`Ivan's' Legacy:
Embarrassing Farce

A few hours' drive south of where Israeli tanks
were rolling into Lebanon last week, the world
was reminded that one Mideast nation still
honors due process.
Israel's Supreme Court overturned the five-year-
old conviction of 73-year-old Cleveland auto work-
er, John Demjanjuk, who had been sentenced to
death after a jury concluded he was "Ivan the Ter-
rible," the sadistic SS guard who killed and tor-
tured prisoners at Treblinka. But the court did not
acquit Mr. Demjanjuk of complicity in the Nazi
horrors. It ruled that instead of being "Ivan," Mr.
Demianjuk was a guard at an SS training camp
in Poland, at the Sobibor death camp (where
250,000 died), and at two concentration camps,
Flossenberg and Regensburg.
Israel's attorney general is now determining
whether Mr. Demjanjuk should be tried for his
role at Sobibor. Whether or not such a trial occurs,
the effect of Mr. Demjanjuk's trial on the world —
and on Israel— should be considered. In 1986, he
was stripped of his U.S. citizenship and extradit-
ed to Israel. Two years later, he was tried and con-
victed. Throughout, he maintained his innocence.
And for a large measure, the implicit intent of the
trial — to educate the world about the Holocaust
— got lost amid legal manueverings about Mr.
Demjanjuk's true identity. As Israeli journalist
Tom Segev said, "The great drama developed into
an embarrassing farce."

Justice should never be farcical. But the sight
of Mr. Demjanjuk yawning while hearing his con-
viction read or the sound of his good-natured
"Shalom" delivered to a Holocaust survivor who
was about to testify against him prevented the
Ukrainian native's long trial from being a forum
for morals and history and individual responsi-
bility amid frenzied nationalism and hate.
Mr. Demjanjuk may be barred from returning
to the United States because he lied about his past
when entering the U.S. in 1952. But of even greater
moral concern is whether his terribly frustrating
trial bars Israelis and others from pursuing jus-
tice against the criminals of the Holocaust.
One hopes not. Anyone who committed "crimes
against humanity" under the Nazis and is still
at large should live out their days under the crip-
pling fear that they will be momentarily exposed
for what they were.
One should also not worry that the Demjan-
juk trial will lessen the concern of Jews and oth-
ers with the Holocaust or with pursuing those who
engineered it. Forty-eight years after the end of
World War II, the Nazis' evil still shames and dis-
gusts decent people; each day, the new Holocaust
museum in Washington is crowded to capacity.
The Demjanjuk trial has only been an idiosyn-
cratic, peculiar detour in what must be humani-
ty's eternal quest for grappling with the
contemptible acts of the Third Reich.

A Small Victory
In South Lebanon

For now, Katyusha rockets have ceased falling on
Kiryat Shmona and other northern Israeli settle-
ments and regular Lebanese army soldiers are
committed to policing the area of southern Lebanon
that abuts the Israeli-occupied security zone.
Moreover, Syria reportedly halted arms ship-
ments to Hezbollah guerrillas during the height
of last week's mini-war to help forge the cease-fire
that let Secretary of State Warren Christopher re-
turn to the Middle East to continue the search for
peace.
All things considered, that constitutes progress
in the Arab-Israeli conflict. How sad that it took
the deaths of more than 130 and the displacement
of some 300,000 Lebanese civilians before Beirut
and Damascus finally acted to curb Hezbollah's
Iran-directed terrorists, who purposefully operate
among the general population to gain cover and
force Israel to cause unwanted civilian deaths.
Still, Israel was right to launch its counter-of-
fensive. Its government could not sit idly by while
rockets continued to fall on its own civilian popu-
lation.
Hezbollah's intent is to cause havoc and wreck
the Middle East peace negotiations. There is no
reasoning with them. In such circumstances, how-
ever, over-reaction risks radicalizing positions and
playing into terrorists' hands. Fortunately, Israel's

