Lest We Forget 1406 UATE:6/24/87

LEST WE FORGET

REHABILITATING KURT WALDHEIM

unbelievably, the politicians 1n the Vatican are undertaking a reception of Kurt Waldheim, unwelcome in most civilized countries. He 1s being accorded the highest level diplomatic reception, with all the pomp and circumstance they can muster. The patent effort 1s to rehabilitate him, and Implicitly to rebuke "the Jews" for pursuing h1m so unmercifully.

In emphasizing the virtue of Austria as a "Catholic nation" and Kurt waldheim as a "Catholic," the Vatican would have done well to ponder the life and death of Fr1edr1ch Jaegerstaetter. Jaegerstaetter was a simple

Christian, a Roman Catholic farmer in the Tyrol, who was beheaded because ne refused to fight in Hitler's Austrian army. Or, If that moved no one 1n the bureaucracy, they might have pondered the role of Waldheim's fellow-

Austrlans Adolf Hitler and Adolf Elchmann.

Neither the modern saint nor the contemporary devils disturbed the planning, however. Sheer politics was to rule where Christian principle had vacated. Those of us who are repelled by the political obscenity, as

1n Its own way as shaming to Christianity as the antics of Jimmy and Tammy ttakker, are left to recall how in the distant past there were popes and bishops who rebuked emperors and excommunicated kings. Not today: the princes of the church jump Into bed with the princes and powers of this world's darkness, against whom the scriptures warned.

If Pope John Paul II stood in the line of the great leaders of the church, he would do one pastoral thing before anything else: hje would advise Kurt Waldheim to resign. But this pope and his bureaucracy evidently have missed what 1s going on 1n Christian theology and In the vital centers of spiritual renewal in Christendom. They may have heard the easy words of Lest We Forget 2406 DATE:6/24/87

the worldly politicians Kohl and Reagan at Bltburg, but they missed the magnificent message of Richard von Welzsaecker who three days later put his people back on the track of repentence and recovery of Integrity. The old

triumphal 1st stance of rulers 1n Christendom, with their bad religion and

calculating politics 1s again affirmed for all the world to see. All the

more commendable is the courage and faithfulness of a Sister Rose Therlng

and her colleague from Seton Hall University. Providentially, they were

leading a group 1n Jerusalem last week when the Incredible news broke. And

they on the spot released a statement condemning the reception of Waldheim

Dy the Vatican.

Rose Therlng is a nun, a professor 1n the School of Education at Seton

Hall, and an Important person In the rethinking of Christian preaching and

teaching 1n the post-Auschwitz churches. Her doctoral study was devoted to

an analysis of antisemitism in Catholic textbooks, and under John XXIII and

his spiritual influence it led to significant change 1n Catholic materials

in use in the United States. More recently she has been an officer 1n the

National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel, and a participant In

many seminars and conferences on Christ Ian/Jewish relations.

Rose Therlng and Father Bossman represent post-Holocaust Christianity.

The Vatican bureaucracy represents in this Waldheim affair, as jn a number

of other situations, a pre-Holocaust style of politics. It was politics of

that spirit that gave Adolf Hitler his first entry into social

acceptability, when Pa eel 11 overrode the German Catholic bishops and signed

the Concordat with Hitler behind their backs. As long as he was winning,

Hitler could count upon Pace Ill's encouragement and support in his posture

as the champion of Christian Europe against atheistic Bolshevism.

Much of the truth of the Roman Catholic Churches role in the coming to

p wer of the Nazis has been ignored in recent years. The hope of everyone Lest We Forget 3406 DATE:6/24/87

of conscience, Jews and other Christians, has been that the example and spirit of John XXIII would be carried on. And with the blossoming ecumenical dialogue no Christian from another church wanted to make a great deal of the bad record of PacelH and his Curia. But now that the old spirit and the old style 1s coming back strongly, 1t may be time to raise again some serious questions about the record.

the questions that will not down, however successful the ecclesiastical politicians may be for the moment, are these: Why did the

Roman Catholic leadership, and most of the German Protestant too, sympathize with Hitler? What was the role of the Vatican 1n destroying the welmar Republic? What was the precise role of the Vatican in helping hundreds of Nazi war criminals escape as the war ended? Why 1s 1t so alfficult for the Roman Catholic church leadership to face the meaning of

Jewish death and survival as openly and courageously as, far example, the

Protestant churchmen in the Netherlands or the Protestant church leaders 1n

West Germany? When will the church move beyond the formal elimination of explicitly antisemitic teaching to the constructive building of respect and cooperation with Jewish community leaders?

In America we are already, Catholics and Protestants and Jews - and especially at the local level - practicing a cooperation that the bureau­ crats now trying to salvage Kurt Waldheim have never seen and do not under­

stand. And it 1s precisely that understanding and cooperation that makes us

Americans know that the Waldheim affair 1s not a "Jewish issue," as the

Vatican Is trying to make 1t. It Is even more acutely a Christian affair,

Tor 1n Its resolution lies an answer to the question whether the Christian

leaders, have learned the lessons of the Holocaust and of their own martyrs.

during the Third Reich. Lest We Forget 4406 DATE:6/24/87

Moved by these questions, a group of Protestant churchmen released a statement some days before the Pope received Waldheim with such a demonstration of support. We could have had dozens of signatures, had there been no urgency. As 1t was, seven churchmen - all clergy, and from seven denominations - joined with me. They were George Williams of Harvard

(United Church), William Harter of the United Presbyterians, Hubert Locke of the University of Washington (Christian Churches), James Wood of Baylor university (Southern Baptist), David Lewis of the Assemblies of God, Roy

Eckardt of Lehigh University (also United Methodist) and Burton Nelson of

North Park Seminary (Evangelical Covenant). That was a group sufficiently representative to release to the media the following message: THE PAPAL

INVITATION TO KURT WALDHEIM IS PRIMARILY A ROMAN CATHOLIC PROBLEM. HOWEVER

AS PROTESTANTS WE WANT TO MAKE OUR DISTRESS KNOWN. THE INVITATION DISGRACES

IHE MEMORY OF CHRISTIAN MARTYRS WHO OPPOSED NAZI IDOLATRY. THE INVITATION

DISHONORS THE MEMORY OF THE VICTIMS OF THE NAZI HOLOCAUST. THE WOUNDS OF

THE LORD'S PEOPLE CANNOT BE HEALED SO LI6HTLY (JEREMIAH 6:14).

Amen! And let those hear who have ears to hear, and let them see who have eyes to see the Truth.

Franklin H Littell, Anne Frank Institute of Philadelphia "*" ^J*-trt-.

Lest We Forget #425 DATE:12/9/87 SUMMITRY AND SYMMETRY One of the interesting developments in connection with the Summit is the rumor that the Soviets plan to abandon the "Anti- Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public." According to the report, the Committee has failed in its campaign to create the opinion that Zionism equals racism. An anonymous official in Washington has attributed the source of the story to Samuil Zivs, Deputy Chairman of the Committee, who is a member of Mikhail Gorbachev's entourage at the Summit. This report interests me for several reasons. On the face of it we may gather that world opinion has failed to go along with the obscene UN resolution equating Zionism with racism, and has been immune to the propaganda made of the resolution by Israel's enemies. The resolution was rammed through the UN Assembly in the first place by an alliance of Arab League and Communist blocs, abetted by the cowardly appeasement of a number of free world representatives. The "Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public" was set up to influence public opinion in the free world, not in the Soviet Union or its satellites. There is no "public opinion" under the Arab and Communist regimes: the open discussion which produces full, free, and informed opinion is not allowed. No, the "Anti- Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public" was a fraud from the start. First, it was set up as a front to push the dictatorship's policy outside Soviet Russia. Second, the "Soviet

© public" does not exist as an opinion-initiating or opinion- articulating entity. Newspapers in the free world from time to time report debates and ferment in Russia and the satellites in a way that may confuse readers. When there are debates, they come within the limits of the Party, the bureaucracy, or the military establishment. Of "civic initiative" there is not - and cannot be - any evidence. No one - no one - can truthfully say that he knows the direction or intensity of popular ideas under a despotism or a dictatorship. At the time of the German Nazi dictatorship, outside observers would frequently make the casual assessment that the German people were overwhelmingly and enthusiastically behind the Hitler programs. In fact, however, even before the assault on the German Jews over one million Germans - liberals, socialists, trade unionists, "pacifists" and "cosmopolitans," Masons, in short what Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon called "consymps" - had been thrown into concentration camps. Tens of thousands of others were murdered - even before the Nuremberg Laws disfranchised German Jews, even before Kristallnacht- even before the launching of the Holocaust. I shall never forget the animal roar of a Nazi Party rally! But was that "public opinion?" The person who thinks that both a lynch mob and a conscientious jury are democratic expression of self-government has misunderstood the heart and soul of both liberty and self-government. The so-called Anti-Zionist Committee never represented any

CD "public opinion" in the Soviet Union, although it undoubtedly helped to confuse public opinion in the free world. "Summit fever" can lead us to a basic miscalculation of the differences between the Soviet system and the American society. There is no real symmetry. Of course the Russian people, like the American people, want peace. Of course their basic human wishes - food, shelter, work, recreation, love, hope - are the same as ours. And like sensible Americans they rejoice in arms reductions that are mutually beneficial and thoroughly verifiable. But let us never forget the basic differences in our political situation. The Soviet rulers, once they have juggled the three power centers into place, can forget about "public opinion." The American executive has enough trouble just keeping various official bureaus and agencies in line with official policy, and he certainly can't run the risk of ignoring civil initiative groups that are working on the public mind. Chairman Gorbachev must above all guard his back against disaffection in his Party. It was the Party that saved his neck when his friend Yeltsin pushed reform too hard and infuriated the bureaucratic new elite. President Reagan cannot function with the force of his party alone: indeed, he has to fight against the fulminations of the radical right that has captured major segments of the Republican Party. The Russian leader has no worries about hostile public opinion: the media are all controlled by his regime. The American executive must remember fairly often that two of his powerful predecessors, Nixon and Johnson, were brought low by voices of the people magnified by the media. Reagan must undertake the onerous task of selling the treaty to the American people. And he must act strongly and soon. But onerous as it is, it is precisely this factor of open debate, of full discussion of matters of public policy, of the effort to achieve consensus rather than polarization, that differentiates liberty from totalitarianism. In the open society, the civic initiative groups have a moral obligation to identify themselves honestly, to mount a vigorous and loyal effort, and to see to it that they are not being used by enemies of the common good. Which brings me to my final comment on the rumored demise of the so-called Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public. I once talked with its Deputy Chairman - in Moscow. He assured me there and then that there was no antisemitism in the Soviet Union. He knew - by implication, far better than I- because he was a Jew himself. Then he went on to tell me of the good time he had enjoyed a few months before, while travelling around the USA under the sponsorship of the American Friends Service Committee. Why is it that some Americans find it so easy to champion the murderous PLO, lie about Zionism, and sponsor de-racinated Jews like Samuil Zivs? Of course such a "Jew" suffers no persecution in Soviet Russia. All he has to do is abandon the Jewish community and forget his heritage. But what kind of a Jew is that?! - Franklin H Littell, The Anne Frank Institute

<2> Lest We Forget #427 DATE:12/31/87 THE SELF-DEFENSE OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES, Part II

The responsibilities of an administration of Military Government are different from those in normal society. The need to maintain a Military Government over some conquered area is- hopefully - temporary. The need arises through the successful conduct of a war, and it should end when armistice is transformed into a treaty of peace. The rights of those who live in the conquered territory under Military Government are fundamentally different from those of citizens in a free society. They extend no further than basic rights to which every human person is entitled by virtue of his/her humanity. They do not include the liberties of free citizens: freedom of speech, religion, press and assembly; protection against self-incrimination; due process of law according to civil circumstances (jury trial, etc). Most of the newspapers that have reported problems in the areas occupied by Israel fail, whether in malice or through slovenliness, to point out the difference between normal society and the exigencies of Military Government. The countries surrounding Israel and . supporting the terrorists and de- stabilizers have had declarations of war out against Israel for decades now. Until they are prepared to show good faith in making peace, Israel is under no obligation either to them or to bystanders to explain why the disagreeable business of Military Government requires measures of control that would be inexcusable in normal civil society.

0 Those who serve external enemies have to be dealt with accordingly. Maintaining security against internal enemies is also a much more serious problem than many people like to think. Those who have declared internal war, both in theory and practice, against a republic or constitutional monarchy are of the same order as infiltrators and imported terrorists from outside. In fact, they often have been allied with outside enemy forces and have received money, ammunition and technical training from them. An effective Early Warning System will indicate when movements have gone beyond reasonable dissent and opinion-making and are engaged in disloyalty and subversion. One of the most successful efforts to date has been set up under the Bonn Republic, where both neo-Nazi and Communist politics have been rendered ineffectual. The problem was made acute across the decades by the infiltration of thousands of Communist agents from the East. Some of these agents have been outstandingly successful in espionage, .but they have not been able successfully to de-stabilize the society nor substantially to undermine the public's confidence in the republic. The method used has been exposure of extremist and terrorist movements by an Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesverfassungsschutz.. This office, without any police powers, has kept track on movements operating outside the rules of legitimate public debate. It functions under a Committee of Parliament which is comprised of representatives of all parties. This composition guarantees that none will be tempted to use the

0 Committee for partisan advantage, thereby giving the Office greater credibility in the public at large. Such an office would in the United States give maximum public exposure to the activities of such as the KKK, the American Nazi Party, the Socialist Workers' Party, the Democratic Labor Committee, the Aryan Nations group, the John Birch Society, etc - as well as the many "fronts" which they set up to snare "innocents" and "angels." This would be at least a beginning in facing a challenge to the security of the republic and to the rights and liberties of loyal citizens, to which inadequate attention has as yet been directed. In fact, since Joe McCarthy gave the Communists the best "cover" they ever had in America by his wild and irresponsible demagoguery it has been virtually impossible to discuss the problem. Whenever the issue is raised, as in the case of the Nazis at Skokie or the KKK in North Carolina or a leading Trotskyite in Boston, all we get is the shaking of heads and the rattling of 19th century slogans - reminding one of nothing so much as the rattling of dried seeds in a gourd. The point must be made again and again, until even academics get it: positions which were staked out when political parties were first becoming active are not sufficient by themselves in the Age of Terrorism and Genocide. Jefferson's ideas of popular revolution, according to which the peoples can overthrow governments that no longer serve their interests, simply do not work in the age of totalitarian ideologies and movements.

Q Wilson's ideas in the Fourteen Points also were born out of the 19th century political scene - with the examples of the American Revolution and the French Revolution fresh in men's minds. The "self-determination of peoples" was a fine concept when popular revolution was still possible, but it becomes an arrant fraud when it is used to give a cosmetic face to the ruthless dictatorship of Hitler or Stalin or Assad or Arafat. Once a modern dictatorship is established there is no possibility of popular revolution. Such a regime can only be overthrown with outside help - that is, by war. The necessity therefore is to spot potentially genocidal movements early and to destroy them while it can still be done with a minimum of wrenching and tearing. Shortly before the Weimar Republic collapsed in a welter of parliamentary tricks, Goebbels wrote in his Journal: "Once we have the power we will never give it up. They will have to carry our dead bodies out of the ministries." The question is whether now, after the events of the Third Reich, we have learned our lessons about the self-defense of democratic societies. If we have, we will not let the Langers and Shahaks and other communists and fellow-travelers shake our confidence in the democratic government of Israel. And neither will we let mindless sloganizers turn our thoughts away from measures to protect the rights of loyal citizens and the stability of the American republic.

Franklin H Littell, The Anne Frank Institute of Philadelphia

e Lest We Forget #428 DATE:1/1/88

THE SENSE OF WHERE AND WHEN

The great Bill Bradley - Phi Beta Kappa, Rhodes Scholar, basketball champion and U S Senator - once wrote an exciting book about his experiences as a sport star. The basic theme was the importance of having a sense of position, of where you are. Jesus of Nazareth, in one of his stories, emphasized the importance of timing, of knowing what time it is. He was being critical of those who didn't know where they were in holy history, although the birds of the air and the animals of the field knew well their seasons. There were two things about the great Rally for Soviet Jewry that brought these topics to mind. In the first place, it was a great event - done superbly well, with the message well- and appropriately conveyed to the head of the Soviet state. The number in attendance made it one of the most impressive demonstrations of recent decades, while the theme itself could hardly have been more timely. I found it dismaying to read, then, in a newsletter of the United Methodist Church, that at the same time as the Rally for Soviet Jewry there was a "vigil for peace" launched at another place in the national capital. Now a prayer vigil for peace is always a good idea, especially when the heads of state of the USSR and the USA are getting together. There is a certain timelessness about the quest for peace which makes it always more appealing to some than anything that might be subtly confrontational. But why was it necessary to hold such a diminutive display- precisely on December 6th, precisely when such an impressive gathering had been projected by American Jews to remind the Soviet leader that we Americans are interested in human rights as well as verifiable detente? The hype from a top executive of the United Methodist Church announced that the vigil, held at the Washington Episcopal Cathedral on call of the chief executive of the National Council of Churches, attracted the participation of Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations. The Soviet delegation was led by Metropolitan Filaret, registered with his government as an official of the Russian Orthodox Church and granted permission to leave Soviet Russia to participate in the vigil. Suppose the churchmen had given a thought to those who cannot get permission to leave, some of whom have waited for decades - perhaps separated from their families, unemployed and unemployable in their professions... Suppose, if they were unable to rally for Soviet Jews, they had remembered the thousands of persecuted Soviet Baptists, Pentecostals, Lutherans... the suppressed Catholics in Lithuania. Just suppose! But this would have required a sense of timing for which the ecclesiastical elites have not been noted in recent years. And it would have sacrificed the display of "ecumenical unity," with official Soviet churchmen marching side by side with elites from American free churches. It would have punctured, in short, the fiction that Gorbachev and his forces were eager to sell to Americans: that in spite of some political differences, the Russian people and the American people live about the same kind of life. But they do not. Soviet Jews and American Jews live in two different ages of human history, and so do Soviet Christians and American Christians. So, in addition to being at the wrong place on December 6th the American churchmen were looking at the wrong calendar. Roman Catholics in America, Protestants in America, and Jews in America meet each other today in the fullness of their strength. Never in two thousand years has there been such a situation, both in terms of the internal vigor of the communities and in terms of the equality of communal rights and Religious Liberty that all enjoy. But we have yet to learn to pay attention to each other's concerns, to share in a fraternal way in each other's major efforts. Fifty years ago, even in America, it was still difficult to get Jews and Roman Catholics and Protestants to sit down at the table together and discuss their common problems. Today it has become the easiest thing in the world to hold a National Workshop on interfaith dialogue, to release press statements against bigotry and prejudice, to raise money by opposing antisemitism and repeating general principles of tolerance. But that is no longer where the action is. Today the major task is to develop and call into focus joint actions which serve our communities and the society at large. By their lack of a sense of timing the Christian churchmen on December 6th missed a major opportunity to join with the Jewish leaders in calling for release of the captives. They did peace a disservice, too, for they said in deeds if not in words that the plight of persecuted minorities in the Soviet Union is something only American Jews get excited about.

