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are still people among us whose
memories are fresh about the
Holocaust, about the role of
Wagner's ideas and music as the
Nazis used them. When a Holocaust
survivor hears Wagner's Ride of the
Valkyrie,' he thinks about the gas
ovens."
But Mordechai Virshubsky, a lib-
eral-left politician who chairs the
cultural committee of Tel-Aviv city
council, dismisses the ban as "stupid"
and self-defeating. "If you don't play
someone because of what he was,
then you're behaving like a totalitari-
an regime. This is the worst kind of
censorship."
Virshubsky, who was born in
Germany in 1930 and was brought
here as a child refugee in 1939, con-
tends that there are other ways to
remember the Nazi atrocities. "Why
deny ourselves the chance to hear
this great, dramatic, important
music? We are the poorer for it. We
are punishing ourselves and gaining
nothing by it. No one would be
forced to go and listen to his music.
"After all, we drive German cars,
we teach the German language, we
even translated 'Mein Kampf' into
Hebrew. There are no taboos any
more. We are making a mockery of
ourselves."
Many prominent Israelis musi-
cians would like to play Wagner
here. One of the most eminent, the
pianist-conductor Daniel Barenboim,
once tried, but was booed off the
stage. Zubin Mehta, the Indian-born
musical director of the Israel
Philharmonic, has failed repeatedly
to get the ban dropped.
Israel Radio's music channel slips
in a snatch of Wagner from time to
time — and gets away with it. The
ban is anchored in custom and use,
not the law.
Asher Fisch, musical director of
the New Israel Opera, would like to
introduce a Wagner opera into its
program. He maintains that the deci-
sion should be left to the musicians.
"It's important," he says, "because
everything that was composed after
Wagner was influenced by Wagner to
some extent. His sound is of a kind
that our orchestras do not know. It is
important for them to learn it."
Yet, sotto voce, the Israeli-born
Fisch does not see Wagner topping
the charts here, if and when he is
performed. "When we play Wagner
in Israel," he predicts, "we will real-
ize that musically it will not be a
great success. I don't think the
Israeli audience will go for this
music."
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Under Fire, Roth Resigns From
U.S. Holocaust Museum Post
JAMES D. BESSER
Special to The Jewish News
T
he U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Washington has
suffered another embarrass-
ing public relations setback
that supporters say could leave the
institution more vulnerable to political
control.
John K. Roth, the Claremont
McKenna College philosopher whose
appointment as head of a new academ-
ic arm of the 'museum generated fero-
cious attacks from the right and unease
among some mainstream Jewish lead-
ers, resigned from the post on Monday
before taking up his duties.
The Museum's governing Council
will not immediately select a new direc-
tor for the Center for Advanced
Holocaust Studies, created this year to
enhance the Museum's stature as a
world center for serious Holocaust
scholarship. Museum sources say the
focus will shift to finding a replacement
for Walter Reich, the former Museum
director who was ousted early this year.
Roth's resignation represented a big
victory for critics who charged that in a
number of articles and essays he had
made casual comparisons between cur-
rent events and the Holocaust and that
he had maligned Israel.
But supporters say the successful
campaign against Roth will damage the
academic credibility of the Museum
and lead to a new susceptibility to
political pressure that will make it
harder to attract serious scholars to the
institution.
In a letter last week orchestrated by
supporters, 42 leading Holocaust schol-
ars said that "none of us could conceive
having academic involvement with the
Center should any other criteria than
scholarly excellence and administrative
competence be imposed on the
appointment of the director."
But this week, a key signer, Hebrew
(Oetroit's Original Discounter
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