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Insight
Remember
When
Few Clues
From the pages of the Jewish News this
week 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 years
ago.
04.10:05*0
Israeli statesman . a ESan speaks at
Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington
Hills.
A Nazi eagle and more leading clues are found
in Indiana Holocaust museum fire.
JOE BERKOFSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Terre Haute
lir hen the pickup truck with
the two shady-looking
characters pulled away
from the curb, Michael
Kor saw something straight out of
Buchenwald.
A survivor of the Nazi Germany con-
centration camps, Kor, 75, works as a
guide at the Holocaust museum in Terre
Haute, Ind. As the two visitors left on
Nov. 13, he noticed an unusual decal on
their truck.
"At the back of the glass on the cab
was a Nazi eagle," he said.
Just after midnight on Nov. 18, the
tiny CANDLES Holocaust Museum —
the name stands for Children of
Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab
Experiments Survivors — burned to the
ground in what officials say probably
was an arson attack.
The Midwest office of the Anti-
Defamation League offered a $2,500
reward for information while an investi-
gation got under way by the
Indianapolis office of the FBI; the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms; and local police and fire offi-
cials.
Law enforcement officials would not
comment on Kor's encounter earlier in
the day.
While investigators have unearthed
some leads, they still lack sufficient evi-
dence to make arrests, Vigo County
Prosecutor Bob Wright said.
At the site of the razed museum,
investigators found what is believed to
be a fire accelerant and the phrase
"Remember Timothy McVeigh"
scrawled on a brick wall.
The Oklahoma City bomber, part of
a group that adhered to a vision in a
racist, anti-Semitic tract called "The
Turner Diaries," was put to death in
Terre Haute's federal prison on June 11,
2001.
"Around here, people are more famil-
iar with that name than you would be
in New York," Wright said.
FBI officials said they
are considering the
attack "domestic terror-
ism" because of the con-
nection to McVeigh.
1983
The Precious Legacy: Judaic Treasures
from the Czechoslovak State Collection,
celebrating 1,000 years of Jewish histo-
ry, religion, culture and art in Bohemia
and Moravia, is on view at the
Smithsonian Museum of Natural
History.
Community Unites
The attack stunned the
community, where
about 200 Jews live and
where there is one syna-
o-ocrue the Reform
United Hebrew
Congregation, Wright
said.
"This is Middle
America. I would never
The CANDLES Holocaust Museum in Terre Haute was
have suspected this
museum would have
gutted by a suspicious blaze on Nov. 18.
been targeted by any
type of group," Wright
insurance likely would not cover, he
said. "I don't know of any incident that
said.
has occurred in this county that would
Mozes Kor, a real-estate agent, found-
have caused one to believe this kind of
ed the 4,500-square-foot museum in a
thing could happen."
former print shop in 1995. The muse-
Kor said he grew suspicious when two
um's education director, Mary Wright,
men came into the museum 20 minutes said 2,300 students visited the museum
before closing and looked around but
in the first six months of 2002. About
seemed uninterested in hearing about
10,000 people visit in a typical year.
the Holocaust.
Eva Kor said she mainly tries to
When he asked one of the pair if he'd
explain the Holocaust from a child's
heard of Auschwitz or the death camps,
point of view. "When I was in
"he said, 'Not really' with a kind of
Auschwitz, the whole world was the
grin," Kor said.
camp. To me, it was all about how to
The community has rallied around
organize another piece of bread, or how
Kor's wife, museum founder Eva Mozes
to survive another experiment."
Kor, 69, who was among thousands of
Among the few museum objects that
Jewish children subjected to medical
survived the fire were a partly melted sil-
experiments by Dr. Josef Mengele in
ver cup that Mozes Kor brought from
Auschwitz.
Auschwitz and a damaged Nazi helmet.
In the first two days after the attack,
Anti-Semitic attacks in the Midwest
Mozes Kor said, Eva received more than
have become rare, said Richard
80 phone calls of support. The local
Hirschhaut, the Anti-Defamation
council of churches, the synagogue and
League's Midwest director, based in
a local radio station held candlelight vig-
Chicago.
ils at the site, located near a busy high-
The fire "ranks as among the most
way.
serious episodes" in the area since 1999,
"If these people tried to stop what we
Hirschhaut said, when white suprema-
were doing, they have succeeded in
cist Benjamin Smith went on a shooting
doing the exact opposite," Eva Kor said.
spree in Illinois and Indiana, killing two
Several people have donated money to and injuring nine, including two reli-
rebuild the museum. Mozes Kor esti-
gious Jews. O
mated the damage at $350,000, which
The Sephardic Institute for Advanced
Learning in Flatbush, N.Y., is
destroyed by arson. Since the start of
the Yom Kippur War, four other syna-
gogues and yeshivot in the area have
been vandalized.
Former Detroiter Professor Marshall
D. Shulman, head of the Russian
Institute at Columbia University, is
named Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of
International Relations at Columbia.
Israel's President Zalman Shazar an
Foreign Minister Golda Meir attend
the funeral for President John E
Kennedy.
The cornerstone for the new Hebrew
Memorial Chapel on Greenfield in
Oak Park is laid.
At the first formal meeting of the
Detroit Chapter, American Physicians
Fellowship Committee, Inc. of the
Israel Medical Association, Dr. Bernard
Weston is named president and Dr.
Noah E. Aronstam honorary presi-
dent.
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Rabbi Philip S. Bernstein, director of
the Committee on Army and Navy
Religious Activities of the National
Jewish Welfare Board, will speak before
the Detroit JWB Army and Navy
Committee.
Mrs. Adele Mondry of Detroit is hon-
ored by YIVO, the Yiddish Scientific
Institute, for her essay "Why I Left the
Old Country and What I Have
Achieved in America." 0
,
— Compiled by Holly Teasdle, archivist,
the Rabbi Leo M Franklin Archives of
Temple Beth El
11/28
2003
31