Franklin H Littell The Anne Frank Institute of Philadelphia Lest We Forget #429 FHL:2/4/88 SENATOR HOLLINGS DEFENDS FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Standing forth in two recent courageous actions, Senator Ernest F Hollings of South Carolina has not only shown that he has convictions: he also knows what the freedom of speech guaranteed in the First Amendment is all about. The purpose of the guarantee of freedom of speech, like the other basic liberties listed in the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution, is to ensure as full and free a discussion of public policy as can be evoked. Before the slow emergence of such a principle, and emergence which was accomplished with much suffering and many martyrdoms, despotic rulers and arbitrary regimes punished those who uttered ideas they didn't like. The purpose of such liberty was to make full, free and informed public debate possible. Correlative to it was the idea that citizens had the right to participate in the discussions and decisions that shaped their present and future. Before that, rulers who thought of themselves as "Fathers" of their people were quite sure that they knew better than their "children" what was good for them, and the rulers acted accordingly. Contrary to the tortuous twistings and turnings that the lawyers have given "freedom of speech," it was never - until the present age of degenerate morality and ethics - said to protect pornography, obscenity, sexual exhibitionism, etc. It was never, contrary to the speculations of lawyers on the bench and on the floor, said to protect bullyboys marching in uniform ("symbolic speech"!) to intimidate loyal citizens. Nor was it ever thought

0 to throw the weight of government behind some power-monger's abuse and misuse of a monopoly of the channels of public expression. For many decades the power of government was, on the contrary, thrown behind encouraging a maximum open expression of diverse opinions on public issues. One of the chief ways of guaranteeing this healthy diversity was the Fairness Doctrine, adopted in 1949. Since control of a channel is a natural monopoly, provision was made under the Federal Communications Commission to see to it that no station pursued a relentlessly one-sided advocacy of a single position. Citizens of other views, particularly if they were attacked on a station program, were to have the right to time to answer. A few months ago, in a sleight-of-hand which received little public attention, the Fairness Doctrine was struck from the books. The practical effects were immediately felt. One church leader whose church's position on an issue had been attacked at great length on a station asked in fairness for time to reply. He was answered by the station manager: "I don't have to give you time to reply. The Fairness Doctrine has been ended..." Of course decent editorial management of a station would police itself on fairness and fair play. But unhappily the radio and TV stations, like the newspapers, often show little professional ethics. Unlike the newspapers, however, which can always be answered - at least feebly - by another paper or even a handbill, TV and radio are monopolies. You cannot jam and you cannot start up another station without government approval. The

® government guaranteed and licensed the monopoly, so it was felt- until the present administration ended the public's protection - that the government should see to it that fair play was observed. In point of fact the Fairness Doctrine, even when it was on the books, was frequently ignored and often poorly enforced. The only time it came into the picture was when a station applied to have its license renewed. The most famous incident in point was the Red Lion Case, where the radical rightist Carl Mclntire lost his station license after some years of undisciplined political propaganda and religious bigotry. In the years 1966 to 1976, when I was National Chairman of the Institute for American Democracy, I had many personal experiences with radical rightists who attacked me as a "pink professor," "red clergyman," etc. In 9 out of 10 cases the stations made no effort to obey the law, which required them to inform any person so attacked and to offer a chance for response. But at least when the time came for license renewal I, and others assaulted in like manner, had a chance to testify before committee about the degree of disregard for fair play and informed public debate shown by the station ownership. Senator Hollings is fighting for action by Congress to codify the Fairness Doctrine, recently scuttled by the FCC. He deserves the encouragement and support of every American who believes in full, free and informed public debate on policy issues. In an even more striking display of civil courage, Senator Hollings has recently championed public freedom of speech against

(7) the Rupert Murdoch media cartel. In order to ensure as vigorous a diversity of responsible debate as possible, the FCC before Reagan had prohibited monopolistic conditions in cities. One of the rules prohibited ownership of a daily newspaper and a TV station in the same market. Murdoch and his raiders and lawyers had been operating in defiance for several years, in Boston and in New York. Hollings attached a rider to the recent budget bill requiring immediate compliance with the law. Now the masters of pilpul among the lawyers are arguing that such a rider should not be attached to a major bill of another order. And the champions of corporate monopoly, like Senator D'Amato of New York, are arguing that Murdoch should be allowed to continue to defy the FCC rules. The president of the Allied Printing Trades Council in New York is reacting the way trade unions so often do these days: he's siding with the head of the cartel, Murdoch. Senator Hollings' action in the Murdoch Case is good for freedom of speech and the intention of the First Amendment. Corporate monopoly of opinion-making is not furtherance of freedom of speech, however Murdoch's lawyers and politician friends may try to twist the meaning. Government licensing of monopoly channel-holders carries with it government responsibility to see to it that the channels afford the public a maximum of full, free, and informed debate on matters of public policy. Anything less is perverting the meaning of the First Amendment. Franklin H Littell, The Anne Frank Institute of Philadelphia

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Lest We Forget #499 DATE:7/4/89 AMERICA SLIDES TOWARD FASCISM

This is written while the bands and the parades and the assemblies are rejoicing in 200 years of political freedom in America. On Sunday the televangelists seized hold of the flag issue and rang the changes on America's freedom. Some of them damned the Supreme Court for permitting flag-burning. All of them wove the Christian cross and the American flag together, harmonized the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Onward, Christian Soldiers," and generally communicated the message that this "Christian nation" - the United States of America - is in grave danger of losing its way. It is - but not for the reasons sermonized and orated about... Not because, having once been "Christian," it is now threatened by religious and cultural and ethnic pluralism... Not because organized religion is losing out. It isn't - although some of the old mainline churches are losing their members to more energetic and purposeful crusading movements. No, the threat to American freedom and Americans' liberties comes from another corner: the apparently unchallenged notion that order and discipline are government monopolies, the reckless idea that other centers and structures of authority may be over-ridden with impunity by government agencies, the resultant politicization of the society at all levels and in all corners.

Running along with this genuinely fascist landslide is the practical implementation of such statist developments: law and order 1 and the operation of them has become a monopoly of the lawyers - on the bench and on the floor. During the Dark Ages nothing did more to discredit genuine religion than the monopolistic ideas and practices of theologians. As we slide toward ever more controlling statist ideas and practices in American society today, nothing is more destructive of genuine justice than the monopolistic ideas and practices of lawyers and/or judges. Many people are talking about the switch of the majority of the Supreme Court away from Roe, with which they presented Americans the day before July 4th (!), as a "day of disaster for American women." Certainly there is that aspect of it, for the governments at state level have been given a clear ideological signal that their invasion of personal privacy and trampling upon family and religious authority will be welcomed by this Reagan Court. But it is not primarily "a day of disaster for American women," especially for poor women who will again be left to the tender mercies of the back-alley butchers. This day is primarily a day of disaster for all Americans who love their liberties, value limited government, and know that the heaviest burden upon peoples all over the world during the last century has been the arrogance and unchecked power of the STATE.

Whether in Communist or Nazi or fascist systems, the subordination of all matters of conscience to the STATE, the ' surrender of all personal and group liberties to the STATE, the servility of organized religion toward the STATE, the final defencelessness and powerlessness of the human person when face-to-face with the all-powerful STATE has been the recipe for the major crises and disasters of the 20th century. Americans have been protected until now by the checks and balances in our constitutional systems, by the alertness of the churches and synagogues to Religious Liberty issues, by the strength of family loyalties and neighborhood bonds and other sub-political associations. But in the last ten years, month by month and sometimes day by day those checks and balances and protections of liberty have been assaulted and undermined - all in the name of "law," all done in due order by lawyers on the bench and on the floor. The Supreme Court's ideologically-tainted arrogance in the Webster Case, preparing the way to turn family morals and decisions over to the STATE, is but a dramatic milestone in a downward path that has been pronounced for years. Do you think that the baseball business is an area where standards might be fixed and maintained by self-policing under a top-flight professional Commissioner? A third-rate justice in a bushleague court can arrogate to himself the claim to destroy the whole texture of order and discipline across the nation. What has the Pete Rose Case to do with the Webster Case? Everything, once you lift your eyes from the muck of the moral muddles... Do you think that a local church, part of a conservative Perotestant movement, has the right to maintain its own standards of membership and discipline? Did you think that the "free exercise of religion" was one of the treasured liberties of Americans? Wrong! We have before the courts today several dozen cases, some of them involving tens of millions of dollars, where little bands of anti- religious psychiatrists and lawyers have set out to destroy religions they don't like - and incidentally making a lot of money while they do it. While the big religious establishments sleep-walk through history, Religious Liberty is being permanently damaged by ambitious judges and lawyers - and precedents are being set that will in due season come back to haunt those who looked the other way when the assaults of the STATE were made on Hare Krishna, "the Bible Speaks" Church, Scientology, the Unificationists, the Worldwide Church of God, Pentecostals in Tennessee, and many other unpopular groups. There have been dozens of parallel actions in which civil courts have intervened - lawyers on the bench and on the floor - to destroy the order and discipline of college and university campuses. Procedures for maintaining the integrity of "the republic of learning" which have endured for centuries, under the careful guidance of professors and senior students, are now freely challenged and overthrown by government agencies - with lawyers leading the charge. The truth is that the house is on fire, and by no means only because a reactionary bloc of ideologists has now set out to undo decades of social progress in America. As we learned from the triumph of Nazi Statism a half century ago, there is a guilt of the spectators as well as a guilt of the perpetrators when a society slides toward fascism, civil strife and chaos. — Franklin H Littell Lest We Forget #465 DATE:10/10/88 WAS ADOLF HITLER A JOKE?

"Denial" has come to be one of the technical terms among Holocaust scholars. Other terms frequently used are "perpetrators," "survivors," "victims," "rescuers" and "liberators." "Spectators," usually called "by-standers," is another word that is gaining frequent use. The "deniers" come in all shapes and sizes. The largest number are those who simply refuse to face the facts of our recent history. Most of them are gentiles, some of them even Christians, who don't want to think about the terrible tragedy of our recent past. Some "Christians" don't want to think about the crime of Christendom against the Jewish people. But there are also Jews who say, "Why dwell on the past? Let's get on with the business of the present." The trouble with "deniers" of this type is the fact that traumas in individual and social history lie around like old land-mines: if not courageously confronted at the right time, at some unguarded moment in the future they may explode and destroy the life around them. There are also political "deniers," most of them neo-Nazis. There is a Journal of Historical Review, put out to deny that the Holocaust ever occurred at all. None of the "Editorial Council" is a trained historian: they are electrical engineers, physicists, etc - the typical "technically competent barbarians" that dominated "education" in Germany during Hitler's Third Reich. The so-called revisionists have no significance in Holocaust scholarship: in relationship to the world of scholarship they are "flat

- ft Ti-nn-i-i-tii--Ulftitii i earth" people. No serious scholar spends his time debating with members of the International Flat Earth Society. No serious scholar spends his time debating with the "historical revisionists." The "historical revisionists" are worth study by graduate students for another reason: they reveal something important about continuing Nazi and antisemitic networks in our political underworld. One of their leading voices, now deceased, was an itinerant teacher names Austin J App who wrote many pamphlets arguing that the Germans were right in World War I and World War II both. The chief financial backer of the Journal of Historical Review and of the "Institute" that puts it out is a man named Willis Carto, for more than three decades the eminence orise of fascist and antisemitic politics in the United States. He has founded dozens of "fronts" to promote his ideas, and "historical revisionism" is merely one of them. And now we have the appearance of a third type of "denier:" the individual to whom the whole thing is a joke. At least that is what he implies, since on challenge he denies that he would ever discriminate on racial or religious grounds. Ralph Engelstad, whose private room dedicated to Nazi memorabilia in his Imperial Palace in Las Vegas has become a matter of public discussion, says, "I want everyone to know that I despise Adolf Hitler and everything he stood for. Nevertheless, he created his own niche in history, although it is an infamous one..." The facts weren't known until one of his employees entered a formal complaint with the Nevada Equal Rights Commission, charging that he was discriminated against because he was Jewish. Now that we are no longer dealing with a secret room and with private parties celebrating Hitler's birthday, what are the public issues? The incident goes beyond vulgarity, bad taste, "black humor" - even beyond the Galgenhumor for which Germans have a special knack. How shall we understand the citizenship of the owner of a public institution, operating on a public license, who collects and displays a massive collection of pictures and other artifacts featuring Adolf Hitler and his Nazi movement? Is he in fact a secret sympathizer with America's recent enemies, as Austin J App was an open sympathizer? Jerome Brentar, the ethnics specialist recently dismissed from George Bush's staff, who a few days later went on national TV to deny the facts of the Holocaust, not long ago put on a dinner in App's honor! There is an American network in the fascist wing, as well as in the communist sector - and not only in Latin America. Does Engelstad belong to that network? Evidently the present evidence is insufficient to sustain that charge. The alternative interpretation seems to be that he is a man of incredible insensitivity and bad taste. But this charitable interpretation is weakened by the presence of a disturbing element of calculation. This is not a sudden enthusiasm, a sudden flare-up of bad manners. Millions of dollars are involved, and months of planning. What is this about bumper stickers? - "Hitler Was Right." This is not a joke, not even a bad joke, not even Galgenhumor. What is this tale of T-shirts saluting Hitler's conquests in Europe? According to Nevada law, disciplinary action is to be taken against a licensee who displays a "failure to exercise discretion and sound judgment to prevent incidents that might reflect on the repute of the state of Nevada..." Furthermore, the licensee is obligated "to conduct gaming operations in accordance with proper standards of custom, decorum, and decency..." and to avoid "any type of conduct in the gaming establishment which reflects on the repute... or detriment to the state of Nevada." I think the Nevada Gaming Control Board has a problem in Ralph Engelstad, regardless of what he thought he was doing - or whether he pursued a morbid fascination without giving thought at all to the moral implications of what he was doing. When it comes to the Holocaust, there is a guilt of the "by-stander" as well as a guilt of the perpetrator. I have a solution to resolve both the Gaming Control Board's embarrassment and his - assuming that all parties in the community are ready to learn from this painful experience. Let Ralph Engelstad give his collection of Hitler and Nazi memorabilia to the University of Nevada, along with sufficient endowment to guarantee that it is properly cared for and rightly used. There is a place in the University for such material, just as there is a place for diseased and dead bodies in the Medical School. Or, if the collection is to be moved out of Nevada, let it be given to the U S Holocaust Memorial Museum, where the corner-stone was laid just this week. There is a place for Pathology in the study of health, and there is a place in the Social Sciences and in public education for examining pathological phenomena like Hitler and Nazism.

Franklin H Littell Lest We Forget #572 DATE:2/3/90 THE VIEW FROM JERUSALEM

Jerusalem. While diplomats from America and the European Community rush to and fro, and while Dictator Saddam Hussein of Iraq threatens to scorch Israel if his aggression in Kuwait is reversed, life goes on as usual in Jerusalem and throughout the Land. The panic evident in telephone calls from outside, kindled by the yellow journalism and sensational media of the "free world," finds no echo here. The students from Australia and California who comprise the large part of our mid-winter Teachers' Institute at Yad Vashem treat the overseas telephone calls from home with a mixture of amusement and sympathy. They have already absorbed the steady, unfrightened, business-like manner of the Israelis. None of them leaves the Institute early. The Israelis, who are going about their business as usual, are used to Arab bullies and Muslim terrorists who dress their violence in religious language. After all, they have had declarations of war confronting them for more than 40 years. And four times they have successfully thrown back massed attacks mounted by Arab aggressors, aggressors heretofore well equipped by greedy Western munitions manufacturers and Soviet Realpolitiker. This time the Soviets have joined the concert of nations and the malefactors cannot play the middle against both ends. For four decades every outlaw regime from Castro to Idi Amim has blocked police action by playing the Americans vs. the Russians, the Russians against the Americans. That game is up in the Middle East. Because President Bush took the initiative to call the nations to quarantine the aggressor, coherence and consistency in U. S. policy is essential. Will Bush blink on January 15? Dictator Saddam Hassein thinks he will, and as the weeks have ticked off Iraqi diplomacy has been a mixture of insult, swagger and populist appeal to the Arab masses. The Arab masses, long envious of the America they see in the movies and over TV, have been aroused by the mullahs (Muslim clergy) to express their primitive feelings in the rage of a Puritan Jihad (Holy War). The dynamic is well known to psychiatrists and social psychologists. Will Bush blink? The response of America is here figured to be unpredictable. In 1981 the Israel Air Force knocked out the nuclear fission factory where Saddam was developing the bomb. The action was deplored by our government and condemned by peace organizations and moralistic church bodies. In 1982 the Israelis wiped out the terrorist training camps in Lebanon, drove the PLO out of the country, and turned a quieted Lebanon over to UN/US forces. President Reagan not only blinked: he fell asleep. The Syrians were allowed to return to dominance in Lebanon, and 244 American soldiers paid with their lives for occupying an exposed post without leadership and without a designated mission. Lebanon sank back into the jungle of clannish warfare, only now emerging as a servile satellite of Syria. The feeling is that Israel would become another Lebanon if it depended upon American "statesmanship" as first line of defense. Will this chance to re-shuffle the major factors in the Middle East also be lost? So far, at least, the White House publicly has

The View from Jerusalem 2 resisted Saddam's efforts to achieve "linkage" - to tie the termination of his aggression in Kuwait to a sell-out of Israel's security. Francois Mitterand, never reliable when antisemitism or anti-Israel issues are involved, has proposed "linkage." But he is the only one of our allies to wobble. An attack on Israel, frequently verbal and on occasion military, has been for years the last refuge of Arab League despots and dictators when internal pressures or external blunders jeopardize their rule. Changing the subject is the Devil's last recourse. In the UN Assembly, a poisonous swamp of automatic antisemitic, anti-Zionist and anti-Israel pronouncements, President Bush's attainment of a clear condemnation of Iraqi aggression is something of a miracle. It is in fact the last chance of redeeming an organization that at the end of World War II was one of the high hopes of peace lovers and idealists but in recent times has become a hissing and an embarrassment. In the meantime, in Jerusalem, the last round of gas mask distribution is being completed, the IDF is on alert, and the German Embassy has advised its nationals to leave. But our friends and allies in Israel are giving most of their attention - apart from the normal round of work, study, and daily errands - to finding homes and jobs for the 200,000 Russian Jews who have arrived in 1990. They are planning for the 400,000 expected in 1991 - and the total of 25% increase in population expected within 5 years. They are looking ahead and acting for life.