forceful display stopped short of that. The rela-
tively perfunctory reaction from Arab quarters to
Israel's offensive attests to this.
That being the case, Israel's offensive in Lebanon
appears to have succeeded, at least in the short
run. Hezbollah will, of course, by again to disrupt
the talks, and Israel may need to again inflict an-
other punishing blow.
Ultimately, though, Israel's best chance of neu-
tralizing Hezbollah — as well as the equally re-
jectionist Hamas organization operating in the
West Bank and Gaza — is at the negotiating table.
To many observers, the peace talks, for all their
apparent foot dragging, have passed the point of
return. Syria, which has the power to make or
break the negotiations, appears resigned to mak-
ing peace with Israel; ditto for the Palestine Lib-
eration Organization. Israel's Labor government,
meanwhile, has shown more than ample evidence
of its desire to trade land for real peace.
That's why it is important to note that no Arab
parties to the peace talks used the Israeli assault
as an excuse to abandon the negotiations; that for
the first time Syria and Lebanon have taken some
responsibility for limiting Hezbollah, and that the
Arab world has seen — once again — that a strong
Israel will do what is necessary to protect its citi-
zens.

Intermarriage Crisis
Still Looms Large

MARC TANENBAUM SPEC AL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

M

ore than a decade
ago, a young woman
came to my office
asking if I would preside over
her conversion to Judaism.
The woman, a magazine
writer, was a former Catholic
nun who, under the impact of
Vatican Council II, had
become intrigued by Judaism
and had begun a serious
study of the Jewish religion
and Jewish culture.
After determining over
several meetings that her in-
terest in becoming Jewish
was genuine, I arranged for •
an Orthodox and a Conser-
vative rabbi to prepare her in-
tellectually and spiritually
for conversion, climaxed by
immersion in a mikvah
(ritual bath).
(She had asked for an Or-
thodox rabbi, saying that
should she ever make aliyah
to Israel, she did not want to
have problems being accepted
as a Jew.)
She subsequently married a
young Jewish man who was a
"cultural" or secular Jew. She
set up a kosher home, "took"
her husband to shul services
on Shabbat and Yom Tov and,
later, had her two children
educated in an Orthodox day
school.
As told to me, the husband
in time felt pressured by all
this unexpected Jewishness
coming from his former-nun
wife. He complained to his
mother, also a "cultural" Jew.
Her response was, "That's
what happens when you
marry a shiksa."
That is an intermarriage
experience with "a happy
Jewish ending."
Unfortunately, national
Jewish studies on the rising

The late Rabbi Marc Tanen-
baum was for 30 years the di-
rector of the international
relations department of the
American Jewish Committee.

rate of intermarriage provide
little basis for any nachas. Ac--%
cording to a major study by
the Council of Jewish Federa---/,
tions, 52 percent of the Jewish j
men and women who have 'T\
married since 1985, married
non-Jewish spouses.
Some 5 percent of these )
marriages involve one part- 1
ner who is a convert to '
Judaism. The survey found
that Jews by choice (converts)'
number 185,000, while con- )
verts from Judaism number C
210,000.

Our very future
as a significant
American Jewish
community is at
stake.

More significantly, nearly
three of every four children of
intermarriages are being
raised either as Christians or
with no religion at all.
That grim picture is/
deepened by the low Jewish)
birthrate (lower than
Catholics and Protestants),)
the rising tide of divorce anL
broken families and the very
limited immigration rate,
mainly of Soviet Jews.
There is some consolation
to be found in the rising,
numbers of children receiving)
a Jewish education, a hie\
percentage of bar mitzvahs`
and increasing Jewish educa-1
tion among many adults. The
dramatic rise in Orthodox.
Jewish commitment is an im-
portant balancing wheel.
Nevertheless, if present
trends continue — and there
is little sign of their abating
— the American Jewish com-
munity is facing an un-
precedented challenge to its
continuity and survival.

❑

