The Walls Come Down Strauss - Ostrich "•• Genius P
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AJR Information Volume XLV No. 2 February 1990 £3 (to non-members) ^on't miss . Implications of recent momentous events "^he banality of good and evil p. 3 The Walls come down Strauss - ostrich "•• genius p. S e observe events in Europe with one dry knew where we stood. Now the maelstrom of and one moist and tearful eye. As the ongoing developments brings forces to the surface Con cern and care Berlin Wall collapses, we half - but only which, through sheer unpredictability, pose all sorts p. 8 W half - empathise with the joyous crowds, of dangers. Crowds in Leipzig and Dresden chant remembering as we do another Wall (the one that deinands for 'One Germany' - a slogan with shut off the Warsaw Ghetto). We see Germans intimidatiiig xenophobic and antisemitic disarming and humiliating the Stasi and cannot undertones. What makes the fluid situation even recall them doing anything remotely similar, even more fraught is that (for different reasons) neither after VE Day, to the Gestapo. Expressions on East nor West Germans underwent genuine, i.e. ordinary citizens' faces bespeak outrage at the spiritual, de-Nazification after the war. It seems lifestyle of deposed Bonzen; in 1945/6 revelations apposite - but also risky - that two of the key East about the 'deathstyle' of the deposed FUhrer met German personalities attempting to stern the with blank indifference. reunification tide are Jews: the new Party leader So much for our tears - what about their Gregor Gysi and the renowned author Stefan Heym. opposite? Joy is the appropriate response to the fall Fevered nationalisin is likewise on the march of any tyranny; how much more so in the case of elsewhere in Eastern Europe - from Yugoslavia to Erich Honecker, refuser of restitution and armourer the Soviet Union. In Ceausescu's fiefdom, however, of the enemies of Israel. Yet, when Soviet satraps where the bloodstained conducatore sought to held sway from East Berlin to Sofia, at least we buttress his rule by playing off Romanians against minority Hungarians, both made common cause against him. Romania has, of course, been bucking the trend for forty years - by, for instance, permitting Jewish emigration to Israel. (Its Jewish leadership, too, seems sui generis, with Chief Rabbi Rosen dismissing democracy on the grounds that 'Weimar led to Hitler'.) The Russian situation is also fluid to a dangerous degree. The recent murderous violence between Armenians and Azeris indicates how lethally dangerous ethnic tensions can be. The largest ethnic group in the Soviet Union are the so-called Great Russians, and the second largest, the Ukrainians. Among both populations xenophobic as well as reform-minded pressure groups are currently active. One can only hope and pray — though Western governments can take appropriate measures — that the difficulties of perestroika do not allow present- day bigots in either Union Republic to enter into the inheritance of the pogromniks and Petljuras of The 9th November 19S9, day of yesteryear. Sakharov, thou shouldst be living at this the Wall's 'collapse', obscuring the memory of Crystal Night hour - Russia, Jewry, and mankind have need of fifty-one years earlier. thee! AJR INFORMATION FEBRUARY 1990 f David Maier And then the book turns to a presentation of the author's personal The single-minded pursuit opinion on a variety of issues. In chapters with such titles as 'Jews and Poles', 'Jews Simon Wiesenthal. JUSTICE, NOT VENGEANCE. Translated from the and Ukrainians', he examines the peculiar relationship between the ethnic groups German by Ewald Osers. 1989. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. London. concerned, and the phenomenon of the 372 pp. incl. index and illustrations. Hardback £16.95 endemic anti-Semitism of Central and Eastern Europe. He looks at 'Jews and t feels vaguely uncomfortable to hiding of a genuinely wanted Nazi, and to Palestinians' and at the prospect for peace propose in these columns anything but the exposure of a clandestine escape in the Middle East. And he discusses 'Jews I wholehearted praise for all that Simon organisation; for Forsyth authenticity and Jews' in order to denounce acts of Wiesenthal has said and done in the 45 enhanced the success of the book and its internal betrayal which are unhappily on years since he, a frail survivor of the film version. record. ghettos and the camps, addressed a letter Justice, not Vengeance also deals with a The last four chapters are arguably the in Polish to U.S. Col. Richard Seibel, in number of other encounters, Wiesenthal's most memorable. In 'The Test Case' we which he named 91 Nazi war criminals meetings with other well-known are told how the discovery, in the ranks of whom he wanted to be found and tried in personalities: writers, like Leon Uris; the Austrian police, of the S.S. officer who the name of justice. politicians, like Franz-Josef Strauss; heads had arrested Anne Frank convinced a However, it