- Franklin H Littell, in Israel to lecture at the Yad Vashem Winter Teachers' Institute

The View from Jerusalem 3 ANTISEMITISM AND THE MAINLINE FHL:3/25/90

At the time Wellhausen and other enlightened German Christian scholars were developing critical studies of the Hebrew Scriptures, and carrying along with their studies a negative appraisal of the "Old Testament" in contrast to the "New," the great Rabbi Solomon Schechter called the intellectual framework of the Christian professors "the higher antisemitism." In the last hundred years "the higher antisemitism" has taken many forms. Many individuals who would be ashamed even to be seen in the company of a Nazi or member of the Ku Klux Klan are nevertheless guilty of making judgments and passing on ideas that are just as dangerous to the Jewish people as the violence of the gutter-fighters. I shall never forget coming upon a letter written by the Dr Otto Dibelius in the Lenten season, 1937. Dibelius was truly a great man- an opponent of the Nazis' attempt to take over and manipulate the Christian churches, later an opponent of the Communist regime of East Germany, a preacher and an author of theological treatises of note. I knew him well during my decade in post-War Germany, and he later visited me in my home in the States. What I found in this letter, which I discovered doing research in an archive after he was dead, was a letter from Dibelius - then a Superintendent of the Church of Berlin-Brandenberg - instructing his pastors how they should preach as they approached Good Friday and Easter in 1937. In 19 37 the German Jews had already been robbed of their citizenship and their protection at law. Dr Dibelius wrote contemptuously of the street-fighting, gutter- level politics and vulgar antisemitism of the Nazis. And then he wrote, "Of course I have always considered myself a theological antisemite.. ." and told his pastors they should use the Lenten Sundays to preach conversion to the Jews and salvation only through Jesus Christ. Dr Dibelius was a learned man, a gentleman of the old school, and his education and self-respect would never allow him to mix socially with the rabble that infested the ranks of the Nazi Party. But, as a theological conservative, he could only repeat what the churches had taught for a millenium and a half about the dead end of the history of the Jewish people. In a way, his call for evangelizing the Jews was an act of defiance in 1937, for the Nazi regime was already determined to purge the churches of baptized Jews (those who, in their pseudo-scientific jargon the Nazis called "non-Aryan Christians"). But, of course, Dibelius' stance was not defiant enough! And, more sadly still, Dibelius' position showed again how the endemic religious and cultural antisemitism of the leaders of "Christendom" had weakened any chance of effective resistance to the political antisemitism of Hitler's Party and program. The "higher antisemitism" of the church leaders, even the better ones, made the lower antisemitism possible. Nor is this situation confined to Third Reich Germany. A few days ago there was reported "on the Main Line" an incident redolent with a similar "higher antisemitism." It seems that in a special program at

Antisemitism on the Main Line 2 the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, one of the largest and most prosperous congregations of that denomination on the east coast, the audience in attendence was treated to an Israel-bashing program of the harshest kind. Questions raised that showed sympathy for Israel were dismissed without discussion or sneeringly tossed aside. Unfortunately, this kind of program is becoming more and more common in the so-called "mainline" Protestant churches. The line purveyed is one that undercuts the Jewish right of existence at the same time that overt antisemitism of the Nazi and KKK type are ostentatiously rejected. In the United States, the Jewish right of existence is denied obliquely by financial support of Hebrew Christian missions. The Jewish people is to be subjected to the slow death of assimilation rather than the relatively speedy death of the Holocaust or the Muslim Fundamentalist jihad. In the international arena, the Jewish right of existence is denied by attacking the Jewish state of Israel, judging its failings far more harshly than the murderous actions of the ruthless despots and dictators of the Arab League, and by passing on in purest form the propaganda of the terrorist PLO aimed at making Israel the pariah of the nations. By a curious coincidence (?), the leading layman present at the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church orgy of anti-Israel sentiments two days later published a column in The Philadelphia Inquirer (March 14, p 19-A) following uncritically the PLO line and championing the intifada war. Not only that, according to the report at the meeting in the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church the PLO murder of "collaborators" was justified.

Antisemitism on the Main Line 3 (The PLO calls all Arabs who want peace with Israel "collaborators.") In the article in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Mr Paul Hopkins - who is identified as an individual who "served many years as liaison with the Middle East for the Presbyterian Church" (whatever that means!)- repeats all of the trite anti-Zionist and anti-Israel charges. The PLO party line dominates. The degree to which some individuals and denominational agencies have become echo chambers for the "Zionism is racism" approach of the pre-Gorbachev Communists and the still bellicose Arab League is a disenchanting experience. The first thing Mr Hopkins and his kind of church politicians never face honestly is the fact that these regimes whose politics they are defending are still at war with Israel. These Arab League despots and dictators have refused to cancel their declarations of war and sit down to negotiate even an armistace: in the Middle East to date there is only a stalemate, after their repeated attacks and terrorist assaults have failed to bring Israel down. For the security of America, we had better hope they do not succeed in their wars - including the intifada - against our only dependable democratic ally in that part of the world! The second thing these gentlemanly antisemites won't face is the fact that Israel is a legitimate government in contrast to those that have strategized and financed the intifada as a new form of war against what they call "the Zionist entity." Not one of these enemy countries has a regime with a moral right to exist. Like Hitler's and Stalin's regimes they only exist by wielding brute force against their own

Antisemitism on the Main Line 4 subjects, and by exploiting the moral laziness of other countries. The regimes that run together against Israel in the Arab League are illegitimate. The Muslim Fundamentalists among them carry the most dangerous threat of World War III in the world today. They bring danger and death within the Soviet Union in volatile transition, as well as within the Middle East. The attitude of appeasement conveyed by Mr Hopkins and those like him represents both bad politics - bad for America as well as for Israel - and lowgrade religion. It wells up from a culture- antisemitism that is pervasive, although unrecognized by its gentlemanly carriers. Like the "higher antisemitism" of Dibelius and other good people in Germany in 1937, the "gentlemanly antisemitism" of the mainline Christians in 1990 diverts attention from the real issues in today's world. One of those real issues is whether respect for the dignity, liberty and integrity of the human person can survive in a world where despots and dictators can with impunity launch terrorist strikes and wars against a civilized and democratic people (Israel), can blow planeloads of innocents out of the sky (Pan American 103), and yet have their cause championed in a supposedly Christian church (Presbyterian) by citizens of a supposedly friendly ally (USA). The good people who are carriers now, like the good men who were carriers then, weaken the body's resistance, while the overt offensive against liberty and self-government is launched by others.

- Franklin H Littell, Past President of the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel, National President of American Professors for Peace in the Middle East Antisemitism on the Main Line 5 LS9t We Forget #542 DATE:5/15/90 WHY SUPPORT THE OBERAMMERGAU EXPLOITATION OF BAD RELIGION?

There are many commercially successful "Passion Plays" in the world, a dozen or more of them in the United States. There is one quite wellknown near Spearfish in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Another has more recently been developed in connection with an antisemitic and Radical Right center in the hills country of Arkansas. The "Passion Play" of Oberammergau in Bavaria is the grand- daddy of them all. Every ten years it wheels around, and this summer tens of thousands of tourists will make the stop to see the play - one of Adolf Hitler's favorite spectacles. They will also, as the travel agencies point out, visit a most beautiful panoramic scene. Lying along the Ammer River, with the Bavarian Alps towering above, few villages in the world can vaunt the natural beauty of Oberammergau and the countryside surrounding. But of course the tourists could enjoy the gorgeous scenery anywhere along the roads and rest hotels that flourish from Sonthofen to Fuessen, Bad Toelz and Berchtesgaden. The scenery is not at issue. The Passion Play is. The reason why the antisemitic, genocidal Fuehrer was fond of the Oberammergau Passionsspiel is plain enough. The play, by the selection and featuring of certain translations of certain texts in the Christian New Testament, fixes for the illiterate and prejudiced the stereotype of "the Jew" as a betrayer. At the high point the mob ("the Jews," we are led to understand) cries out, "His blood be upon us and upon our children." We are left with many questions. One question is why the post-Holocaust civilized world, at least dimly conscious of the disastrous consequences of viciously antisemitic preaching and teaching, continues to give the cash trade that makes the Oberammergau Passion Play a good living for all the natives. Another question is why the Roman Catholic bishops of Bavaria, able and willing to enforce emphatically the Vatican position for government control of contraception and pregnancy, have been unwilling to enforce the teachings of Pope John XXIII and the Ecumenical Council:Vatican II against the deicide calumny. In needs to be noted that there are other translations and other texts for telling the story of Jesus' death. Why pick the most inflammatory of all (Matth. 27:25)? It should also be noted that three outstanding American Catholic scholars - Professors Gerard Sloyan and Leonard Swidler of Temple University and Professor Jack Kelley of the University of Dayton (Ohio) - have made several trips at considerable expense of time and energy and money to get the villagers to moderate the harshness of their message against "the Jews." But the Passion Play Committee of the village has voted twice not to use another and better text. When the burning accusatory text in Matthew was written, the setting was an intense family quarrel - between Jews who followed the teacher Jesus of Nazareth and Jews who followed other teachers.

Oberammergau 2 When the gentiles became the majority and took over the Jesus Movement, the medium and the message both changed. The bitter accusation of "the Galileans" that the "Judaeans" (i.e., the Temple party) shared with the Romans the blame for the crucifixion of their leader was changed. It was now the accusation of the gentiles against "the Jews." The deicide charge in Matthew was the most unqualifiedly condemnatory of the several reports of Jesus' death. And so the harshest teaching remained until very recently- feeding the envy of the gentiles, justifying ruthless laws in "Christendom" against "Jews and heretics" (i.e., dissenting Christians), flowing into the great river of primal antisemitic fury that made Auschwitz possible. In 1634, when the Passion Play was founded at Oberammergau, no one knew anything about "settings" or "messages" or "mediums." Nor did they know in 1850, when the present version of the play was written and the present accents were given the presentation. In 1990, however, we know - and we know the consequences. Why do American tourists and tourist agencies continue to help people make money in presenting an incipiently genocidal calumny against "the Jews?" - Franklin H Littell

Oberammergau fA H

Lest We Forget #546 DATE:6/19/90 REMEMBERING MARTIN BUBER

This week marks the 25th Yarzeit of the great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. Buber was born in Vienna, studied in Berlin, and became one of the most important leaders of Zionism in the German-speaking area. He taught for some years at the University of Frankfurt, and his association with Franz Rosen-zweig in the Lehrhaus was also of continuing educational importance. His work closed down by the Nazi Third Reich, he moved to eretz Israel in 1938 and taught at Hebrew University until his retirement in 1951. Martin Buber had an enormous influence on the modern development of inter-religious dialogue, beginning with his 1923 classic Ich und Du (English 1937: I and Thou.. Karl Barth, the chief theologian of the Christian resistance to Nazism, was among those greatly indebted to Buber. In the present flowering of Christian/Jewish discussions and joint writing, the importance of Buber's work is universally recognized. For 22 years before his emigration Buber lived with his family in Heppenheim, a lovely village on the Bergstrasse between Frankfurt and Heidelberg. Heppenheim is not far from Worms, the once Imperial City with the oldest Jewish cemetery in Europe, the city which was also site of Martin Luther's famous challenge to the heads of Christendom in 1530: "Here I stand!" In 1979 the county and state (Land Hessen) made the Martin Buber Haus a historical landmark. The following year - completely re­ furbished with help from the German Federal Republic (Bonn) - the house was made available to the International Council of Christians and Jews. The international office of the ICCJ, founded in 1972, was moved from London. The Executive Director of the ICCJ, now comprised of 18 national societies, has for the last ten years carried on the extensive international educational work of the ICCJ from Heppenheim. A Dutchman, Dr Jacobus Schoneveld had for a dozen years before coming to the ICCJ developed a very important ecumenical and interfaith work in Jerusalem. The memorial program for Martin Buber was an event that appropriately symbolizes the influence of Dr Schoneveld in building Christian/ Jewish understanding - as well as the great weight that Christians as well as Jews give to Buber's philosophy and practical leadership. The International Council of Christians and Jews has a secure base in Germany, for the German Councils for Christian/ Jewish cooperation are vigorous and well-supported. They now number 57 societies, and with the opening of East Germany to political and religious dialogue there are already committees working in a number of East German cities. The/work)in West Germany celebrated its 40th anniversary last November, under the honorary charimanship of President Richard von Weizsaecker. The Heppenheim observance was held under the patronage of Prime Minister (Bundeskanzler) Helmut Kohl, and it was attended by a number of eminent national and international personalities. Among them were Sir Sigmund Sternberg, Chairman of the board, and Dr Elisabeth Maxwell (Oxford) and Rabbi Peter Levinson (Heidelberg), Vice Chairmen. Elisabeth Maxwell is well known, among other good works, for her sponsorship with her husband of the international conference in Oxford

Remembering Martin Buber 2 and London in July of 1988: "Remembering for the Future: Christians and Jews During and After the Holocaust." At executive meeting the following morning, Dr Victor Goldbloom (Canada) was succeeded as President by Professor Martin Stoehr of the university in Siegen (West Germany). Stoehr founded and has developed an extensive program for German students to study in Israel, a successful project that received a major public award on its 10th anniversary last year. Also present were Honorary Chairman of the ICCJ: Lord Donald Coggan, retired Archbishop of Canterbury, and Honorary Vice-Chairman Dr Gerhart Riegner of Geneva. There were many speeches, two especially impressive. Dr Ismar Schorsch, Chancellor the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, gave the keynote. Prime Minister Kohl spoke of his time as a student at Heidelberg, and of the impression made upon him then by Martin Buber's written work and spoken word. The importance which Helmut Kohl accorded the Yarzeit of Martin Buber can be measured in part by the fact that he set the time aside just a few hours before he was to appear in Berlin's Opera House, celebrating with a thousand representatives East and West the re­ unification of Germany. Like others who shared this occasion, and especially as I looked back over more than 50 years of work with the NCCJ in the USA and 40 years since we started the work in Germany in 1949, I felt the 1990 Heppenheim tribute to Martin Buber to be a truly significant landmark in interfaith reconciliation and understanding. - Franklin H Littell

Remembering Martin Buber Lest We Forget #548 DATE:6/20/90 THE END OF THE TERRORIST SAFE-HAVEN IN EAST GERMANY

The rush to German re-unification has run into some dramatic issues. One of the most difficult comes from the fact that for years Communist East Germany has been a safe-haven for international terrorists - especially those of the PLO, the Red Army Fraction, and the Irish Republican Army. Within the last few days nearly twenty terrorists wanted by the West German authorities and/or their democratic allies have been caught. One of the first thing the people did in the East was to storm the offices of the Secret Police ("Stasi"). With the apparatchiks' loss of authority and control of their secret files came exposure of their long-term past assistance to terrorists. General Markus Wolf, who led the "Stasi" for 29 years, has fled to Moscow. Among the terrorists now caught, for whom there are Western warrants long outstanding, are some interesting cases. The reports already in hand, augmented by investigation of documents and arms in safe-houses, shows a network of international cooperation with heavy financing by governments such as the dictators of Libya and Iraq. Friendly cooperation, with the benevolent protection of the Communsit East German regime, involved such well-known professionals as Abu Nidal and Barbara Meyer. Besides the well-known murder of the Israeli athletes in Munich, sensational incidents included the bombing of an American club in Berlin; the bombing of an U S Air Force locale in Frankfurt, with 2 killed and 20 wounded; the murders of industrialists Hanns Martin Schleyer and Karl-Heinz Bookurt, labor leader Ernst Zimmermann, diplomat Gerold von Braunmuehl... In one of the better known incidents, a young terrorist named Susanne Albrecht gained entry to the home of her father's friend, a banker names Ponto, by introducing herself ("It's me, Susanne"), so that her comrades could shoot him down in his own home. The new Attorney-General in Bonn has pointed out two of the more important questions. Does the uniting of the two Germanies mean that the secret friends and former sponsors of the terrorists will now have access to the security files in Bonn? And what about the guilt of the major criminals - not the youngsters whose misguided zeal led them into terrorist acts, but the top-level operators like Markus Wolf and Eric Honecker? Alexander von Stahl, in his office, has warned that the younger terrorists will not get light treatment now, but he also says he "has misgivings when a serious wrong-doer like Lieutenant General Wolf is let go without punishment in a united Germany." In the meantime, some ordinary people who were brutally treated by the "Stasi" are bringing suit. An "Association of Victims of the Stalinist Terror" has been founded and is growing rapidly. The persecutees are demanding several actions: 1. return of all civil rights lost in the course of prison sentences; 2. restitution of fines and other financial penalties;

End of Terrorist Safe Haven 2 3. surrender of all dossiers kept on them by the secret police; 4. building of a memorial monument to the victims; 5. apology from the DDR to the victims, prior to re­ unification, and re-naming of June 17 as the day to remember the victims of Stalinism. There is little likelihood that all of these acts of restitution will be accomplished. But the fact that they are now vigorously asserted and openly debated is another indication of the extent to which public opinion has repudiated the years of Communist dictatorship in East Germany. - Franklin H Littell

