NEWS
Hate-Crimes Providing
Backdrop To Conference
Prague (JTA) — As out-
breaks of anti-Semitism
were being reported from
places as widely separated
as Madison, Wis., San Fran-
cisco and West Germany,
leaders of the Roman
Catholic Church and repre-
sentatives of world Jewry
gathered here for a long-
postponed conference on the
Holocaust and the res-
urgence of anti-Semitism in
Europe.
The conference, which
opened Sept. 3, was preceded
by a joint visit to the site of
the Theresienstadt concen-
tration camp. Catholics and
Jews stood in silence before
a memorial to the tens of
thousands of victims of the
Holocaust who perished in
the camp or were taken by
the Nazis from there to gas
chambers in Poland.
After the visitors recited
Kaddish in their memory,
Psalm 130 was read in Heb-
rew by Father Marcel
Dubois of Jerusalem, a
Catholic member of the
International Liaison Com-
mittee.
The Catholic-Jewish
meeting is the first of its
kind in three years. Contacts
between the Vatican
Secretariat on Religious Re-
lations With the Jews and
the International Jewish
Committee on Interreligious
Consultations (IJCIC) were
suspended for three years
because of dissension over
the Carmelite convent at
Auschwitz.
But the conference here
opened Monday in an at-
mosphere of good will and
mutual understanding.
Presiding were Archbishop
Edward Cassidy of the Vat-
ican Secretariat and
Seymour Reich, chairman of
IJCIC.
Opening addresses were
delivered by Bishop Pierre
Duprey of the Vatican dele-
gation and by Rabbi Jack
Bemporad, interreligious af-
fairs chairman of the Syn-
agogue Council of America.
Both faiths have brought
scholars and experts from
North and South America,
Western and Eastern
Europe, and Israel to ex-
amine the history of anti-
Semitism, the Holocaust and
the role of the Catholic
Church.
They expect to produce a
common document at the
conclusion of the four-day
meeting that will constitute
an action program by the
church to combat anti-
Semitism, especially in
Eastern Europe, where the
Vatican has regained a
strong influence in the wake
of the demise of communism.
Meanwhile, in Madison,
Wis., public officials and re-
ligious leaders held a joint
news conference last week to
condemn the wave of 18 anti-
Semitic incidents that has
occurred there in the last six
weeks.
"We must from the very
outset denounce anti-
Semitism at every turn,"
said Dane County, Wis., Ex-
ecutive Richard Phelps. "We
must be clear that people of
such ill will and bigotry are
not welcomed here."
Mayor Paul Soglin urged
the public to come forward
with information that might
Catholics and
Jews stood in
silence before a
memorial to the
tens of thousands
of victims of the
Holocaust.
lead to the arrest of the
perpetrator(s). No suspects
have been identified.
More than 200 people at-
tended the news conference
at the Madison Municipal
Building, hearing additional
statements from Madison
Jewish Community Council
Executive Director Steven
Morrison, University of
Wisconsin Chancellor
Donna Shalala, Madison
Public Schools Superinten-
dent James Travis and the
Rev. Charles Garel, a former
president of Madison's
NAACP chapter.
The conference followed a
weekend in which the B'nai
B'rith Hillel Foundation on
the U.W. campus was van-
dalized twice. During the
evening of Aug. 25, a
window was broken. The
next night, anti-Semitic
graffiti were painted on the
building.
The wave of incidents
began on the weekend of
July 14, when rocks were
thrown through two
windows of a trailer at the
Camp Shalom day camp at
Olin Park.
Since then, both major
Madison synagogues — Beth
Israel Center and Temple
Beth El — have had
windows broken, anti-
Semitic graffiti painted on
them and trash strewn about
their grounds.
The vandalism moved to
the U.W. campus during the
weekend of Aug. 17 and 18,
with windows broken and
anti-Semitic graffiti painted
on the Hillel building and on
the houses of three frater-
nities and one sorority with
predominantly Jewish
membership.
Police in San Francisco
have beefed up patrols at
synagogues and Jewish in-
stitutions after hate crimes
were committed against
three of them within a week.
Although police have ruled
out any link between the two
cases of arson and one of
vandalism at the three syn-
agogues, they say such in-
cidents most typically occur
near the High Holy Days.
Some congregants at the
synagogues suggested,
however, that events in the
Persian Gulf might have
been a factor. Inspector Lou
Ligouri, SFPD liaison to the
Jewish community, said he
was able to rule out a con-
nection between two of the
fires because the fuel used to
ignite them were different.
Nevertheless, he said the
incidents "smack of anti-
Semitism." Ligouri noted
that such acts tend to rise in
the weeks before the High
Holy Days.
"To me this really smells
of intimidation, so people in
the Jewish community will
be somewhat reluctant or in-
timidated to attend ser-
vices," he said. "By
perpetrating two, three,
four, five incidents, there's
plenty of time for the news to
get out and instill the in-
timidation, that fear, in the
community."
As a result of the in-
cidents, police will probably
continue tighter security at
Jewish institutions until the
holidays end in early Oc-
tober.
"We (intend to) increase
patrols or have officers make
passing calls to areas that
people are concerned about,"
said SFPD spokesman David
Ambrose.
In West Germany several
Jewish cemeteries in the
federal state of Baden-
Wurtemberg were reported
vandalized.
The series of desecrations,
which began last week and
continued through the
weekend, are in addition to
several other such acts of
vandalism.
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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
137