PURELY COMMENTARY

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Editor Emeritus

Holocaust And Repetitive Agonies

A

n assembly of dedi-
cated community acti-
vists, who will con-
vene at an annual gathering
here this coming Sunday to
mark the creation of the
Holocaust Memorial Center,
will be moved to prevent the
recurrence of the Nazi
inhumanities.
While the Holocaust
tragedies keep reminding us
of an inerasable record, the
memory of the Nazi bar-
barities, there is added horror
over the hatreds that keep
popping up.
Functioning under the
highy qualified direction of its
organizer Rabbi Charles
Rosenzveig, the Detroit
Holocaust Center continues
the programming of keeping
students and leaders of all
faiths knowledgeable about
the past and involved in ef-
forts to strive to prevent
repetition of even the
minutest of the horrors. In
the process, there is the need
for the awareness of the very
repetitiveness of the in-
humanities that leaves con-
tempt in our memories.
The assembly of committed
leaders will be invited to be
fully informed about the
repeated threats by a most
revered Righteous Gentile.

Beate Klarsfeld, who as a
very young woman became
horrified by what she had
learned in the post-war years
about the Nazi cruelties, ac-
tivated the hunting for guil-
ty Germans and propagated
action to expose the crimes.
Lecturing, publishing,
generating court action, she
and her Jewish husband
Serge Klarsfeld organized to
keep their movement func-
tioning to punish the guilty.

Beate Klarsfeld has
been honored as a
Righteous Gentile
by Yad Vashem in
Jerusalem.

She has been honored as a
Righteous Gentile by Yad
Vashem in Jerusalem, in
Detroit and in other Jewish
communities worldwide.

As Beate Klarsfeld brings
her message to the Holocaust
Center's assembly, she
declares her pursuit for
justice against the Nazi
murderers responsible for the
death of six million Jews. She
has addressed a powerful

statement in support of her
efforts for leading a world
Jewish movement, the World
Jewish Congress. This is her
message:

While as recently as six
months ago I still held out
some hope that recent
threats against Jews in
Europe were but a quick
release of pent up anti-
Semitism .. .
. . . I now know that my
husband living here with
me in Paris, and Jews in
Poland, Moscow and else-
where, face a ground-swell
of ethnic hate matched on-
ly by the wartime years:
• Countries throughout
Europe are seeing a
dramatic resurgence in the
publication of pro-Nazi
propaganda.
• Just months ago in
Belgium, a prominent
Jewish rights leader was
shot to death (anti-Israeli
claimed
extremists
responsibility).
• In Paris, Cracow, and
Moscow Jewish children
taunted.
are
being
Cemeteries are being
vandalized.
• In the Soviet Union,
press reports confirm that
"glasnost" has unleashed a

"torrent" of anti-Semitism
— nationalist, pro-Nazi
groups are even blaming
Jews for that country's
severe economic problems.
The list goes on — much
as it did in the 1930s and
1940s. And I search my
heart for an answer to this
question: It did not stop
back then . . . where will it
end today?

How easy it was then,
back in the Ukraine, to
club Jews to death; how
easy, in Lithuania, to make
Jews undress and dig mass
graves before they were
shot in them.
How easy in Poland to
make rabbis crawl on all
fours. To set fire to their
beards.
How easy for the Ger-
mans to build huge gas
chambers, for the
Austrians to put Jews to
work scrubbing the streets
of Vienna with tiny
toothbrushes.
How easy it was for
Vichy to deliver to the Ger-
mans thousands of foreign
Jews who had trustingly
come to France thinking
they would be protected.
It is because of these
events — and so many

Beate Klarsfeld

more, recorded in our
history books and our
hearts forevermore .. .
. . . that I have come to
believe so very strongly
that Jews and non-Jews
alike haven't the right to re-
main indifferent or inactive
any more.
Under the banner of the
Detroit Holocaust Center we
have to appeal for action not
only to remember the past
but to reject every support of
anti-Semitism.
There is challenge every-
where with hatred felt even at

Continued on Page 60

An Abba Eban Message Worth Anticipating

A

s an objective of the
Histadrut Labor-Zion-
ist movement, the
Afro-Asian Institute in Israel
aims to achieve the following:
"The Institute trains
leadership for labor
unions, women's and youth
groups, cooperative move-
ments and educational and
developmental institutions
to promote rural develop-
ment, community develop-
ment and nation building
skills in Africa, Asia, the
Caribbean and the
Pacific."

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Vol. ReVIII Na 9 October 26, 1990

2

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1990

At the annual dinner
meeting on Nov. 13, in sup-
port of this cause, the
honorees will be Federal
Judge Avern Cohn and Dr.
Arthur Johnson, vice presi-
dent for community relations
Wayne State University and
president Detroit branch
NAACP.
While the honorees
themselves lend importance
to this function, the guest
speaker, Abba Eban, a major
figure in Israel's diplomacy
and one of the most
distinguished world Jewish
personalities, draws special
attention by his return ap-
pearance at a public function.
Expressing a sense of con-
fidence in Israel's ability to
protect herself against
military threats made by
Palestinian demands, Mr.
Eban has been involved in
much controversy over the dif-
fering viewpoints.
In view of the latest occur-
rences that are creating add-
ed difficulties for Israel affec-
ting the attitudes of World
Jewry, especially Israel's re-
jection of the UN proposal for
an investigating commission

Abba Eban

to study the occurrences in
Jerusalem, an Abba Eban
diplomatic judgment of the
continuing issues remains
vital.
During the disputes that
followed Israel's administra-
tion of the area commonly
referred to as the West Bank,
Mr. Eban urged recognition of
many of the Palestinian

Teddy Kollek

demands. He advocated con-
ferring with them in consider-
ing their claims for an in-
dependent statement in what
is treated by Israel as Judea
and Samaria.
Another distinguished man
of our time, Mayor Teddy
Kollek of Jerusalem, had the
limelight thrust upon him by
"Sixty Minutes." As

Jerusalem's mayor, he was
striving to make it a united
city. He was only against the
fanatically prejudiced. Then
came the tragedy that
resulted on the eve of Simchat
Torah as result of the stone
throwing on worshippers at
the Kotel, the Western Wall.
Asked if he despaired the
developments, he said the
peace he was striving for now
has become one for two or
three generations. What does
he propose now? He replied
that Jerusalem would never
be abandoned; the newly ad-
ministered areas should be
given up.
The saddening proposals by
Mr. Eban and Mr. Kollek
must be treated with the ut-
most seriousness.
Israel's autonomy and the
status of Jerusalem as its
capital city will remain pro-
tected by Israel with the
special support of American
Jewry. Planning for this com-
mitment needs courage and
wisdom of tried and highly
respected leaders. Therefore,
the views of the Ebans and
Kolleks must surely be listen-
ed to.

❑