End of Terrorist Safe Haven FAK

Lest We Forget #547 DATE:6/20/90 GERMAN REUNIFICATION

On June 17th over a thousand leaders of West Germany ("the Federal Republic") and East Germany ("the People's Republic") gathered in the Opera House in East Berlin to celebrate the rapidly approaching re-unification of their homeland. While the members of the West German parliament .Bundestag, and the East German assembly (Volkskammer. listened to speeches inside, several hundred chanters made their protest outside on the street. The protesters carried banners with slogans like "DDR - My Fatherland!" The protesters were government employees in East Germany, "good Communists," who saw their good salaries and tax-free houses and other "percs" about to disappear. In China and in Rumania their comrades at the top, tough enough to smash any truly democratic movement, were protecting the privileges of the New Class. In East Germany they don't have a chance. The certainty that East Germany will be merged with the Federal Republic is questioned by no one except the doomed East German apparatchiks. The interesting debates flow around such questions as these: "What calendar day shall be chosen as the day of patriotic remembrance?" "What national song shall be used on public occasions?" "How soon can all-German elections be held?" Before elections are held, a number of additional political developments indicate the force behind the drive for democratic government and re-unification. For example, both the West German Berlin Senate and the East German Magistrate have unanimously voted to make President Richard von Weizsaecker an Honorary Citizen of all Berlin. The action will be celebrated on June 29 in the Nikolaikirche, with the Berlin Philharmonic participating in the fete. The Laudatio will be given by the East Berlin Lord Mayor and the text of the Proclamation will be read by the West Berlin Lord Mayor. Von Weizsaecker, who has won universal praise for his strong statements following the Bitburg fiasco, in quieting the Historikerstreit. in support of Israel and against terrorism, was Mayor of West Berlin before he became President of the Federal Republic. Before entering his political career, he was a prominent lawyer and Protestant lay leader - including service 1964-71 as President of the largest Christian laymen's movement in the world (the Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag). What day shall become the day of national remembrance? There were strong voices at the Opera House for making June 17th the "Day of German Unity." On June 17, 1953 substantial numbers of workers and students rose up in East Germany and attempted to throw off the Communist yoke. The Russians put in two tank divisions and crushed the "rebellion." One professor, an Israeli teaching in both countries, urged adoption of November 7th. November 7, 1989 is the "day the wall came down." He felt that it would help Germans to recall other years: November 7, 1938: Kristallnacht; November 7, 1923: the Putsch attempted by Hitler and Ludendorff in Munich; November 7,

German Reunification 2 1918: the declaration of a republic at the end of World War I. Generally, German political leaders and journalists have rejected this date: they feel that the euphoria of the most recent November 7th would drown out the necessary remembrance of the other dates. July 20 has been urged, since on that day in 1944 a conspiracy of resisters almost succeeded in killing Hitler and ending the Nazi government. May 23 has been suggested, since on that date in 1949 the basic law was fixed which has governed the Federal Republic ever since. There was general agreement in East as well as West that the Federal Republic, not without some errors, has maintained a good record in reconstructing a government ruled by law and not men (a Rechtsstaat. and in protecting the rights of minorities. One popular writer suggested May 8th, the date of the end of World War II in 1945. But neither May date has caught on. The major address on this June 17th was given by Manfred Stolpe, a pastor who is head of the governing body of the Protestant Church in the East. Another pastor who is head of one of the smaller parties in the East placed the event and the date in this way: "1989 completed what 1953 began." The enthusiasm for self-government and liberty in Germany has become, except for the displaced Communist bureaucrats in the East, almost universal. The role of the pastors is significant, for in East Germany the Protestant Church has been a center of resistance to the

German Reunification 3 Communist dictatorship. One astute observer, who years ago led the students when they marched out of the Communist-controlled Humboldt University and founded the Free University in the West, said there were three major factors in the successful march to freedom in 1989 and 1990. The first factor: the refusal of the Americans to turn their back on Europe or to weaken NATO prematurely; the second: the unwillingness of Mikhail Gorbachev to use the Stalinist methods of brute force in suppressing popular initiatives; third: the influence of the peace movement within the churches in the East, which developed centers of free discussion and action that the Communist rulers could not destroy. The popular term for this quiet and now successful groundswell of democratic and non-violent "people's power" is Kerzenrevolution, for the marches by candle-light that came from the churches into the public places year after year in protest against the rule of violence (dictatorship, with militarism). If the present spirit and direction are maintained, neither a united Europe nor America nor Israel nor any other democracy needs to fear German re-unification. - Franklin H Littell

German Reunification 4 Lest We Forget #549 DATE:6/23/90 MANDELA, ARAFAT AND TERRORISM Nelson Mandela's predecessor as spiritual head of the African National Congress, Chief Albert John Luthuli, was resolutely oriented to non-violent resistance. He was a clergyman, a deeply committed Christian, and a disciple of Mohandas K Gandhi. He suffered many disabilities and indignities under the government of South Africa, but he refused to surrender to the quick fix of demagoguery and violence. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 19 60, but he did not live to see the relaxation of apartheid in his homeland. With the death of Luthuli, the ANC went the way of many populist movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Made bitter by continuing injustice and driven by the impatience of unlimited expectations, a considerable sector of the movement came under the control of Communist apparatchiks. Whatever the present collapse of the revolutionaries' kingdom of heaven in Eastern Europe may do now to the appeal of the Communist International, at that time the appeal of militant Marxism was very real. Like the IRA (Irish Republican Army) in Ulster and the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) in and around Israel, the ANC became a major factor in the Communist program to de-stabilize the West. The Politburo regularly invited IRA, PLO and ANC leaders to Moscow, provided scholarships to Russian schools for their young troops, and equipped their training camps and cadres with the latest terrorist weaponry. The Russian leadership also supplied heavy equipment (airplanes and tanks and advanced military technology) - either directly or through satrapies such as Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Cuba - to regimes sponsoring terrorist movements. These sponsoring regimes channeled supplies to the terrorists and provided safe havens to which "activists" could flee to escape apprehension and trial for murder, assassination, bombing civilian centers, hijacking airplanes or ships, training and pushing children into civil war engagements. The sponsoring regimes were invariably dictatorships with long records of brutality, torture and genocide toward some of their own subjects - dictatorships like those controlling the peoples of Libya, Iraq, Angola and Zimbabwe. With bloody records of internal cruelty and suppression, such dictators certainly felt no embarrassment in channeling supplies to terrorist movements attempting to de-stabilize and destroy the liberty and self-government enjoyed by the peoples of "colonialist" and "capitalist" nations. One dictator, Castro of Cuba, not only sponsored terrorist movements; he also supplied tens of thousands of mercenaries to help far-away dictators maintain control over their own peoples. Nelson Mandela, who commands great sympathy because of his long imprisonment, his nobility of mien and measured statements, claims to speak for non-violent change - at least for the time being. He has placed himself in the public mind at the head of that section of the African National Congress that is authentic, indigenous, oriented to change by orderly means - and not under the control of Communists. Mandela has not, however, as yet distanced himself from Arafat and Castro and Ghadaffi and other terrorists and dictators who have helped to make orderly change extremely difficult, if not impossible. In the midst of the general euphoria produced by his visit, not many have dared to question the principle of immunity from criticism that seems to apply when white "liberals" are discussing black leaders. The ambiguity of Mandela's position has been greatly abetted by our memory of years of white intransigeance in South Africa. The government of South Africa has been since 1948 openly in the hands of the Afrikaner racists and overtly controlled by the fascist Broederbund - until August of 1989. With the election of President F W De Klerk, a radical reversal of course and move toward representative government is being attempted. De Klerk, like Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, confronts lifting a load of back-breaking burdens inherited from his predecessors. In both Eastern Europe and South Africa, the possibility of orderly and non-violent transitions to greater liberty and self-government depends now upon intelligent "loyal oppositions" as well as upon the intentions of the regimes. Will Mandela and associates (and Yeltsin and comrades) prove capable of creative and loyal opposition? One important weathervane will be their showing on antisemitism, terrorist tactics and friendliness with populist dictators.

- Franklin H Littell Lest We Forget #550 DATE:7/9/90 JEWISH HOLOCAUST AND ARMENIAN MASSACRES

In 1982 an International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide was held in Tel-Aviv. The co-chairmen were two Israeli professors, Israel Charny and Shamai Davidson. Several hundred scholars participated from all over the world. At the last minute, several prominent Jewish scholars withdrew. The story of the series of events that led to their withdrawal has been related in detail by Professor Charny in The Conference Program and Crisis, volume I of the conference report (pages 269-330). The sum of the matter is this: the Turkish government applied extraordinary diplomatic and political pressure - including a strongly implied threat to Jews living in Turkey and termination of Turkish government toleration of the use of Turkish area as a modest escape route for Jews from Soviet Russia - if the Conference were held. The offence of the Conference that the Turkish government was said to have cited was the program scheduling of several Armenian-American scholars as presenters of papers. Professor Charny has told the story of the mixture of intrigue and academic principle and appeasement that went into the Conference crisis. The Conference was held, a Report was published, and an important newsletter - Internet on the Holocaust and Genocide- continues to come from the continuing organization. One of the most important Holocaust scholars in the world, an Israeli, has since told me that he was more ashamed of his withdrawal from the 1982 Conference than of anything else in his life. It will be interesting to see if any American politician makes a like admission about his capitulation to similar pressures that led to cancellation of the scheduled Armenian Remembrance Day last spring. The Senate had overwhelmingly approved Robert Dole's measure, but under intense lobbying four changed their votes. Again, the truth about the Armenian massacres was sacrificed to Turkish deniers and political expediency. The truth about the Armenian massacres has been fully documented, although the Ottoman Turks did not keep as complete records as the German Nazis. Although a few engineers and electrical engineers play the game of supporting the official Turkish government denial of the Armenian massacres, much as the so-called "historical revisionists"- consisting of electrical engineers like Butz of Northwestern and physicists like Bucher of San Diego - deny the facts of the Holocaust, among competent historians there is no denial. Approximately 60% of the Armenian people, the oldest Christianized nation in the world, were deliberately slaughtered during the dying throes of the Ottoman "Holy Muslim Empire." Recent studies have documented the fact that the Turkish decisions were made in deliberate reference to the way the Russian Tsars handled the "problem of the Jews." The active position of German officers as advisors to the Turks during the massacres, officers some of whom held very high posts during the Nazi Third Reich, has been fully documented. The public has long been familiar with the eye-witness reports of Henry Morgenthau, Sr - American ambassador at the scene. Lord Bryce submitted a volume of many hundreds of pages to the House of Commons, replete with eye-witness reports. Julius Lepsius, a German who was one of the world's leading missionary pioneers (Deutsche Orient Mission. collected massive evidence, criticized the failure of the Imperial German regime to intervene on behalf of the Armenians with its Ottoman ally, and collected relief moneys to help Armenian survivors. Recently a graduate student has turned up a mass of previously unnoted sources in the archives of the oldest (f. 1810 in Boston) missions board in the USA: the famous "ABC" (American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions). Here are eye-witness reports of the Armenian massacres not previously known to historians. They simply fill out the fullness of the already ample evidence. The denial of the Armenian massacres has precisely the same scientific standing as the denial of the Holocaust: namely none. The study of the denials has the same purpose, and it is a substantial one. First, there is the identification of the political forces and movements and conditions that lead to genocide: the development of an "Early Warning System" on impending genocide. Second, there is the identification of the political ideologies or systems of belief that make genocide possible, if not inevitable. With the Armenian massacres and the Jewish Holocaust the ideological situation was the same: the domination of the society for centuries by an official religious establishment that denied the basic right of "the other" (Christian Armenians, Jews) to full status and participation in the society. Both situations were simply waiting for a thoroughly consistent and brutal executioner to come along and act out the logic of the prior denial. The denial of the rights of the victims-to-be came before the denial of the evidence about the perpetrators and the victims. - Franklin H Littell Lest We Forget #551 DATE:7/10/90 WHO IS ENTITLED TO SPEAK?

A great Christian statesman of early 19th century America, Alexander Campbell, set forth certain guidelines about speaking. He was concerned to teach his ministers and lay people to make the necessary distinctions. Otherwise, understanding would be clouded by fine-sounding abstractions and generalizations and minds would be misled by voices of uncertain or unknown authority. Among Campbell's guidelines were the following - as sound today as they were a century and a half ago: "Who writes or speaks? To whom is he writing or speaking? Where did he write? When did he write? What did he really say? What purpose did he have in writing?" Applying those questions to any public utterance - the issuing of a new political statement or a major speech by a public leader - sometimes clarifies immediately what credit we are to give it. Who is speaking? (What are his credentials? Does he know what he's talking about?. What did he really say? (Can the report be trusted?) What was the speaker's purpose? (Is there a hidden agenda there?. At a crass level: Why should any intelligent person pay attention to what an electrical engineer at Northwestern writes in denial of the Holocaust? He wasn't there. He has no credentials as an historian. The Butz book - The Hoax of the Twentieth Century - is a compilation of earlier plagiarisms, so far as historical "facts" are concerned. The critical mind jumps past the nonsense to the real question: What is his hidden agenda? Under the spotlight of that question, he stands forth as an antisemite and Nazi fellow-traveler. In other words, the purpose of his writing is neither scientific nor educational: it is political. The first question put by Alexander Campbell is just as important: Who is writing or speaking? Is it a man or woman known for integrity and reliability? Is there a real involvement, or is it mere idle gossip? Will the speaker be one of those who pays the price in case his word is listened to? This is the point that bothers me most about the "resolutions" passed by a number of democratic church bodies, along with the decrees issued by the rulers of authoritarian religious institutions. To be specific: Who pays the price if the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church are wrong about contraception and abortion? Not the bishops! To be specific on another ethical frontier: Who pays the price if resolutions passed so easily by some American churches about the policies of the government of Israel turn out to be wrong? Not the baptized gentiles safe in North America! Recently an Israeli "peacenik," Stephen Langfur, came through Philadelphia talking about the political situation in Israel and in the occupied territories. I first knew Langfur as a teacher and congenial colleague in the Department of Religion at Temple University. Later he made aliyah and served in the Israel Defense Forces. He has an Israeli-born wife and two children. Now Stephen Langfur has joined the small number of reservists who have refused to serve in the territories. He belongs to the kind we call in the USA a "selective conscientious objector." He is not opposed to military service. He has in fact put in another month of duty in Israel proper since he spent 21 days in detention for refusing duty in the occupied territories. But he believes Israel's policy under Military Government is wrong. Stephen Langfur is, as Harry Golden used to say, "entitled." That is, if he is wrong he pays the price and those nearest and dearest to him pay a high price too. He is a credible witness, entitled to be heard and argued with, whether he is right or wrong in the immediate case. Those who deal in abstract absolutes which demand high sacrifices - and perhaps death - of other people need to be questioned on the spot. This includes Princes of the Roman Catholic Church as well as delegates to Protestant solemn assemblies.

- Franklin H Littell, National President of American Professors for Peace in the Middle East Lest We Forget #552 DATE:7/12/90 UNDERMINING THE FOUNDATIONS

For some time now, in the public mind freedom has been a plus word and discipline has been a minus word. Every day there is more evidence that discipline - including self-discipline - is rejected out of hand. The social and political dangers impending from such abnegation of responsibility can scarcely be exaggerated. Every organized society requires discipline: the difference between a despotism and a democracy is the difference between an imposed discipline and a voluntary discipline. Without one or the other, human life slides into the anarchy of the jungle. As the decline and collapse of the Weimar Republic demonstrated all too well, a large public will not indefinitely tolerate the jungle. If the political bosses are corrupt, if the economy is being ravaged by thieves and scavengers, if crime and street-fighting make going out too dangerous, if the professors and the professions have abandoned professional standards, and if a populist demagogue is at hand to exploit the situation, the agitated masses will follow a political false messiah who promises law and order and public safety. Those who shamelessly urge license instead of liberty, and "freedom of self-expression" unchecked by the responsibility of self- discipline, are enemies as dangerous to true liberty and self- government as the political scavengers who come along and feast on the decaying carcass of a society that has lost the will to keep the covenant of good faith, sound morals, and public justice. We are urged to accept that same-sex preference is a matter of indifference. "Homophobia," a new word coined to apply scientific- sounding cosmetics to those opposed to homosexuality. A recent long article in The New York Times quotes psychologists who attribute the "condition" to "religious roots" or a bias grounded in belief in "a moral universe." Doesn't that sound scientific?! - almost as scientific as "Antisemitismus," the word coined by Wilhelm Marr to make hostility to Jews sound modern and respectable! There are still enough people left in today's American society who have not severed themselves totally from the roots of our inheritance to maintain other "biases" too: against widow-burning, against infanticide, against slavery, against polyandry and polygamy (although resistance to these sexual adjustments seem to be fading fast!), against murder. Are such "biases" by definition invalid? Some psychologists and psychiatrists are not content to attack the branches: they are going for the roots. Almost every week or two some "scientist" of the mind is testifying somewhere before a poorly trained judge stumbling through a crowded court docket, often in the presence of a semi-literate jury, to the effect that religious adherence is in itself evidence of a "psychotic personality!" No wonder we are cast loose on a high sea, with neither anchor to prevent our drifting nor compass to keep us on course! We have been so busy rejoicing in the collapse of the Russian Soviet Empire that we have hardly noticed the collapse of our own way of life, and the voluntary commitment to the public good that was once the honor and glory of a free America. Benjamin Hooks, a great American leader, was right on target when he this week won enthusiastic applause at the 81st national convention of the NAACP in Los Angeles. He rightly condemned "those lying, conniving, thieving savings and loan officials who robbed this country blind." He didn't say it, but the pillaging and looting of the national economy since 1980 - which has in a decade converted America from the chief lending nation in the world to the world's primary debtor nation - is as catastrophic for the prospects of our grand­ children and great grandchildren as the Stalinist years have been for Russian children yet unborn. But why then did Hooks shift from this sound proclamation to an argument without moral excuse, namely indirectly to defend the indefensible conduct of Marion Barry? Some of us "whiteys" have spent a lifetime in fighting for the rights of black citizens. We have condemned in the strongest language the "Bull" Conners and John Rankins and Orville Faubuses and Frank Hagues, white men who defaced and shamed the name of America. We did it because we believed in an America for all Americans, and because we believed that certain standards of ethics and morals are firm - not subject to every wind that blows from the mouths of demagogues and pseudo-scientists. Are we to accept the idea that personal immorality in public leaders is a matter of no account? Or is there still some strength and vitality left in the principle that public position and power are a trust, calling for a high standard of self-discipline? Are moral and ethical standards to be dismissed cavalierly as mere "bias?" Are the foundations already undermined beyond shoring up? - Franklin H Littell LEST WE FORGET DATE:6/12/90

WORLD WAR III?

