UP FRONT
Packing Their Bags
JAMES D. BESSER
Washington Correspondent
F
or Jews around the
country, David Duke
has cast an ominous
shadow across the American
political landscape. But for
many of Louisiana's 25,000
Jews, Mr. Duke represents a
more immediate kind of
trauma.
Even if he loses the Nov.
16 election, Mr. Duke's sur-
prisingly strong support
from the white middle class
has left many Jews in the
state feeling estranged from
neighbors and colleagues,
fearful about their futures.
Suddenly, some are think-
ing about fleeing if the
reconstituted Nazi and Ku
Klux Klan leader succeeds
in his bid for the Louisiana
statehouse.
Dr. Kurt Gitter, a promi-
nent ophthalmologist in
New Orleans whose family
fled Adolf Hitler when he
was one year old, feels so
strongly that he has notified
patients that he will close
his practice and leave the
state if there is a Duke vic-
tory.
"I wrote a letter to my en-
tire patient list — about
10,000," he said in an inter-
view last week. "I've never
done anything like this
before. But this is something
I feel strongly about. In ad-
dition to being a Nazi and a
racist, Duke is a
psychopath." Dr. Gitter,
whose family was decimated
by the Holocaust that Mr.
Duke has denied, watched
with mounting frustration
and anger as Mr. Duke
fought a surprisingly close
race for the U.S. Senate with
"It's definitely
made me reassess
friendships. I feel
like more of a Jew
than I did before."
Walt Handelsman
incumbent Bennett
Johnston last year, and
when the former hate group
leader ran a strong second in
the recent open guber-
natorial primary, easily
defeating incumbent Gov.
Buddy Roemer, another
Republican.
"I've had about as much as
I can take of Mr. Duke," he
said.
Some of Dr. Gitter's pa-
tients responded to his letter
with words of support. But
others have spewed anti-
Semitic and anti-black
epithets at the doctor, a John
Hopkins graduate and
former member of the
Hopkins board of trustees.
"There's a real fear in both
the Jewish and the non- Jew-
ish communities among
those who understand what
this man is like," he said.
"It's very traumatic for us. I
think there really will be an
exodus if this man is elect-
ed."
Already, the Duke
phenomenon has left scars
on the Jewish community in
Louisiana. Many Jews have
been profoundly shocked at
the ease with which their
non-Jewish neighbors and
colleagues have accepted
Mr. Duke's candidacy.
"People are very depress-
ed," said Walt Handelsman,
a political cartoonist for the
New Orleans Times-
Picayune who has crystalliz-
ed anti-Duke sentiment in
hard-hitting cartoons.
"At parties, I've stopped
asking people who they're
voting for because I've found
out that people I've known
Photo By Andrew Lichtenstein.
Some Jews in Louisiana say they'll
move if David Duke is elected governor
of their state Saturday.
Framed by the flag: David Duke campaigning in Morgan City, La.
from various places are
voting for Duke," he said.
"I'm personally insulted.
Forget about what he says: If
you're my friend, you
shouldn't vote for him be-
cause it makes me feel you
don't care about Jews."
The rise of David Duke has
opened new gulfs between
Jews and their neighbors, he
said. The intense emotions
swirling around the current
campaign have also forced
many to view their Jewish
identities in a new and un-
comfortable light.
"When I get into an argu-
ment about Duke, I'm
always surprised that it
lasts more than ten
seconds," said Mr.
Handelsman. "He was a
Nazi; he was the head of the
Klan; that's it, as far as I'm
concerned. It's definitely
made me reassess some of
my friendships. And I feel
like more of a Jew than I did
before."
Mr. Handelsman's car-
toons have generated anti-
Semitic and anti-black
letters and calls, part of the
climate of fear that many
Jews expect will flourish in
Louisiana if Mr. Duke wins.
"I do get calls, almost on a
daily basis, about my Duke
cartoons," he said. "I don't
know if it's because I'm Jew-
ish. But many of the letters
are anti-Semitic. People
have called and said, 'we're
Can You Predict
This Article?
First, turn on some spooky
music. Then get dry ice
(billows of smoke being
necessary for atmosphere).
Now wait until midnight
and maybe, just maybe,
you'll be able to predict this
story before you read an-
other word.
What material owned by
Houdini recently sold at an
auction for more than
$7,700?
For those with no contacts
in the other world, here's the
answer: correspondence and
reference material about
spiritualism the magician
used as sources for his
writings. Houdini, born
Erich Weiss, spent countless
hours exposing fake
mediums and those claiming
to communicate with the
dead.
The material was auction-
ed by Swann Galleries in
New York.
Smoking Is Focus
Of RCA Paper
The RCA Roundtable, the
halachic think tank of the
Rabbinical Council of
America, recently issued the
first of a series of 10 annual
responses to contemporary
halachic questions.
The first paper addresses
the issue of smoking, finding
it forbidden "both due to the
damage to the health of the
smoker as well as to inno-
cent bystanders."
The Roundtable, chaired
by Rabbis J. Simcha Cohen
of Los Angeles and Reuven
Bulka of Ottawa, calls on
rabbis throughout the world
to ban smoking in syn-
agogue buildings and areas
under their jurisdiction.
Future issues on which the
Roundtable expects to issue
papers include policy toward
the intermarried and child
abuse.
Compiled by
Elizabeth Applebaum
ROUND UP
Museum Of Art
Hosts Yiddish Films
The National Center for
Jewish Film, located on the
campus of Brandeis Univer-
sity, is working with the
New York Museum of
Modern Art's Department of
Film to organize a new ex-
hibit called "Yiddish Film
Between Two Worlds." The
exhibit opens this week at
the Museum of Modern Art.
The exhibit, which will
run through Jan. 14., in-
cludes films like Tevye, Yid-
dle With His Fiddle, Green
Fields and The Dybbuk.
Many of these are available
on video through the Na-
tional Center for Jewish
Film.
Tevye, made in 1939, re-
cently was added to the
Library of Congress' Na-
tional Film Registry for
movies that are "culturally,
historically or aesthetically
significant." Adapted by
Maurice Schwartz from a
A scene from "Tevye."
story by Sholom Aleichem,
Tevye was filmed on Long
Island.
For information, contact
the National Center for Jew-
ish Film, at (617) 899-7044.
Soviets Plan
Rehabilitation
New York — In a meeting
with the World Jewish Con-
gress, the Soviet Union's
chief prosecutor, Nikolai
Trubin, said he is anxious to
begin rehabilitating some of
the country's most noted
former political prisoners.
Among those he specifically
cited were former refuseniks
Natan Sharansky, Ida Nudel
and Yosef Begun.
Ms. Nudel and Mr. Begun
were imprisoned for
teaching Hebrew.
Mr. Trubin told the WJC
that rehabilitation would
involve authorities issuing a
formal apology and possibly
compensation for their
unlawful imprisonment.
The Soviet prosecutor also
said his country is prepared
to open the ministry's files
on the case of Raoul
Wallenberg, the Swedish
diplomat who rescued
thousands of Hungarian
Jews from the Nazis and
later disappeared in the
Soviet Union.
"He believed that it would
not be a long time until we
got to the bottom of the
Wallenberg mystery," said
Irwin Cotler, WJC Canadian
chairman who attended the
meeting with Mr. Trubin.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
11