
Road in West Bloomfield —
despite a vote which they
say will make their task
more difficult.
West Bloomfield Township
trustees voted 4-2 on Tues-
day to exclude colleges and
universities from areas zon-
ed for single-family use and
move them into areas re-
served for industrial office
parks. The ordinance, which
also lowers the land re-
quirement of colleges from
40 acres to 20 acres and sets
restrictions on building ap-
pearances, puts the founda-
tion's plans in jeopardy.
Although the foundation
has not presented any site
plans to the township, foun-
dation leaders have an-
nounced plans to build a re-
ligious retreat on the 40
acres it owns west of the
Jewish Community Center.
The retreat is expected to in-
clude a rabbinical college,
parks, a Judaica library, a
Jewish art museum, a Soviet
Jewish center, a day care
center and a center for the
elderly.
Under the new ordinance,
the foundation must request
rezoning from the township
for their 40-acre site. They
cannot build on the land
unless the township trustees
agree to rezone the land,
now zoned single-family, to
industrial office park. Trust-
ees have said they do not
want any additional in-
dustrial land in the
township and have been ac-
tively attempting to rezone
industrial properties to pro-
tect single family neighbor-
hoods.
Continued on Page 20
Jewish-Polish
Links Strained
SUSAN GRANT
Staff Writer
A
Polish native who re-
cently returned from
a visit to his
homeland isn't optimistic
about the future of Jewish-
Polish relations.
"Polish-Jewish relations
are not excellent. Actually
they are pretty bad. It's just
a bit short of people slugging
it out," Mariusz Ziomecki
said during a Feb. 19 lecture
at Wayne State University.
About 25 people, mostly
Poles, attended the lecture
which was sponsored by
B'nai B'rith Hillel Founda-
tion, the Wayne State Ger-
man and Slavic Languages
and Literature Department
and the Center for Judaic
Studies.
Although the Jewish and
Polish communities in
Detroit have survived
unscathed during controver-
sies over the Holocaust film
Shoah and the Carmelite
nuns' convent at Auschwitz,
Ziomecki, a Free Press
editorial writer, expects to see
a confrontation between the
two communities in the near
future.
"It's the law of averages.
Relations between the two
groups are dreadfully bad,"
he said.
Looking through the local
Polish and Jewish papers,
Ziomecki discovered what is
said "in family" is different
than what is said in public.
Within their own publica-
tions, the two groups con-
demn each other.
During the Carmelite con-
troversy last summer there
was no dialogue between the
two communities, he said.
"No one gave a darn what
the other had to say."
Although the two com-
munities have coexisted
with each other in Poland for
years, they never mixed
together, he said. "During
World War II, the
separateness of the two peo-
ple only deepened. You
Continued on Page 20
FEBRUARY 23, 1990 / 28 SHEVAT 5750