For several years it has been evident that if another ..major war

developed, the surge of Islamic fundamentalism would carry the torch.

For all of their rhetoric, chiefly for internal consumption, the leaders

of neither world empire - Russian and American - wanted war. When risk-taking brought them to the brink, as in the Suez C^nal crisis or the Cuban missile

confrontation, one side backed down. Now, with the Russian leaders facing

mass starvation and the American leaders facing fiscal disaster, both sides have decided to cool off the arms race.

In the combination of Arab imperialism and Muslim fundamentalism, other than rational forces are dominant. Whatever the illusions of Marxist true believers, in the end their ideology required rational solutions. Stalin was only able to inspire the Russians to tackle the enormous risks and sacrifices of modern war by abandoning Marxism and appealing to the atavistic symbols of

Ivan and Peter and populist patriotism. Whatever the popular following of

American political crusaders,.in the end they have to answer to the American people's admiration for common sense solutions. The political expansionism of pan-Arabism and the fundamentalist holy wars of the Muslim mullahs have nothing to do with either rational solutions or common sense.

Saddam Hussein of Iraq is a cunning enemy and a mighty gambler. As an

Arab journalist has recently commented, he has again staked his entire game on one card. Like another megalomaniac, Adolf Hitler, if he loses in his gamble, he intends to bring the rest of the world down with him. Whether a halter can be put on such an outlaw broncho is more than doubtful. As

President Mubarak of Egypt - who thought he had done it - said, the prospects make one "more than pessimistic."

Whether President Bush, who is accustomed to the deals the oil companies have always made with dictators and despots, realizes the intractability of the scene is also doubtful. In ansi-jering questions he has staked his case on the apparent unanimity of friendly governments - members of the European

Common Market, the Soviet Union, Japan, the Security Council of the United

Nations - in verbally condemning Saddam. President Bush says that world opinion is against Saddam.

"World opinion" is, of course, what kept Stalin out of the B<ics and

Hitler out of Czechoslovakia. President Bush says that world opinion is against

Saddam, but he apparently has not realized that Saddam has no regard for the opinion of this world. Saddam's only frame of reference is another world - a world beyond this natural order, a world filled with angels and devils, a world in which Allah gives the victory to his crusaders against ' *Zionists" and "the Great Satan" (the USA). There is only one thing that will halt a visionary like Saddam: total, crushing, undeniable defeat - indubitable evidence to the fanatical hordes that Saddam has misunderstood the will of

Allah.

It is a serious mistake to underestimate the appeal of Saddam and his

"Holy War" to the Arab masses. The willingness of Egypt and Morocco to send troops to defend the'despotic regime that rules Saudi Arabia should not blind us to the fact that nearly half of the regimes represented at the "Arab summit" refused to join-, in confronting Saddam.

Three fundamental and controlling facts must be borne in mind. First, not a single one of the Arab League regimes is democratically elected; not one of them has a mandate to speak for its own subjects. Second, these illiterate masses know that they are being exploited, and they know that American and other Western cartels and corporations are part of the structures of power that exploit them. Third, the Muslim preachers and teachers of the radical, fundamentalist wing have steadily grown more powerful since the mullahs over­ threw the Shah and reversed his program of gradual Westernization (cultural, educational, economic, political).

Fortunately, Gorbachev is well aware of the dangers inherent in Muslim fanaticism. 2% of the population of the USSR is Muslim, and one of his most serious internal problems is the eagerness of the Azerbaijanis (Muslim) to slaughter the Armenians (Christians) in their respective republics.

Detente between the USSR and the USA has so far prevented the explosive situation in the Middle East from degenerating into a series of power ploys between the two - as in the past so often colored every international crisis.

But Saddam must not be underestimated, and his appeal to the illiterate

Arab masses must not be misjudged. For decades their preachers and teachers have blamed every ill upon "the Zionists" and "American imperialists." Now they have a champion.

Saddam is not simply a primitive, who slaughters his own subjects with poison gas or machine guns if any sector dares to affront him. He is also a

"true believer," with enormous appeal to masses of "true believers." 1Those who now worship him as a god-man, a knight of the true faith who stands forth to do battle with the Elders of Zion and the Western corrupters of morals and

Allah's laws, must see him fall on his face in the dust.

With the lines of battle being drawn as they are, how fortunate for the world that the Israel Air Force took out that Iraqi nuclear fission factory a few years ago.J We cannot expect the churchly solemn assemblies that then condemned Israel's action now to admit that they were terribly and utterly wrong - though they were. But we might now expect a little less daily agitation against Israel as the chief threat to peace in the Middle East, a little more honest ...; discussion of the real forces of chaos and violence.

Franklin H Littell LEST WE FORGET DATE:8/17/90

PORNOGRAPHY AND "FREE SPEECH"

The issue of pornography for public consumption can always be counted on to attract public attention and debate. If the attention doesn't come immediately/ those exhibiting themselves or their product will demand attention. They will shout and/or give press conferences until they get the attention they want. Because being "banned in Boston" has been the publisher's dream for decades/ the argument has arisen that pornography should be ignored: paying it attention only increases its circulation and sales This begs the fundamental question/ however: Does the public have the right to protect itself from exhibitionism and its children from prurient materials?

In this discussion/ a voice of legal fundamentalism like the ACLU is quite useless. Hag-ridden by ideological absolutes/ the American Civil Liberties Union can no longer distinguish free speech from overt action. During the neo-Nazi show at Skokie/ Illinois - and in several other flagrant violations of the canons of civility and respect for the rights of fellow-citizens/ the ACLU argued that wearing uniforms (or white hoods) was "symbolic speech."

The only way the ACLU and other idceological absolutisms can win their argument against "censorship" and for pornography is to make fun of Senator Helms and "Mrs Grundy." The person who goes around holding his or her nose at every indecency makes a ridiculous figure/ especially where the boundary lines move with every wind that blows. But winning this cheap victory does nothing to settle the basic issue.

Has the public no right to defend itself against indecency and (2 the deliberate exploitation of human beings to satisfy the baser instincts? Have parents in a residential area no right to protect their children from exploitation by pornography-pushers? The fact is that those who wear Nazi uniforms or KKK hoods to intimidate their neighbors not exercising their rights of free speech, A whatever clever lawyers do to the English language. I might/ for example/ in imitation of ancient prophetic figures doff my clothes and run naked through the streets of the city. I might argue that my nakedness was "symbolic speech/" my argument made even stronger if I cried out in a loud voice/ "Yet 40 days and Philadelphia shall be destroyed... Yet 40 days and Philadelphia shall be destroyed!" I doubt that the ACLU would rush to defend my conduct/ even if the city's fiscal condition continues to worsen... Precious artistic circles continue to wring their hands over the "right" of a few exhibitionist artists to feature homo-eroticism at the tax-papers' expense. The promoter of sales for Two Live Crew's records will claim he is defending "free speech" as he pushes hard­ core ballads for youthful consumption. Both positions are morally and intellectually indefensible. In most nations today/ in spite of superficial assent given the UN Declaration on Human Rights/ there is no such thing as "freedom of speech" or "freedom of the press/" let alone "freedom of religion." Most countries with delegations in the United Nations have not even heard of such liberties; most assuredly they have never experienced them. Three hundred years ago the same conditions obta ined in all of Europe/ including England - the mother country of constitutional liberties. The five great liberties listed in the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights attached to the Federal Constitution - speech/ press, (3 petion and assembly/ with freedom of religion the first of all - were all won with difficulty and sacrifice against arbitrary rulers. They carry the scars of historical struggle. Their context was clear and straight-forward. They were to be removed from the control of kings and tyrants because only by open and uninhibited discussion of public policy could popular sovereignty be exercised.

As long as rulers ruled "by divine right" and the unwashed masses did what they were told/ there was no need for the 5 great liberties. But when public policy was to be set with the full participation of a free citizenry/ worship/speech/press/petition/assembly had to be put beyond the reach of arbitrary rulers.

Pornography/ whether on records or in drawings or on film/ has no part in public debates about public policy. It contributes nothing to an intelligent answer/ for instance/ to the question what we shall do as a free people confronted by a Hitler or a Saddam.

It can be argued/ of course/ that pornography ought - as a matter of public policy - be allowed free flow in public channels. There is something to be said on each side of the matter of public control of the sale of records/ machine guns, drugs. It can be argued that as a matter of public policy the Nazis should be allowed to make intimidating marches and the KKK ought to be allowed to hide behind its hoods. These arguments are themselves protected exercises of basic liberties.

But to argue that poronography itself/ or uniforms themselves/ or hooded demonstrations themselves are "free speech" is obfuscation and demagoguery. An agency of government is entirely within the limit of' the First Amendment when it prohibits pornography/ terrorizing by uniforms or hoods. It only violates basic rights if government should attempt to silence the argument whether or not it (4 is sound public policy to do so.

In sum/ we shall gain ground when we stick to the plain meaning of the language/ remembering the fundamental reasons why in the course of historical development a few peoples came to demand that their governments keep their hands from basic liberties. Our fathers and mothers did not demand liberty so that the vicious and the greedy could flaunt license and licentiousness. They claimed their liberties to be better men and women/ citizens rather than subjects/ rulers rather than ruled.

Franklin H Littell Lest We Forget #555 DATE:8/23/90 JAMES SOUTER FOR SUPREME COURT JUSTICE

For some weeks the debate has been raging over James Souter's suitability for the Supreme Court. A central question, along with whether or not he likes women, is the issue of his ideological orientation. But for Saddam Hussein's military aggression, the Supreme Court nominee might still be in the headlines. Is Souter a "liberal"? After all, he went to Harvard College and Harvard Law School... Is he a "conservative"? After all, he has been nominated by President Bush, presumably with the approval - if not on the initiative - of Adviser Sununu. How does he stand on the "right to privacy"? Will he held reverse Roe v. Wade (abortion rights)? Is it true that he once gave a non-fundamentalist reading of the Second Amendment (gun control)? The National Rifle Association, the National Committee for Handgun Control, the National Organization of Women, "Right to Life" Committees and several dozen other specialized crusades and "cause" groups all want to know James Souter's ideological orientation.

One nationally syndicated columnist has declared that if his ideological orientation isn't clear, he is unfit for the high court. My judgment is the opposite: if he is. ideologically hidebound, he is unfit for the Supreme Court. Hopefully, in the hearings he will refuse to speculate, refuse to pre-judge hypothetical cases, refuse to be baited into settling abstract points of law. The unhealthy polarization of political judgments, buttressed by ideological straight-jackets, has been for some time the curse of parliamentary politics in Europe. During the 20th century, frozen and de-hydrated political creeds - whether Christian or Marxist, Christian conservative or Christian Democrat or Social Democrat or Communist - have corrupted the public forums of both Eastern and Western European countries. Even in Great Britain, where the House of Commons was once described as "the town meeting of all England" (Edmund Burke), the ideological rigidity enforced by party "whips" has replaced intelligent discussion on matters of public policy. The failure of the Liberal/Social Democratic effort to recover open and informed debate on public matters was a grievous loss to liberty and self-government. The collapse of a reasonable middle ground has left the British parliament more polarized - and more impervious to fresh concepts and programs - than ever before. The Tories are locked in a doctrinaire program to reverse history, step by step and bill by bill since 1946, while the Labour Party is hung out to dry between old fashioned trade union blocs and slogan-mouthing Trotskyites. Unhappily, since the founding of the John Birch Society in 1958 there has been in America a raucous and growing movement toward ideologizing and polarizing politics. Parlor conservatives like Billy Buckley have contributed to the process, while verbal street-fighters like Viguerie and Atwater frankly demand that the judiciary be as politicized and ideologically

Souter for Supreme Court 2 pure as they hope the legislative and executive branches to become. In the process, public opinion has been twisted - with appearance more important than reality in candidates, with financial clout more important than merit, with wordy sloganizing more active than the use of the brain. America is in grave danger of losing its reliance upon the politics of common sense - the politics of problem-solving, politics carried on in a low tone of voice, politics hammered out on the anvil of compromise. The genius of American politics has never been religious or philosophical purity. The American of the great tradition is "liberal" on one issue, "conservative" on another - depending on the merits of the case. He has no interest in ideological labels or Procrustean beds of speculative abstractions. The President had to make an end run around the ideological blocs by nominating a man about whom little is known. This is in itself a melancholy thought, but it tells us more about the degeneracy of the political scene than about James Souter. There has been a reliable report that his models in study and reflection are Justices Holmes and Harlan. That is an encouraging word. It may mean that we have a chance to gain a justice on the high court who will make up his mind on the merits of a case rather than by using some sliderule of philosophical orthodoxy. We have recently had several Supreme Court appointments on the basic of ideological commitment, with little regard to the

Souter for Supreme Court 3 nominee's scholarly capacities or common sense. Perhaps this time we have a candidate who embodies the true genius of the American way of decision-making. Perhaps James Souter is a man who neither pre-judges issues by "liberal" or "conservative" stereotypes and slogans, nor hesitates to make specific decisions on specific questions according to the consensus of past and present wisdom.

- Franklin H Littell

Souter for Supreme Court Lest We Forget #556 DATE:9/9/90 FOREIGN POLICY BY TV

In a shrinking world, added signs of interdependence arise every day to demand our attention. Sometimes we are scarcely aware of the sea change that has occurred, but dramatic incidents bring us back to reality. Right now, every time we tank up at the gas station we are hit by the smallness of the globe. Our leaders are being dragged kicking into the realities of instantaneous communication. 200,000,000 Arabs have been profoundly influenced by what they watch on television. Most of them can neither read nor write. They have jumped from illiteracy to post-literacy without ever passing through a literate period. And the mullahs and other Muslim preachers and demagogues have been telling them for years that the problems of the world, indeed the reason why they do not enjoy the sumptuous living that they see daily on their TV screens, is because of a sinister plot concocted by the Elders of Zion and American capitalists. President Bush, like his predecessors poorly advised by State Department Arabists, is having to scramble to deal with the real forces in the Muslim world. Not one of the regimes in the Arab League, every one either an old-fashioned despotism or a modern dictatorship, represents the will of its subjects. Only a little over half of these regimes voted to support the United Nations resolution against the Iraqi dictator's aggression, and of those that did, most of them also fear their own subjects and the agitators that stir them up. They know very well that Saddam has a lot more influence among their subjects than they do. Saddam Hussein is as clever with the TV as Goebbels was clever with the radio. He has shown himself a master tactician in using the technical equipment of instantaneous communication. When the conflict was first taking shape, Saddam used Ted Koppel to bring his message to a world starved for pictures from the gulf. He boldly challenged Margaret Thacher and George Bush to debate him on TV, "for the whole world to see." With moral condemnation gathering against him, he used a set piece on TV to show the kindly Hausvater joking with "guests" (hostages) and even ruffling playfully a little boy's hair. There is always the chance that even a TV-mesmerized outside world will see through the tricks. But Saddam knows that his own illiterate followers will not: he stages other shows for their consumption, in which the staples are his posturing challenges to America and the free world, his sarcastic appeals to Gorbachev, interspersed with implied charges that back of the whole thing is Israel ("the Jew"). Now America, but a few weeks ago beginning to rejoice at the detente with the Soviet Union, has another enemy - one who knows well how to use TV, how to appeal to the masses eager to storm the bastions of plenty. The report is that Bush and Thacher and Mitterand and Saddam Hussein are united in one thing: they all watch CNN to find out what is going on. And CNN reports the news by satellite to 95

Foreign Policy by TV 2 countries. In effect, the foreign policy of response to Saddam is largely in the hands of CNN plus four master commentators who blanket America: Ted Koppel and Peter Jennings (ABC), Tom Brokaw (NBC) and Dan Rather (CBS). In giving the first TV interview after days of blackout, Saddam used Koppel for 45 minutes and then sent him away with praise as "America's first TV Foreign Minister." Saddam's comment carried added bite because at that moment James Baker, Secretary of State, President Bush and Vice President Quayle were all on vacation. On the role the master TV commentators play, one European newspaper commented that they are "men who not only tremendously over-value themselves but are also over-valued by their employee's." The newspaper then went on to discuss how many millions of dollars each is paid each year. Their pay is not the problem, however, except to the extent that it helps them lose a sense of who they are, what they are doing, and their responsibility to the public. The problem is that the Iraqi dictator has used them, and continues to use them and their media, to win the PR war against duffers. - Franklin H Littell

Foreign Policy by TV Lest We Forget #557 DATE:9/15/90 WHAT IS FREEDOM?