is difficult not to have some of government, like Ronald Reagan and doubting schoolboy of the reality of the reservations about his latest book. For Helmut Kohl; distinguished fighters for Holocaust. The two penultimate chapters one thing, it is not, in spite of the claim human rights like Andrei Sakharov. There deal with neo-Nazism - in general, and on the dust cover, an autobiography. is a forceful account of his long-term feud with reference to the several attempts on Would that it were. There is, admittedly, with Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, Wiesenthal's life. The final chapter is a brief resume of his life in an whose repeated attacks upon him went addressed 'To My Young Readers', and it introductory chapter. But this is by beyond all decency and reason. He also is sensitive and moving and timely in its another's pen, and the reader is still talks of meetings with more humble folk warning that the combination of hatred without an insight into the real Simon who, as often as not, came forward to and technology represents a serious threat Wiesenthal, the person as distinct from help him with remembered facts and to mankind. the symbol, Cyla's husband, Paulinka's information vital to his task. One of the failings of this book is that father, the grandfather of her children, the it ranges far too widely. Some topics engineering graduate, the Jew, the man. could, with advantage, have been omitted. Perhaps one reason for this is that, as this It would, on the other hand, have first chapter 'in Heu of a pen portrait' increased its impact if the author had points out, 'he does not process "cases" elected to provide argument and answer or "files", but he experiences those life to the difficult questions which it stories as he works on them'. Because, in inevitably raises, including, surely, that other words, he has made the suffering of suggested by the title itself. Does Simon others his own? Wiesenthal indeed spend his days in the 'No doubt I myself pursue my activities contemplation of justice, with not a hint because of a particular psychological BELSIZE SQUARE SYNAGOGUE of vengeance? And if the latter, would structure', he observes, and the book that be so terrible, since, after all, full 51 BELSIZE SQUARE, NW3 reflects this particularity. Thus the greater justice has not yet been done, and never part of the book is given over to a review will be? We offer a traditional style of of his single-minded pursuit as he reopens Any book by Simon Wiensenthal must religious service with Cantor, his files and looks again, at times with be taken seriously, especially this one if, Choir and Organ harrowing detail, at Nazi bestiality and as he surmises in his Preface, it turns out his own efforts to track down the to be his last. To express regret at some of perpetrators in order to bring them to Further details can be obtained its shortcoinings does not imply criticism trial, or at least to prevent 'Austrian and from our synagogue secretary of its author, and even less so of his work. German authorities from allowing the prosecution of Nazi criminals to be Telephone 794-3949 shelved'. Minister: Rabbi Rodney J. Mariner These recollections make compulsive New Year Honours reading. Some are particularly fascinating. Cantor: Rev Lawrence H. Fine Among these must be rnentioned Regular services: Friday evenings at 6,30 pm, Professor Eric Ash, rector of Imperial Wiesenthal's collaboration with the Saturday mornings at 10 am College, London, a former child refugee thriller writer Frederick Forsyth in Religion school: Sundays at 10 am to 1 pm from Germany, received a Knighthood. connection with the novel The Odessa Berlin-born Paul Oppenheimer, a Belsen File to their mutual satisfaction: for Space donated by Pafra Limited survivor, who is standards manager of Wiesenthal the portrayal of the main Lucas Automotive Limited, received the character led to the flushing out of his MBE. AJR INFORMATION FEBRUARY 1990 ^Qv/d f^aJQ^ /•lita U quest for justice. In this respect she held that it had failed because due process of law had not been observed, not least because the judges had not allowed any The banality of good and evil witnesses for the defence to be called and heard. Moreover, there was no legally he trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann himself was no more than an recognised definition of 'crime against the Eichmann was not after all, 'the last ordinary career civil servant conditioned Jewish people' and, most significantly, no Toi the numerous successor trials to giving unquestioning obedience to convincing proof of relevant criminal ;^hich followed the Nuremberg Trials'. superior orders - 'what was done was not intent on the part of the accused who wenty years after its sentence was my doing', he maintained - earned (unlike the major figures convicted at '-arried out, another Israeli court delivered widespread disapproval, not least among Nuremberg) was only one of many ^similar verdict on a defendant accused American Jews.