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38

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1990

The Hate-Beast Is Crawling
Over Eastern Europe Again

Gift
Certificate s
Available

H

igh on the current
best-selling list in
newly liberated
Romania — if such a list ac-
tually existed — would be a
late-19th century piece of
fiction produced by the Rus-
sian Czar's secret service.
The book, which has been
widely translated over the
past 93 years, purports to
represent the conspiracy by
a powerful Jewish cabal to
seize control and manipulate
the world to its own devious
advantage.
The notorious forgery, the
Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, was intended to incite
anti-Semitism and provide a
cover of respectability for
generations of anti-Semites,
and in this the authors suc-
ceeded beyond their wildest
dreams. In post- revolu-
tionary Romania, the book
continues to spread its
poison.
Other manifestations of
anti-Semitism have found a
central place in the political
vocabulary of the New
Romania and are clearly
visible on the streets of
Bucharest.
A recent Western visitor to
the headquarters of the Na-
tional Peasants' Party was
astonished when Valentin
Gavrielescu, the party's
spokesman, asked him con-
fidentially: "How can a Jew
be a Romanian? To think our
Prime Minister is a Jew —
it's a disgrace to the revo-
lution!"
Not all of Romania's polit-
ical tyros are as crude as
Gavrielescu, but observers
are surprised by the cons-
tant references — "He's a
Jew, you know" — to the
ethnic origins of Jewish poli-
ticians.
Referring to the relatively
small Jewish population of
Romania, which now
numbers some 15,000 souls,
one politician noted that
deposed leader Nicolae
Ceausescu had bartered
thousands of Jews for Israeli
goods. "And," he said,
laughing uproariously,
"they all went to Jew York."
Outside of the political of-
fices of Romania, in the
streets of Bucharest itself, it
is obvious that the more ex-
plicit sentiment of Valentin
Gavrielescu is tapping a rich
vein.
While opponents of the rul-
ing National Salvation

Front draw the hammer-
and-sickle symbol under
posters depicting President
Ion Iliescu, posters of Prime
Minister Petre Roman and
Solidarity leader Silviu
Brucan, both Jewish, are
daubed with the Star of
David.
"The comments in
Bucharest are not very
pleasant to hear," noted one
recent visitor whose official
guide was among the avid
readers of the Protocols.
"And they don't come only
from impressionable young
people, who are absorbing
new ideas like sponges.
"Anti-Semitism also comes
from the older people who
were conditioned by pre-war
attitudes of hostility toward
Jews and the days when
Romania, right up to the end
of the war, supported the
Nazis."
Nor is Romania the only
Eastern-bloc state where old
hatreds are providing the
signposts to the new prom-
ised land.
The neo-Nazi Republican
Party, led by former SS offi-

"We have filled the
history books with
suffering, rubble,
defeat, millions of
refugees, millions
of dead—and the
crimes can never
be undone. If we
think about
Germany and the
German future, we
have to think about
Auschwitz."
Gunter Grass

cer Franz Schoenhuber,
shocked West Germans by
the astonishing level of sup-
port it achieved in regional
elections last year, and now
it appears to have gained a
solid foothold in East Ger-
many, too.
Even as the East German
rulers finally conceded last
week that they, too, bore
historic responsibilty for the
Nazi crimes, hundreds of
Republican Party recruits
flaunted their newly ac-
quired political identity at a
mass demonstration in Leip-
zig.
Holding up their arms in
Nazi salutes, they goose-
stepped through the city
smashing windows and
chanting, "Sieg Heil — to

hell with the Jews."
While manifestations of
neo-Nazism in East Ger-
many are still regarded as a
fringe event, there is serious
concern that the country's
shattered economy could
provide the catalyst for
spiralling inflation,
unemployment and
homelessness — a heady
cocktail which is likely to
spark a radical right-wing
response.
Gunter Grass, West Ger-
many's best-known writer,
paints a dark picture of a
reunified Germany:
"Whatever we may think of
ourselves, our neighbors
have their own experiences
of us," he says. "And they
are right to mistrust us.
Even when they act hys-
terically, they are right.
"We have filled the history
books with suffering, rubble,
defeat, millions of refugees,
millions of dead — and the
crimes can never be undone.
If we think about Germany
and the German future, we
have to think about
Auschwitz. Our neighbors
are afraid of us and we have
a duty to do what is accep-
table not only to us but also
to them."
Grass, who has been
publicly assailed in West
Germany for his outspoken
opposition to German
reunification and for his dire
warnings to fellow Germans
not to repeat "our terrible
history," remains unrepen-
tent: "I was in the Hitler
Youth," he says bluntly. "I
have my own experience of
the German mentality."
But as Communism
retreats, the greatest focus
of concern over the res-
urgent tide of anti-Semitism
is the Soviet Union itself,
where three brutal attacks
on Jews have provoked a
climate of fear:
• Vitaly Lekhtman, a
cultural administrator who
sponsored Jewish concerts in
Leningrad, was found
murdered in his apartment.
A Star of David had been
carved into his flesh.
• The bound and bat-
tered corpse of an elderly
Jewish art collector, Israel
Kovelman, was found in his
Moscow apartment. No
valuables were missing and
there was no evidence to
suggest that robbery was the
motive.
•
Svetlana Mezhibur-
skaya, a Jewish medical
worker, was recently releas-