In late August the young people were walking and talking and setting up booths in Prague and East Berlin. The spirit of freedom was in the air. The atmosphere was pregnant with excitement, with anticipation of glorious times to come. Every taxi driver in Prague pointed out to me the place where Reinhard Heydrich was ambushed and slain by a team of Czech patriots. And every one urged me to visit the National Museum and the Palace, there to mingle with thousands of adults and school children eager to be reminded of every historical detail in their national heritage. The Czechs are a proud people, and their city escaped the massive destruction visited during World War II on national capitals like Berlin and Warsaw. On the old Charles Bridge over the Moldau River there were dozens of booths, manned chiefly by students and other youth, selling hand-painted pieces of wood, lithographs, paintings. There were also stands where you could buy pieces of Russian uniform, and others where you could buy books new and used. Half way across the bridge I was startled to hear, sung in Czech and accompanied by a guitar, one of the anti-war ballads of the American Civil War: "Just Before the Battle, Mother." My impression of the global aspect of the anti-war network was further strengthened by the fact that the "Rolling Stones" had been in the city just two days before, filling the largest stadium in the world (120,000). The Stones were received during their stay by Vaclev Havel, at the Presidential palace. Accompanying him at the reception was his Deputy, Alexander Dubcek, who had seen his "Prague spring" crushed two decades before and lived to see the Communist empire in dissolution. Around the city were placarded the Rolling Stones' salute to the city and to the world: "The tanks have to roll away. The Stones have rolled in." President Havel had returned the previous week from Oslo, Norway, where he gave one of the major addresses at the international conference on "The Anatomy of Hate" sponsored by the Elie Wiesel Foundation. The city, from taxi drivers to students and professors at Charles V University, was proudly repeating Havel's repudiation of bigotry and violence and affirmation of freedom. Dictatorship is the ultimate expression of contempt for the human person, finding its logical outlet in violence and war. This made my visit to the Alexanderplatz in East Berlin all the more moving, for Communist East Germany had surpassed all other regimes in Eastern Europe in its devotion to militarism, violence toward dissenters, use of secret police and the dossier system to terrorize its subjects. I was in Berlin when the wall closed off escape for East Germans, in August of 1961. And I was in Germany in November of 1989, when the people began to tear the wall down. In June of this year I saw the celebrations of reunification in Berlin, and in late August I saw the people moving back and forth between the two formerly divided sectors of the city. "Checkpoint Charlie" was also down and out. Again and again the haunting question arose: "What is this freedom that the people of Prague and Berlin - along with other populations in Eastern Europe - are saluting so ecstatically?" Their young people look at America - in spite of our crime on the city streets, corrupt politicians, and ominous S & L and other financial

What is Freedom? 2 scams - with the naivete of youth and the purity of heart of the innocent. Perhaps we should turn the question toward ourselves. They have yet to make the mistakes that come upon a society when citizens do not loyally sustain liberty and self-government. The East Europeans simply know that they have survived and are emerging from under slavery in one of its most vicious forms: dictatorship. They are just beginning to learn what we seem to be forgetting rapidly: that in this life the alternative to imposed discipline is not anarchy. The alternative to slavery is not license: true liberty is opposed to both slavery and license. The alternative to dictatorship is the self-discipline, the voluntary self-control of a free people. Freedom is not "de-regulation." Freedom is not the exercise of the power of the corrupt to gouge the society. Freedom is not the "right" of the privileged to take advantage of the needy or the naive. Freedom is not the "right" of the powerful and rich to steal from the poor and helpless. Freedom is not the right of everyone to go to hell in his own way. You can have all of these under dictatorship, violence, militarism and war. What is freedom? Freedom is simply this: the entitlement of free men and women to practice self-discipline, to pursue the good of the commonwealth through voluntary initiatives. The Czechs and the East Germans have to learn that truth, and we Americans have to recover it and reassert it. - Franklin H Littell

What is Freedom? Lest We Forget #558 DATE:9/16/90 THE ECONOMY OF IRAQ

We have some vague idea of the inter-locking economies of Iraq, Europe and America - not to forget Japan - because of the threat of a shortage of oil and gasoline. But the precise details, which generally go unreported, carry a more powerful message. Some of the conservative commentators make a good deal of the fact that the Russians, who were Iraq's chief military supplier for years, have not withdrawn their "advisers" even though they have agreed to support the United Nations' actions. Not one that I have seen has noted that Iraq was Russia's chief source of hard currency with which to buy American wheat. Western governments are also tied up in ways just as far reaching as an oil and gasoline crunch. Italy, for instance, is owed 9.3 billion dollars by Iraq for credit extended by the Italian government to enable Iraqi purchase of military equipment. With the cut-off of the munitions trade with Iraq, Italian factories are reducing production or shutting down - and employees are being released. Fiat has cut the payroll 10%. The ship-building firm Fincantieri is stranded with 11 ships (valued at 2.6 billion dollars) and a burden of unpaid interest. The chemical giant Enimont has cut 2,000 from the payroll.

At the Oslo conference, Guenter Grass cut to the heart of the moral issue in listing as criminals some 70 German companies that had also helped build up the Iraqi dictator - supplying him with poison gas, long-range rockets, etc. Before the war and capture of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein had demanded 10 billion dollars from the rulers of that principality. During the eight years he waged war against Iran, Kuwait and other Arab regimes had poured astronomical sums into his hands. Now the subsidies were cut off. He had built a warfare economy, and after the armistace with Iran could not manage an economy without hostilities. Like many modern dictators, Saddam has reached the point in his dictatorship, violence and militarism when he cannot survive without waging war. Of course he was a murderer from the start: when he came to power with a coup in 1979, he immediately liquidated some of his closest colleagues. This summer he had 16 high officers shot, including 6 generals and 9 colonels: they expressed doubts about the Kuwaiti invasion. Since the slaughter of his Kurdish subjects two years ago, Saddam has found his Air Force restless: he wants aviators who will not hesitate to use poison gas. Except for the Israel air force destruction of his nuclear plant in 1981, which the pious and muddle-headed condemned so quickly at the time, the world now would be facing in Saddam Hussein a dictator just as ruthless as Stalin or Hitler - armed with the atom bomb ( ! ) . We would then be forced to face calamities beside which the personal and financial cost of the military build-up in Saudi Arabia are minor inconveniences. The political style of Saddam Hussein has been evident for some years. The kind of action he would undertake, if he felt pressed, has been predictable. His use of poison gas against the villages of his own Kurdish subjects, his blackmail of his Arab League partners, his

The Economy of Iraq 2 attempt by military assault to steal land from Iran when Iran had lost the sympathy of most nations - all are of one piece. Today Saddam has only the hardline support of outfits like the PLO and the dictatorship of Libya. That too is a piece of the mosaic: in an Early Warning System on potentially genocidal movements or regimes, the old folk saying that "birds of a feather flock together" also has its place. The basic lesson, however, after the very immediate fact that Saddam Hussein must be brought low, is our need to be aware that we cannot make good business arming all kinds of regimes all over the world. We are now in acute danger of paying dearly with American lives for the recklessness with which American companies have been allowed to sell to all and sundry. Not long ago Senator Bob Dole was acclaiming Saddam Hussein as someone we could do business with. As recently as last July the White House lifted export controls on equipment essential to making nuclear explosives and long-range missiles, and Iraq has been paying premiums to scour the markets for this technology. It is true that the State Department "experts" have failed miserably for a decade to articulate an intelligent policy of containing and weakening the Iraqi dictatorship. It is also true that the blame rests - in the USA, and in several other countries as well - with those who put quick profits ahead of loyalty to the cause of liberty and self-government. - Franklin H Littell

The Economy of Iraq Lest We Forget #559 DATE:10/1/90 A SCHOOL FOR AMERICANS

The flood of books about the crisis in American education continues. The Chronicle of Higher Education and other in-house journals carry the latest reports on the changes many colleges and universities are making. The privately run and financed schools are especially anxious, for the rate of closings has increased year by year throughout the last decade. And the middle class, which has carried the support of the churches, synagogues and private schools for generations in America, is being crushed between exemptions for the rich and welfare programs for the poor. With the financial crunch approaching, both privately and publicly financed institutions of higher learning are expanding their staffs for soliciting funds and for communications and public relations. Getting a good press and TV coverage has become very important, regardless of the quality or lack of quality of the educational programs. And finding the right angle for soliciting funds, especially tax moneys, has become an all- consuming passion of administrators. The two chief channels of public largesse are commercialized athletics and defense-related research. A few really good schools, such as the University of Chicago and Emory University, have been strong enough in their commitments to humane and liberal education to eliminate commercialized athletics altogether. Other first-rank schools, like Harvard and Yale, keep their athletic departments on a tight rein. In others, with Temple University the conspicuous example, millions of dollars have been poured into an effort to achieve high standing as a "football school" or "basketball college." Usually this is accompanied by neglect of attention to the needs of the libraries, laboratories, special programs (seminars, conferences, institutes). The requirement that the form of teaching be maintained, whatever the over-all quality, is handled by depending increasingly upon part-timers. Part-timers are often "academic gypsies," through no fault of their own trapped in a bureaucratized higher education scenario where the statistics are more important than the essence of the matter. Part-timers can be hired at low wages, with no benefits such as health care or retirement plans, and dismissed just as indifferently as they are hired. Unhappily, much of higher education in America - in the harsh economy of the arms race and S & L swindles - has been thrown back into the piece-work methods that once dominated the manufacture of shirts and automobiles. If the classes "meet," even though most students are missing and a "cadet" has replaced a mature professor, the statistics can be juggled to demonstrate an impressive body count. Some boards of trustees, with little or no understanding of what the "higher learning" is all about, but with canny experience of running corporations - opening and closing, hiring and firing at will - are taking the lower path. They follow the lead of administrators who have written off real education.

Democratic Education for Americans 2 In recent years, for example, the teaching by part-timers at Temple University has jumped from less than 10% to more than 30%. And the commercialized athletic programs, regardless of the real needs of higher education and its professors, are generously financed. There is an underlying accent of racism when this approach is taken in our large cities, a racism that needs to be faced squarely. The hidden meaning, sometimes muttered in committees and closets: commercialized college athletics provides a path into the big time for black stars; the rest of the young shvarze can get the simple skills they need for jobs without "expensive" liberal and humane education. What about education for citizenship, then? When students see a university run dictatorially, what are they learning about liberty and self-government in a democratic society? When they see those at the top of the control system operating an oligarchy rather than a republic of learning, what are their "models" saying to them? If the catalog of the school talks about "education for democracy," while the school itself is run like an Arab fiefdom or an ante-bellum sugar plantation, what are the students actually learning - white and black students alike? And if those that are teaching them are supine, licking the dust on their crawl to submit to "the domination of arrogance" (see the Kol Nidre service prayers!), are the students learning to be upright Americans - or serfs? - Franklin H Littell

Democratic Education for Americans 3 Lest We Forget #560 DATE:10/8/90 MIXED MESSAGES FROM LOUISIANA

New Orleans. With the end of David Duke's campaign to become U S Senator from Louisiana, Americans can breathe a short sigh of relief and get on with nomral life. But not for too long. There are a few things about the vote that are worth marking down for future reference. First, David Duke. Running in the Republican primary, the man with a name that "sounds American" for 44% of the vote, even though he was repudiated by the national party. Fortunately, perhaps, his experienced opponent - incumbent Senator J Bennett Johnson - also has a name that "sounds American." The ethnic prejudice factor cut along only one line: black and white. Duke, who two years ago got less than 50,000 votes for President on the Populist Party ticket, ran again on a barely disguised racist platform. Although he fobbed off his earlier activities as a KKK and neo-Nazi agitator as youthful indiscretions, he had not changed. He ran his campaign this time on a double-tiered platform that the most dim-witted redneck could not misunderstand: race prejudice and resentment of "headquarters." In appealing to popular resentment against "city hall" (the state and Federal governments), he struck a deep chord of response in the electorate. In appealing to racist bigotry against black citizens, he invaded our uneasy dreams of the American future with flashes of the nightmares of the American past. In the background of his rallies sounded on memory's ear the distant roars of lynch mobs. Duke pounded the drum against affirmative action, against welfare programs (especially for unmarried black mothers) - and most of all against "the politicians." "The politicians" have given us higher taxes. "The politicians" have allowed the Savings & Loan swindle. It was a powerful mix of appeals, and resentment embodied in David Duke got 60% of the white vote. And, although the national Republican leadership wrote Duke off as an embarrassment, as a populist he was in line with Ronald Reagan's kind of campaigning: run for government office by running against the government. By appealing in addition to popular anxieties about change, even in defeat Duke turned himself into a major factor on the Louisiana political map. Two years ago he was a nobody, with only a small corps of hard-core followers. Today he has captured a significant sector of the electorate, with between 75% and 80% of the registered voters going to the polls. The real hero of the day, however, was Ben Baget Jr. He was the chosen Republican candidate, but his reasonable voice couldn't be heard above the din of the demagogue Duke's rallies. The last pre-election survey showed him with only 8% of the vote, while Duke had 26%. Louisiana has a law that unless one candidate runs above 50% in the primaries, a runoff must be held. To close Duke out of a runoff, and to save the honor of his state and his country, Baget withdrew two days before the vote. Bennett Johnston then

David Duke 2 won with 54% - a close call in a day when incumbents have a 90% advantage over any competition. We can be glad that Duke was defeated. But the percentage of Americans who are frustrated, leaderless, confused - and apparently eager to turn back the clock - puts a damper on our rejoicing.

- Franklin H Littell

David Duke Lest We Forget #561 DATE:10/12/90 MAINLINE ANTISEMITISM AGAIN, BUT NOT SO "GENTLEMANLY" Last spring (issue of March 29th) this columnist reported on a scandalous display of culture-antisemitism in a Main Line church in Bryn Mawr. Last week we had an even more blatant display of culture-antisemitism in a Main Line newspaper, The Suburban (Wayne PA). An editorial in The Suburban, entitled "A 'Choice' - for Death?" is to any student of the phenomenon a conspicuous example of prejudice, ignorance, and slovenly journalism. The long editorial, written in support of the re-election of State Representative Bob Flick, attacked candidate Lisa Palfy Kohn at a level rarely seen even in this age of sprawling negative campaigning. Some of the points made in the editorial show* lazy writing. For instance, Lisa Palfy Kohn is not a Jew as charged. A simple telephone call would have cleared that up, and a conscientious writer would have made that call. But that would have prevented a vulgar exploitation of the tragedy of the Holocaust to argue a sectarian religious position on the abortion legislation issue. The gentile writer rushed to rebuke Ms Kohn for not living up to her heritage of "Jewish extraction or belief" (a tactic revealing what specialists call Kulturantisemitismus.. Then he denied, as his prejudice made him, a point upon which every Shoah scholar - gentile, Christian or Jew - agrees: the uniqueness of the Holocaust. "Some Jews are offended at the comparison, as if the Holocaust was unique. It was nothing of the sort." Then the writer expanded his vulgar misuse of the Holocaust theme: "The Nazi Holocaust lasted less than a dozen years; the new American Holocaust has already lasted 17 years, with no end in sight." He thought to drive the point home by inferring that Adolf Hitler simply added the Jews to a disposal list that already included the unborn. The statement is false: under the Third Reich, abortion was vigorously punished as a crime. Having confused other issues, the writer then contended that a fetus is a baby. We may wave aside the census, which only began two hundred years ago; but even in the Middle Ages no one of repute argued such a position. The related theme - that an individual is present in the womb from the moment of conception- is to be sure the opinion of Thomas Aquinas (1225-74 C.E.), as it was the opinion of other ancient greats such as Confucius (c551- c479 B.C). That opinion is, however, contrary to what biological science teaches. It is also contrary to what many churches teach about the separation of the new individual from the mother and his/her acceptance into the family and society as a human person. The writer was so blinded by a sectarian religious dogma that he could not be fair to persons of other opinions, Jews or Christians. It is nothing but a lie to say that to be "pro- choice" is to be "pro-abortion." No one is pro-abortion, any more than anyone is pro-drunkenness. The issue is not anti- abortion vs. pro-choice: the issue is abortion legislation.

Mainline Antisemitism Again 2 Who makes the decision whether to go full term or to abort the fetus? That is the issue. Are the privacies and liberties of American citizens further to be diminished by government intervention, judicial or legislative, Federal or state? In a century of burgeoning and arrogant State power, why is the State a better point of reference than a sacred condominium of woman, husband, rabbi/priest/minister, doctor? Let those who argue for expanded State power take their position openly and honestly! In the 1920s the Protestant churchmen had their experiment with Prohibition; apparently the Roman Catholic hierarchy how is determined to have its way with another prohibition, one that also invades privacy and attempts to legislate morality. Legislation on the abortion issue can be argued pro and con as a matter of public policy, set after informed debate. But the case for government control is not made by mis-stating the issues and sneering at persons. Perhaps, to guard my own back from the street-fighters, and to avoid being called "rabbi" by someone who doesn't think it a term of honor (as I do), I should make clear that in this matter I write as a clergyman of six decades' standing in my church (United Methodist). - Franklin H Littell

Mainline Antisemitism Again Lest We Foroet #562 DATE:10/20/90 ANSCHLUSS IN LEBANON While the U N Assembly was carrying on its favorite diversion of bashing Israel, another major banditry was accomplished by an Arab dictator. Not to allow dictator Saddam Hussein of Iraq alone to display the role of strutting conqueror which the Arab masses so much admire, dictator Hafez al-Assad has finished his conquest of the Lebanon. Kuweit and Lebanon both down the drain - and those who gather at the green table at the UN can find nothing more important to do than to put Israel on the griddle because of its difficulties in Military Government! Neither did the "statesmen" have time, while trying to calculate how best to penetrate a stubborn Israel with an "investigating committee" that would come with its mind made up already, to mention the slaughter of several hundred prisoners of war by the conquering Syrian army. No, their eyes were focused on the 21 rioters (or was it 19?) that got shot while throwing stones at Jewish worshippers at the Wall during Succoth! One is tempted to give up. It seems hardly worth the effort any more to point out that Israel has carried for years the burden of Military Government simply because the defeated Arab League enemies- all of them illegitimate regimes, whether despots or dictators - refuse to sit down and make peace. Neither the U S State Department nor the media seems to know any longer the difference between a legitimate and an illegitimate government - and to direct their supports and their criticisms accordingly. Military Government is a miserable business under the best of circumstances, and it is doubly miserable when unrepentant aggressors look for your religious holidays - Yom Kippur, Succoth, Pesach next? - to launch new assaults on your right to exist. In August of 1989, after taking over the leadership of an invaded Lebanon at the request of the last President, who had succeeded the previous President (assassinated), General Michel Aoun accepted without any reservations the UN cease-fire plan. Beirut, once a city of 1.5 millions, lay in ruins - with less than 150,000 crouching in the rubble. Syria immediately announced that it had a "base capable of confronting all foreign pressure," strengthened its blockade and mounted an offensive with 10,000 fighters against the mountain "gateway" Souk el Gharb. Aoun, a patriot, defended his turf but launched no new offensives. The enemies and invaders of Lebanon have had a year to finish picking the bones of a once beautiful and flourishing country. Of course, Lebanon has been be-devilled since it beginnings as an independent nation by the overriding loyalties of a clan-controlled society, with chieftains not unlike the warlords that once governed China and divided its turf. Many of them have been in the pay of foreign regimes. (While Syria was launching its offensive after Aoun accepted the UN cease-fire a year ago, Walid Jumblat - Druse leader, Hawi of the Lebanese Communist Party, Nabih Berri of the Shiite Amal forces and others were meeting with Syria's leaders in Damascus to plan Aoun's defeat.) Elias Hrawi, the present "President," was put in place by outsiders. At the end of the military campaign of the last year, Aoun's last redoubte has been smashed by flights of Syrian warplanes and over-run

