UP FRONT A Plague of Desecration Jewish cemeteries in Israel and France have come under attack by unknown forces. Authorities suspect anti-Semitic groups or Jewish extremists. STAFF REPORT T he desecration of five Jewish cemeteries in little more than a week has united much of France against bigotry and anti-Semitism while increas- ing the tension between Arabs and Jews in Haifa. Between 100,000 and 250,000 people, including French President Francois Mitterrand and Prime Min- ister Michel Rocard, march- ed through the center of Paris Monday in solidarity with French Jews. About 1,000 people had marched Friday in Carpentras and 10,000 others gathered Sun- day at the southern French town of 26,000 where van- dals had overturned 34 headstones and exhumed and mutilated a recently buried corpse. In Haifa, after more than 300 headstones in two cemeteries were defaced with slogans calling for the destruction of the Jews and the establishment of a Pales- tinian state, local leaders pleaded for residents to refrain from retaliation. "We will not allow this barbaric act to harm the good and harmonious rela- tions that exist between Jews and Arabs in Haifa," said Aryeh Gurel, the city's mayor. But Rehavam Ze'evi, The slogans on the Haifa headstones written in perfect Hebrew urged Arabs to "burn, kill and exterminate the Jews." leader of the far right-wing Moledet faction, said the an- swer to the desecration in Carpentras . should be the immigration of all French Jews to Israel. And the an- swer to the Haifa desecra- tions should be the expulsion of all Arabs from Israel. In Israel, a deranged Or- thodox Jew and his mentally aberrant friend were detain- ed for the May 12 assaults on the Hof Carmel and Kfar Samir cemeteries in Haifa. But on Tuesday, several gravestones in the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem were found daubed with swastikas and Stars of David. Previous at- tacks on the centuries-old burial ground have been at- tributed to Palestinian na- tionalists. Police have not eliminated the possibility that the Pa- lestinian uprising motivated the assaults on the Haifa cemeteries. But the prime suspect remains David Goldner, a 42-year-old resi- dent of Kiryat Motzkin in the Haifa Bay area described as a ba'al teshuvah, or returnee to Orthodox Judaism. He says he is a student of Kabbalistic mysticism, and claims to be an "emissary of the Messiah," who he says has been reborn and is living in northern Israel. 0 0 0 a_ Moshe Ran weeps over the desecrated Haifa grave of his son Avi, Israel's national soccer team goalie who died in 1987. Goldner has been in trou- ble with the police previous- ly for attacking his wife and threatening his parents. In both cases, psychiatric ex- aminations found him fit to stand trial. He will undergo further tests. The slogans on the headstones written in perfect Hebrew urged Arabs, including President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Pres- ident Hafez Assad of Syria, to "burn, kill and exter- minate the Jews." Police suggested that the Haifa in- cidents might have been a copycat response to the at- tack on the Carpentras cemetery. On Tuesday, Goldner pleaded not guilty to the charges of desecrating the Haifa cemeteries and offered to give the magistrate lessons in Kabbalah. The second suspect was identified as a 32-year-old resident of Kiryat Yam on Haifa Bay and a friend of Goldner's. The two men have frequented the Continued on Page 10 Is Eichmann Aide Living In Syria? New Babel Works Appear In Russian Washington, D.C. — Nazi mass murderer Alois Bruner, Adolph Eichmann's chief executioner, is alive and well and living under the protection of the Syrian government, according to a report in the June Reader's Digest. Peter Michelmore writes that Bruner lives under armed guard in a Damascus apartment building. The Syrian government not only knows his whereabouts, but supports him with a monthly pension check, Michelmore says. The Syrians deny any knowledge of Bruner's exis- tence. "Their hope is that he will soon go to his grave, his story untold," Michelmore's article states. But the truth is that "Syria is harboring the most monstrous Nazi war criminal still alive and at large," a man "directly responsible for sending more than 140,000 Jews to their deaths." Ann Arbor — Ardis Publishers of Aim Arbor has published in the original Russian a previously unknown collection of works by Soviet Jewish author Isaac Babel. Petersburg 1918 was col- lected and edited by Dr. Ephraim Sicher of Ben- Gurion University's Center for Russian Studies. The book focuses on the difficult life in Petersburg (now Len- ingrad) after the Bolshevik Revolution, and includes Babel's incomplete work The Jewess, a story about the dissolution of the Jewish community in the Russian Pale of Settlement. Babel, author of Red Cavalry and Odessa Tales, was unable to complete and publish Petersburg 1918 be- cause of increased repression in the Stalinist period. He was executed by Stalin agents in 1940. ROUND UP U-M Event Marks 1492 Expulsion Ann Arbor — Fourteen- ninety-two was a year of discovery and torment. It was the year Christopher Columbus began his first voyage to the New World and the year the Jews were expelled from Spain. Beginning October 1991, the University of Michigan will mark the 500th an- niversary of the expulsion with a series of concerts, discussions, exhibits and lec- tures. Called "Jews and the Encounter with the New World," the program will be held in Ann Arbor, Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo Columbus' voyages to the New World would have been impossible without the con- tributions of Jewish scien- tists, inventors and finan- ciers, according to U-M researcher Judith Laikin Elkin, who is organizing the event. Yet Spain's Christian rulers expelled many of these same Jews in 1492 and refused to let them par- . -.7 ":%„, . • -- 1111": . N = • NV ;- `.• I A • ""::" . • ' ' • to4 .1;74r; ' N-A - - A map from the "Jews and the Encounter with the New World" exhibit. ticipate in the conquest and settlement of the New World. A Real Mouthful Of Alphabet Soup New York — In the begin- ning it was the Jewish Wel- fare Board. Then it was just plain JWB. Now it's the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America, or JCC Associ- ation. A new name, a new acronym. Late last month, delegates to the 1990 JWB Biennial voted to change the name JWB to Jewish Community Centers Association of North America. "By adopting this new name, this organization has publicly aligned itself with the Jewish Community Center movement," said new JCC Association Presi- dent Lester Pollack of New York. "It is a major step to have taken, and it is more than semantics." JTS, JPS, JVS, JF&CS, UHS, JPI, ORT, BBYO, USA, ADL, JCC, JFS, BIAS, NCSY, UCSJ, JTA, NCJW, YMHA, YU, AJC, UJA, CLAL, CAJE, JLC, AJPA, NCSJ, NFTY, ARZA, LZA, AIPAC, JWV, UOJC, JARC, HUC-JIR, CJF, WJC, SSSJ, NJCRAC, ZOA, JNF, CCAR, YI, RCA, AMIT, IDF, JESNA, VIVO, AAEJ, WZO, JBI, JDC, JCC Association — do you know what they all mean? And think — this is just the beginning! Could more organizations with more acronyms be just around the corner? Stay tuned to the Round-Up .. . Compiled by Elizabeth Applebaum THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 5