Anschluss in Lebanon 2 by Syrian tanks. He has sought refuge in the French Embassy. Hundreds of his followers were slaughtered after their surrender - contrary of course to the most elementary rules of land warfare. The silence of the UN is typical. The same UN Assembly that in the summer of 1982 condemned Israel (!) because one Lebanese clan's troops slaughtered several hundred PLO outsiders cannot muster enough energy to condemn flagrant breaches of the Hague Convention and atrocities like those for which German aggressors were punished at Nuremberg: crimes against humanity and breaches of the rules of land warfare. Syria has never recognized Lebanon's right to exist except as a province of "Greater Syria." After years of bribery of clan leaders and interference of other kinds, Syria in 197 6 invaded the Lebanon. Nearly one hundred thousand died, and Syria - meeting a stout resistance in some coastal sectors and warned by other regimes- withdrew to the eastern half of the country. After dozens of broken cease-fires and numerous ploys with puppet chieftains, interspersed with propaganda blasts against Israel, Syria's dictator has now completed the conquest of the broken land - a "desert" that the aggressors and the appeasers now salute as "peace." For an American, a most wretched aspect of all this is the role of the White House and State Department. They threw away a stable Lebanon, rescued from terrorist invaders, when it was handed to them in 1982. They apparently gave the signal to Assad that the USA would not interfere. Assad, like Hitler in 1938 at the time of the Austrian Anschluss. had nothing to fear from the "free world." - F H Littell

Anschluss in Lebanon 3 ?u

Lest We Forget #563 DATE:10/21/90 A SOCIETY WHERE "ANYTHING GOES"

The Maplethorpe Case in Cincinnati, decided to the satisfaction of advocates of "artistic freedom," raises as many questions as it answers. Like the 2 Live Crew Case in Fort Lauderdale, also decided in favor of "artistic freedom," the underlying issues are far more important than what meets the eye. We might again give attention to the torturous misinterpretation of the "free speech" liberty which the First Amendment guarantees citizens of the republic. The babblers and sloganizers have wheeled out the misinterpretation whenever a public indecency case arises - as though the God-given liberty to participate in making the decisions that govern our common life were my right to offend or intimidate other citizens! The ACLU sloganizer in Fort Lauderdale greeted the charge against 2 Live Crew: "Is this America? These things happen in totalitarian societies..." George Bush fell into the same misinterpretation of the "free speech" protection when he opposed the bill to limit excessive exploitation of children's TV by advertisers. Bush was, unfortunately, more justified in his wrong-headedness about "free speech," since the Rehnquist Supreme Court - never slow to assist corporate interests- has already ruled that "free speech" protection covers anonymous political advertising by companies. The point of this writing, however, is to raise another question: Is anything that isn't a crime all right? Are there no limits to behavior except the possibility of a criminal sentence? Have civility and decency no public significance any more? The issue is the same as the invasion of the suburbs by "adult" book and film stores. Parents who work, who pay their taxes, who invest in their children's education, who belong to synagogue or church, who tend their lawn and bushes and perhaps a little garden, who probably are making payments on an automobile and a house, resent the invasion of their living space by individuals whose only interest is in making money quickly. They feel toward the invasion of "adult" stores and penetration of the sound waves by prurient materials just the way they feel toward the invasion of school yards by drug pushers. They resent the preciousness and snobbishness of defenders of "artistic merit" who become most vocal as members or fellow-travelers of the homosexual network. There is something profoundly unhealthy in a situation where the loudest voices for "art" are raised to advocate "art" whose chief merit seems to be that it offends the people who are paying for it. No wonder the ordinary citizen thinks it a cheap shot, and resents it! For all of the pious posturing about "free speech" and "free expression," based on a misinterpretation of both the history and the political philosophy which gave us the First Amendment in the first place, there is only one basic motive at work: money, as much and as quickly as possible. The Gospel of Greed, which has gained so much ground during the last decade in America, covers a multitude of wrongs.

The 2 Live Crew and S & L scam may seem quite different, but at heart the issues are the same. The disc company president who promoted 2 Live Crew, who claimed to be devoted to "free speech," is in

A Society Where "Anything Goes" 2 truth devoted to the fast buck. Like the S & L thieves, who will cost the American taxpayers for generations to come, the Maplethorpe exhibitors and 2 Live Crew outfit have one interest: to make money, regardless of the effect on the society, regardless of the consequences for generations to come. In an age when "anything goes," so long as you manage to keep out of jail, such elements are tossed to the top of the waves like foam and scum. Add to the list the Motion Picture Association of America, who during the flurry about war in the gulf and economic crises here at home managed to remove the "X" rating from movies. Both the National Council of Churches and the U S Catholic Conference have condemned the movie industry's sleight of hand as "arrogant and ill-advised." In a joint statement they charged that the industry "has caved in to the commerical interests of those who are attempting to get sexually exploitative material into general theatrical release." Who listens to the churches? Who cares what the tax-payers think? Certainly not the sophisticated "art" critics! Certainly not the directors of the S & Ls, floating to earth under their golden parachutes! Let "freedom" ring! - while our liberties, along with other old-fashioned qualities such as privacy, decency, civility, propriety and honesty are sacrificed on the altars of license and greed. - Franklin H Littell

A Society Where "Anything Goes" Lest We Forget #564 DATE:10/25/90 "THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING." (Where are the Americans?)

Jerusalem. As I walked this afternoon the path through the park between Yemin Moshe and the King David Hotel, I caught myself humming an old tune. What was it?! ...surely from Thomas Moore, that most melodious of Irish poets. What were the words? "I feel like one who treads alone some banquet hall deserted..." The association of thoughts was stunning. The streets were full of cars, and the Israelis were going about their business with their usual vigor. But where are the Americans? In the last two days I have talked with enough Israeli friends and read enough in the media to realize that everyone is asking the same question. A former student of mine, with a daughter scheduled to complete her active Army service in March and a son just beginning his years of duty, commented on the virtually empty hotels. Another young friend gave me the official statistics on a collapsed tourism. (She is scheduled to pick up her gas mask this evening.) I am here for the Council meeting of Yad Vashem, but the spontaneous conversations are more on present perils than on the catastrophic disasters of a half-century ago. Saddam Hassan, with his chanting, screaming mobs that call for "the blood of the Jews," is more harshly outlined in our present consciousness than Adolf Hitler. Yet the face is the same: the fearsome, demonic, harshly outlined, unashamed countenance of unrestrained Evil. Where are the Americans?! I learned that great delegations from my country (including one from Philadelphia) - mobilized and pledged on the slogan "We Are One People" - have cancelled their trips. In short, the Americans have waked up to the fact that the Israelis have lived with for years: there's a war on, and it is getting nastier. They stay home, and they telephone their youngsters who are in Israel as students or in volunteer services to come on home. In the meantime, through other channels, great numbers of young Americans are already facing Iraq's dictator and his allies in planes and tanks and motorized units - eyeball to eyeball. The rise of Saddam Hassan as the populist champion of Holy War has introduced a new and highly volatile factor into the Middle East scene. He has successfully split most of the Arab masses from their unpopular and despotic rulers. And he has done it by making the move favored by every Eastern Mediterranean knave and bandit for forty years: when caught or cornered, attack Israel - at least by threats, if not immediately by planes and tanks. Saddam's strutting and preaching has breathed new life into the declining fortunes of the PLO. Arafat was the first voice among the Arab League Councilmen to side vigorously with Iraq. His "Palestinians" made King Hussein of Jordan go down on his knees toward Baghdad. His "Palestinians" were allowed by Saddam a free hand in robbing, pillaging and murdering - taking over the houses and other properties left behind by Kuwaitis who have managed to get out of their country alive. Once again in East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and Gaza Arafat's terrorists are proudly proving that they can be just as blood-thirsty toward civilians as the Muslim Fundamentalists. The al-Aksa preacher who fomented the stone-throwing attack on the thousands who crowded the Wall at Succoth, an attack that led to the deaths of some of the attackers, cried out in his sermon: "Kill the Jews!" Some of his young listeners took him literally. For those who fled the hail of stones, some of them streaming blood, and for those who - horrified - watched it over TV, the scene evoked memories of bloodied Jews fleeing homicidal mobs under the Russian Tsars and under the late Fuehrer of the German Third Reich. They are understandably outraged when the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish media feature only those killed or injured when the attack is repulsed. For their part, they are happy to have had policemen at the Temple Mount who acted to protect the intended victims, unlike the tsarist police and the Nazi police that stood idly by and let the mobs do their bloody work. While the Americans, unless under military orders, keep their distance, the Russians continue to arrive in great numbers. They are eagerly doing the work, however menial, that Arabs from the territories before the Intifada War came daily to do. They work hard. Large numbers of them are hi-tech trained. They have turned their backs on the Russia of the Imperial and Bolshevik eras, and are staking their lives on the future. My prayer this evening is that my Americans will once again in numbers bet on the future. If the new Hitler Saddam can use hostages to shield his military posts, then those who love liberty and self-government and are privileged to carry American passports can volunteer their presence among our threatened friends. After the IDF, Israel's second shield against her enemies is the continuing and active presence of numbers of free- world Europeans and Americans - Jews as well as Christians.

- Franklin H Littell Lest WE Forget #565 DATE:11/11/90 THE DAYS OF BROKEN GLASS

The "Days of Remembrance" come around on the Jewish calendar: 1991 - April 11 (Thursday), 1992 - April 30 (Thursday), 1992 - April 18 (Sunday), 1994 - April 8 (Friday), and so on until the year 2000 (C.E.): May 2. Yom Hashoah is appropriately marked on the Jewish calendar, although large numbers of gentiles (including many Christians) now join in the memorial observances in America. The "Days of Broken Glass" come around, appropriately enough, on the calendar of Christendom: November 9-11 (A.D.). The difference between Yom Hashoah and Kristallnacht is thus fixed forever in our calendars, as it should be in our minds.

To be sure, there are Jewish friends and colleagues who object to the use of the term "Kristallnacht," because it was the Nazi expression for the mob violence the Party instigated on November 9, 1938. There was indeed a kind of bullyboy swagger, a brand of redneck iconoclasm toward the bourgeois German Jews in the Nazi choice of the term. The hostility to gentility, to plate glass windows, to fine chinaware and ornate scrolls was a typical mark of vulgar populism then - as it is now.

But the term has joined the language, and Kristallnacht can just as well remind us of the shattering of illusions and the destruction of the beautiful scenes of the world of dreams. As the historians of the Holocaust point out, those days of November 9-11, 1938 were the watershed in the Nazi assault on the Jewish people. And they were the watershed as well in the complicity of the "Christian nations" in Hitler's plan for the destruction of the Jewish people. Let Kristallnacht be remembered also for the shattering of innocence, for the collapse of the idea of inevitable progress! Yom Hashoah and Kristallnacht have two different moods and meanings. Yom Hashoah is the time of remembrance, of the reading of psalms, of meditation, of mourning, of singing el moleh rachamim. Kristallnacht is the time of teaching the lessons. And the most basic lesson of all is this: It didn't have to happen! The destruction of European Jewry - with the whole murderous season of World War II in Europe - was possible because of the weakness of the non-Nazi leadership elites within Germany and the degeneracy of political leadership in the large countries outside Germany. The new united Germany has made a significant choice for the "Day of German Unity." There were those in the West who wanted June 17th, the date of the uprising of students and workers in East Germany in 1953 - put down by two Russian tank divisions. There were those patriotic spirits who wanted November 9th, the "day the wall came down" and a choice date for celebrating German reunification - and burying in the dustbin of history the other November 9thsin German history.

Hitler and Ludendorff led their gang of veterans in Munich in the attempted Putsch of 1923 on the 5th anniversary of the date Imperial Germany sued for peace after defeat in World War I. The loyalty of the Munich police to the Weimar Republic thwarted

Days of Broken Glass 2 their attempted coup. Fifteen years later, to the day, Hitler and his Nazis instigated popular mob actions all over Germany (now remembered as Kristallnacht), to bury the memory of their failed Putsch. With an upsurge of nationalism, the Germans might have picked November 9, 1989 as a day for burying unpleasant memories - and forgetting unpleasant lessons. To their credit, they did not. October 2nd was fixed as the day of patriotic observance, their "July 4th" so to speak. November 9th is thus left open, unburied, a day to be dug in for the lessons of history. Those lessons are important for the Germans, as they make a new beginning in a reunited country. They are also important for Britons and Frenchmen and Russians and Americans, as each people tries to learn to identify potentially genocidal movements (Early Warning System, and to strengthen those systems and structures within a country that protect the right of the people to self-government and also the liberties of individuals and groups to participate openly and without intimidation in the self-governing process. Kristallnacht - like Yom Hashoah, but for different reasons - belongs on every American calendar.

- Franklin H Littell

Days of Broken Glass Lest We Forget #566 DATE:11/13/90 UNITED GERMANY AND REACTIONARY POLITICS

The fact of a united Germany, the most powerful economic force in Europe, brings to the front burner the question of reactionary politics in the German states. Whether those Germans who have learned nothing during the decades of two world wars and two dictatorships can achieve significant political power suddenly becomes very important. Have the Nazis a chance to gain real power? Do those who want to turn the clock back represent a "Silent Majority." There have indeed been many individuals and groups who held their tongues during the years of Allied occupation, an occupation that continued until a few months ago in Berlin. (No one seriously challenges the idea that Berlin will again be the national capital of a united Germany.) And of course we have been most aware of the progressive elements in the Federal Republic - those that delivered the political support that made the Restitution Agreement work from the time Konrad Adenauer and David Ben Gurion drew it up, those who launched the vigorous programs associated with the Councils of Christians and Jews, those who placed textbooks in the high schools to teach the Holocaust, analyze antisemitism, laud the contributions of the Jewish people to German history and culture, and so on. They were our kind of people and by and large they dominated the West German cultural and political scenes for four decades.

But was there another Germany, a "Silent Majority," that kept silent as long as it was expeditious to be silent and is now demanding to be heard?

Some of the signs are bad. October 3rd was not greeted with enthusiasm by the spokesmen of the Federation of the Expelled, with a membership estimated at 1.5 millions or more. This federation is put together of Landsmannschaften comprised of Germans who at the end of World War II were driven out of their ancestral homes in the Baltic states, in Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia), in Pomerania, East Prussia, in the Volga basin and the Caucasus. The ancestors of some of these German refugees had been in eastern territories for six and seven hundred years, and irredentist feelings are strong among them. They do not want the Oder-Neisse border with Poland - and that is only the beginning of what they do not want. In East Germany, as in Russia, there turns out to be a spiritual underworld of considerable vehemence. In recent weeks there have been many incidents involving demonstrations with Nazi paraphernalia, antisemitic graphiti in public places, roughneck tactics bringing a mild level of terrorism into the political forum. In looking at the emergence of reactionary political forces, nothing has been more anxiety-producing than the recent victories of the "National Democratic Party" in several German states. The ideological leader of the NDP, a genuinely neo-Nazi party, is Adolf von Thadden. Thadden's older half-sister Elisabeth was executed for her part in the July 20, 1944 attempt on Hitler's life. Elisabeth's brother Reinold was founder and President of the largest Christian laymen's movement in the world, the Kirchentag. After the death of Elisabeth and Reinold's mother, the old Pommeranian Junker who was their father married a much younger woman, a Hitler enthusiast; Adolf was born of that union. Adolf has been an unrepentent Nazi for

German Reactionary Politics 2 decades, and his older half-brother Reinold added the estate name- "Trieglaff" -to his name to distance himself from the younger half- brother of whom he was thoroughly ashamed. Elisabeth died a martyr - a Christian who opposed Hitler and the idolatrous Fuehrerstaat to the death. Reinold, 30 years older than his half-brother, died full of honors from the Christian churches and democratic governments - including the French and Belgians, as well as the Bonn republic. Adolf, going on seventy, is the chief mentor of a resurgent German Nazism. The German tragedy, with its present ambiguities, can be summed up in the history of this single family. When all is said and done, the most dangerous thing that has happened recently is not the rise of neo-Nazi splinter movements - but the court decision that gave them an open door to power. For decades the irredentist Land smannschaf ten and small beginnings by the Communists and Nazis were kept in check by the "Threshold Law" passed by the German parliament. No party could have representation in Federal or Land legislatures unless it received the votes of 5% or more of the electorate. Suddenly, on September 30, with national elections coming up for a united Germany, the Supreme Court in Karlsruhe ruled that the 5% rule infringed on the rights of smaller parties. This single ruling, after decades of common sense politics that held terrorist political movements in check, promises to undo responsible republican government in Germany. The door to a doubtful future has been thrown wide open, and Thadden's Nazis are rushing to take advantage of the opening. - Franklin H Littell

German Reactionary Politics 3 f '

Lest We Forget #567 DATE:11/21/90 ROTTEN APPLES, TROIKAS AND SCAPE-GOATS

Americans generally like the idea that if something goes wrong an individual can be named responsible. If the wrong is bad enough, he can be punished. Things will then go forward, onward and upward. We have presently before us a good many indications that this approach to error and evil is wrong-headed. What about those situations where everyone has been either complicit or complacent, where the very structures of power and the exercise of power accomplish great wrong? After the war a good many people - especially Germans but also others - liked to lean back with the thought that the great wrongs done by the Third Reich were due to "them." "They" (Hitler and his coterie) did it. No serious student of the Shoah takes this position today. All recognize that there was a massive and sweeping breakdown of systems and structures. This does not mean that no one is responsible! On the contrary, it means that leaders and practitioners of the churches, the universities, the legal profession, the medics and psychiatrists, businesses and corporations all share in the responsibility for what was done. According to the unused opportunities for resistance that were given them, and according to the degree that they gave open or tacit approval to the regime, all are guilty. The idea that when something fundamentally wrong occurs "a few rotten apples" are to blame is an illusion and - in terms of the chance of a better future - an intellectual dead end. For months Michael Milken has been one of the central figures in focusing our discontent with the collapse of the economic boom. A large staff of ambitious young lawyers and investigators set out to untangle the story and show us what we would like to believe: that the de-regulated pursuit of money in the centers of high finance - supreme in imaginative risk-taking for quick profit and contemptuous of long- range planning - is generally a good thing. Unhappily, the story goes, a few "rotten apples" have to be removed from the barrel to save the blessed whole. Except for a few minor technicalities, the only negative thing turned up about Michael Milken was that he was more clever, more agile, more imaginative, and more facile at turning a fast buck that most of his competitors. It will be a shame indeed if the desperate need for structural reform and control in the field of high finance is now derailed, while a scape-goat or two is sacrificed. The Russians have long had a parable about a troika that is racing across the frozen lake, pursued by a pack of ravenous wolves. At some point, to slow down the pursuers and salvage the escape, the baby is thrown out of the sled. Catching Michael Milken out on technicalities, in a pursuit that has been blemished by rather shocking prosecutive fishing expeditions and press releases which tried him in public, will not alter one whit the fact that the systems and values and structures and basic rules in a game where he was a Class A player are the basic problem. In a fundamental sense, concentrating so much attention and energy on him and his fate is at most diversionary.

Take the second scenario: the public hearing on the "Keating

Rotten Apples, Troikas, and Scape-Goats 2 Five." Again, for many months the media has concentrated on the story of how and when and where Senators Cranston, DeConcini, Glenn, McCain and Riegle accepted too much money into their election kitties in return for doing too many favors for one of the master villains of the Savings & Loan scam. Although there seems little doubt but that Kenneth Keating himself was guilty of selling Indian Snake Medicine to a large number of gullible investors, and that some of the things he did may be found to have broken the law, it needs to be noted that the Senators bid fair to be scape-goats to public indignation. We don't like the thought that posts in government, whose incumbents are supposed to guard the public interest, are for sale. Or at least, now that it has become a public scandal, we feel we need to say something about those who were most reckless in the way they went about it. The fact is, though, that there are few clear standards and almost no laws to indicate where the boundaries between the legal and the illegal lie. With the advent of TV, vastly expensive and powerful beyond measure, all Senators have had to expand the borders of what they once could countenance in good conscience. If Jesse Helms is allowed to spend nearly twenty million dollars to win, and then do it only by means of a lying blitz ad accusing his opponent of saying something he never said, what's wrong with the relatively modest collections of the "Keating Five?" Isn't now the time to set strict legal limits to what candidates for the House and the Senate can spend to get elected, and make them fight for their jobs by arguing the issues? - Franklin H Littell

Rotten Apples, Troikas, and Scape-Goats 3 1 i H

Lest We Forget #568 DATE:11/30/90

Gideon Hausner died on November 15th in Jerusalem. As he joins the other great champions of the people Israel in sacred memory, it is right that Jews and Christians alike should recall what he accomplished. In sum, his prosecution of Adolf Eichmann in 19 61 educated the entire civilized world to the measure of the crime we now call "the Holocaust." The Nuremberg trials, to be sure, were a landmark in the development of International Law. Major Nazi criminals were found guilty of ignoring the rules of land warfare affirmed in international conventions. They were also tried under ancient standards set against "crimes against humanity." The Eichmann case, however, established some of the important groundrules in confronting a newly defined crime: genocide. Genocide was a word invented in 1943 by the refugee scholar Rafael Lemkin, but it did not become a crime punishable at law until the Genocide Convention received a sufficient number of national signatories (1951). In fact, the crime of genocide is still in that intermediate stage between the point when human conscience has reached the level of decreeing something a crime and the point when the criminals are regularly caught and punished. Gideon Hausner, as Attorney General of Israel, staked out the first great landmark in the education of the human conscience against genocide. While the case of John Demjanjuk ("Ivan the Terrible") is under appeal from the death sentence, and while rightwing propagandists like Pat Buchanan try to confuse public opinion in the United States as to the nature of the crime of genocide, we do well to remember how difficult it is to reach a new level of conscience and law on any front - duelling, widow-burning, infanticide, slavery... Gideon Hausner electrified the whole proceeding against Eichmann by opening with the reminder: "I am not standing alone. With me are six million accusers, but they cannot rise to their feet and point an accusing finger." By giving the case a deep moral dimension and an historical setting, as well as by his competence in handling the precise details of an individual case, he educated the thinking and feeling gentile world. Dr Hausner's prosecution of Eichmann was also important in the education of Israelis. Although Yom Hashoah had been made a calendar day, and although Yad Vashem was on its way to becoming the premier world center of memorial, research and publication on the Shoah, the watershed event had not fully entered the sense of identity of Israeli youth. There was of course private family history, with many children somewhat aware of the tragic experiences of parents and grandparents. But it was the Eichmann trial that made the younger generation conscious of the historical importance of the event to the Jewish people. After the Eichmann trial, Holocaust education also became a regular portion of education in the Israeli schools. Although his sterling role in the Eichmann Case placed Gideon Hausner on the world stage, he made other significant contributions to the development of conscience and public law. He was a public citizen in the sound sense, and with his gifted wife Yehudith played an important part in the tightly-knit social, educational, cultural and political life of Jerusalem.

Gideon Hausner Tribute 2 From 19 69 he was Chairman of Yad Vashem, and it was in that connection that I first came to know him well: he nominated me to the government of Israel to be the first non-Jewish member of the Council of Yad Vashem. In my own mind, his analysis and practical recommendations in confronting terrorism are as substantive as his contributions to the law on genocide. Some years ago he addressed the Honolulu convention of the International Association of Trial Lawyers, and on that occasion he diagnosed the problem and proposed a treaty between the democratic powers to deal with it. That was the year he was our guest speaker at a Philadelphia conference on Holocaust education, also stopping on his way to Hawaii to receive an honorary degree from Hebrew Union College. At the time, terrorism was no problem to either the Communist powers or the Arab League regimes: they were exporting terrorism to others, to undermine self-governing and libertarian societies. The guidelines he set are sound today, however, and the moral fervor and intellectual precision with which he exposed the challenge of anarchy to liberty, of the rule of the jungle to civil order, were exemplary. Gideon Hausner's book Justice in Jerusalem tells the story of the trial of a master terrorist in factual detail. Eichmann was a key figure in a terrorist movement (the German Nazi Party) that - having come to power in the Third Reich - actually carried out the policies that its operational style made predictable from the start. Dr Hausner's contribution was to push out the parameters of the rule of law to include sectors where formerly the jungle has prevailed. - Franklin H Littell

Gideon Hausner Tribute 3 Lest We Forget #569 DATE:12/7/90 "PLAGIARISM" AND MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR

Now that the flurry has settled, we may profitably take a good look at the charge of "plagiarism" levelled against Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr. As a Nobel Laureate, as the great leader of the march of America's black citizens to claim their rights, as the outstanding champion of Non-Violent Direct Action, as preacher and orator he made a shining target. The arrows have come from several directions. The pained young black scholar who felt he had to release "evidence" wins our sympathy, if not agreement. The mean-spirited rejoicing of self-styled "conservatives" was to be expected. But in a calmer mood, what actually happened? The first thing to realize is that the concept of "plagiarism" is at most 150 years old. It emerged from the "Historical Method" developed in Professor Leopold von Ranke's Seminar at the University of Berlin. Strict distinctions were made between oral reports, primary and secondary sources, and other kinds of evidences. It was only a hundred years ago that some authors, led by Charles Dickens, pursued the matter far enough to get copyright laws to protect the author's rights in what he created. Fifty years ago many nations still did not recognize the copyrights of authors, any more than they acknowledged the patent rights of inventors. (The Russian Pobieda manufactured after the war was an exact copy of the Volkswagon, without either acknowledgement or payment to the German firm. And for decades in East Berlin you could buy sets of Western authors- beautifully printed and bound - for a tenth of the cost in the West. The authors, of course, received no payments.) Before these recent developments the general principle was that Truth and public utterance belonged to everyone. Almost all of the great writers of the pre-modern age copied each other, paraphrased relentlessly, and seldom acknowledged indebtedness. John Wesley, for instance, published a whole abridged library for his young preachers - with no attention to copyright (which didn't then exist at law), and little attention to pin-pointing the sources of what he considered valuable and edifying material. There is a bitter fight going on now among publishers and electronic communication companies, in which the property rights to material - not the author's rights but the company's rights- are being strengthened to the point of threatening open discourse. This is the reason, behind the scenes, why the King "plagiarism" has been given so much attention in the media. I have personal reasons for writing, as well as professional. Martin Luther King Jr was a friend of mine. I knew him at Boston University, and I knew his doctoral adviser. I participated in the founding meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and marched in some of the famous demonstrations. I rejoiced with millions of other Americans when he preached the greatest sermon in America in the 20th century, in August of 1963 in Washington DC: "I Have a Dream!" Jack Boozer was a friend of mine, a former colleague at Emory University and a longtime participant in the Annual Scholars' Conference on the Church Struggle and the Holocaust. He too held Martin Luther King Jr in affection and admiration. I admired his decision, and that of his widow Ruth, not to let his interest be used by Martin's enemies and the enemies of the civil rights movement. The first thing that occurred to me when I saw the report was "Where was the adviser?" Boozer's dissertation on Paul Tillich and King's dissertation on Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Weiman were written under the same adviser, at virtually the same time. Then I realized that neither Ph.D. essay was then published, which would have been a different matter - in the academic scale of values - from the distribution and sharing of typed materials produced in Seminar. If there was too much sharing of data, it was primarily the responsibility of the dissertation director (adviser) to say so and to require deletion and re-writing. According to the Stanford press release, Dr King expressed his thanks to Dr Boozer generally and copied some of his sentences from time to time without carefully footnoting each citation from the other manuscript. If that satisfied the adviser, Professor Harold DeWolf of Boston University (now deceased), I think it a tempest in a teapot to make so much of it. Martin Luther King Jr demonstrated amply that he was capable of enormously important creative work and originality. Maybe he should have shown more in his typed dissertation. 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Before, during and after the trial of "Ivan the Terrible," otherwise known as John Demjanjuk, some of the organizations in the American-Ukrainian network have tried to claim he is a victim of racist persecution. The Ukrainian Roman Catholics, like the Croatian Roman Catholics, were especially open to the Nazi exploitation of religious appeals. In Yugoslavia, out of the Croatians arose the Ustasa - who murdered Serbian Orthodox clergy and laymen, gypsies and Jews with egual enthusiasm. Yugoslavia, with a significant island of Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was also the area where the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem recruited thousands of Muslim volunteers to fight for Hitler. Hitler's puppet Ante Pavelic headed a Croatian satrapy regime as vicious as the Slovakian puppet regime headed by Monsignor Josef Tiso. Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Ukraine are today torn by ancient religious antagonisms, with the traditional close connection of church and state a powerful force for instability in all three cases. The continuing advocacy of John Demjanjuk's interests, although he was found guilty by a court as just as can be found any place in the world, shows clearly how the exploitation of religious prejudice can be used to confuse counsel and exacerbate feelings. Some time ago we were approached in the Philadelphia Center to ally ourselves with the "Ukrainian National Congress." They claimed that their people had suffered as much as the Jews and that as a "fellow-Christian" I should join them in emphasizing "the Ukrainian Holocaust." Later I received a petition on behalf of John Demjanjuk, which I did not join in. I noticed that Pat Buchanan, the rightwing journalist, did so - and appealed to religious prejudice in his columns attacking Israel's justice. According to Boswell's Samuel Johnson, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." During the Watergate and Irangate scams that came often to mind. But there is another last refuge of a scoundrel to which I would direct attention: an appeal to religion that is insincere, exploiting religious commitment for political purposes. The grave-diggers of the Weimar Republic were marginal religious, who often exploited religious prejudices with utter cynicism - marginal Roman Catholics like Adolf Hitler, Reinhard Heydrich, Adolf Eichmann, Josef Goebbels... The shame of the churches is that some of their most prominent and powerful leaders, including Pius XII, fell for that scam. Gentiles who for calculating reasons parade themselves as "Christians" are not alone in cynical exploitation of the last recourse. I noted with pain that the Frank family of Bayonnne NJ, when caught out in major anti-social and criminal activity, claimed they were being persecuted as Jews. The head of the company, which had illegally dumped sludge in New York harbor for decades, said of the authorities that finally caught and prosecuted them, "We're living in Nazi Germany."

We are grown used to discounting that kind of talk, especially since it is a constant refrain of the antisemitic and pro-PLO network to liken the present government of Israel and its policies to the Nazi Third Reich. That comparison is an obscenity, whether put forward by cheap political demagogues like Pat Buchanan or uttered by Harvard professors and National Council of Churches executives. It is also an obscenity for a criminal to suddenly discover he or she is a "Jew" and claim falsely to be the victim of persecution, just as it is an obscenity for a religious incendiary like Al Sharpton or Louis Farrakhan and an ambulance- chasing shyster like Bill Kunstler to wave the bloody flag of racism to cover their disloyalty to due process of law, liberty and self-government. Patriotism remains one of the last refuges of a scoundrel, but in recent times it has had much competition from hypocritical appeals to religious and racial prejudice. One of next year's major academic conferences in Religious Studies will have as its main topic papers and panels and discussions on "Religious Marginality." But religious marginality is a practical problem, one that threatens all of us in the American republic - whether it is expressed by persons appealing to prejudice to cover their wrong-doings and crimes, or exploited by pretended victims.

- Franklin H Littell Lest We Forget #571 DATE:12/26/90 DIPLOMACY AND THE MUSLIM HOLY WAR Digging a few days ago in my boxes of materials on the German Third Reich and its wicked works, I came upon an old newspaper that seemed strangely contemporary. It was the Final Night edition of the London Evening Standard for August 29, 1939. The front page headline and lead story reported on fruitful diplomatic undertakings between Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler. Admitting that the atmosphere was heavy, the Prime Minister nevertheless assured the House of Commons that "Herr Hitler was concerned to impress on H. M. Government his wish for an Anglo-German understanding of a complete and lasting character. On the other hand, he left the British Government in no doubt of his views as to the uregency of settling Polish- German guestions. The British Government would naturally welcome an opportunity of discussing with Germany the several issues a settlement of which would find a place in any permanent agreement." The same issue reported (page 5) a speech in support of the Prime Minister by Archibald Sinclair, leader of the Liberal Party, in which it is noted that the Pope has prayed for peace. Sinclair knows "nothing that the Government could have done that it has left undone." He believes that "war should be averted by a reasonable basis of negotiations between the parties concerned - Germany and Poland." Two days later Hitler launched against Poland the invasion for which preparations and deadline had been set long in advance. Today, almost every day brings one or more newspaper or magazine editorials counselling the use of diplomacy vis-a-vis Saddam Hussein of Irag. Resolutions to that effect are coming from church bodies and from ad hoc peace groups. The Pope, among others, is praying for peace. Can any practical guestions be raised successfully when well-meaning people allow themselves to be blinded by the illusions and pipedreams of political wishful thinking? With whom can "diplomatic negotiations" be conducted? ...and around what green table? Kuwait is a mere footnote to the problem epitomized by Saddam. As for Saddam himself, he has shown that he will use chemical warfare against any - including his own subjects! - that oppose his dictatorial will. He presently has agents scouring the world for the pieces of eguipment he needs to make the atom bomb, which he would already have but for the providential Israeli strike against his nuclear plant in 1981. (...a successful strike that, incidentally, was at the time condemned by the same individuals and groups that are again urging "diplomacy" instead of economic and military action.) As for Saddam's military allies, Iran and Libya and Yemen being the most important overt partners in the present scene, along with a large network of terrorist organizations operating covertly, the war has been going on for decades. The Holy War against America and its ally Israel and friendly nations in Europe has been declared for more than a generation by preachers

Diplomacy and the Muslim Holy War 2 and teachers of militant Islam. Finding it hard to understand the kind of hatred and bigotry that militant Islam represents, the media dismiss it as they dismissed Hitler and Nazism. Who can believe that an emancipated Muslim author like Rushdie might be kept under permanent death sentence - even when he repents publicly for having given offence (in The Satanic Verses.? Who will take seriously the Iranian Bar Association, where a committee is preparing a brief against George Bush as a war criminal? Who remembers that precisely this formal exercise was undertaken against Anwar Sadat after he signed the Camp David Peace Accord with Israel and before he was assassinated by religious zealots? Fortunately the Israelis do not dismiss as ridiculous the posturings of Saddam, who has been trying from the beginning to exploit the "linkage" of case in Kuwait and "the Palestinian cause." They have learned from previous rattlesnake military attacks, from terrorist atrocities against civilians, and from the new style of warfare of the intifada that the calls to Jihad (Holy War) against the enemy are a wild and dangerous siren song to which illiterate and semi-literate Muslim masses will respond with crusading fervor. There is indeed .a "linkage" between what happened in Kuwait and what happens in the intifada. The linkage is the complete lack of attention to the most elementary rules of civilized behavior. Kuwait was invaded and destroyed, like Poland in 1939, after solemn signings of non-aggression agreements. The intifada

Diplomacy and the Muslim Holy War 3 is a form of warfare, planned and led and financed by outside aggressors - for whom no atrocity, whether murder of Arabs who want peace or stabbing of unsuspecting pedestrians, is too shameful. Resolute diplomacy, accompanied by a strict embargo of military supplies, could have stopped even the dictator Hitler in 1935 and the dictator Saddam in 1980. As in later summer of 1939, so in midwinter of 1990-91, announcements of diplomatic negotiations and prayers for peace that float in the air by themselves are worse than useless. They mislead the idealistic and wide-eyed innocents to believe that Evil and its preachers are less wicked than they really are, and that the political stupidity and economic avarice of the past will not in the end exact their price. The chances of averting a bloody war in the Middle East are now very slight. The survival and extension of liberty and self- government in open societies depend entirely upon the degree to which the Americans are able, like the Israelis, to cast aside every illusion and confront the hard facts exactly as they now lie. - Franklin H Littell

Diplomacy and the Muslim Holy War Lest We Forget 1406 L)ATE:6/24/87

LEST WE FORGET

REHABILITATING KURT WALDHEIM

unbelievably, the politicians 1n the Vatican are undertaking a reception of Kurt Waldheim, unwelcome 1n most civilized countries. He 1s being accorded the highest level diplomatic reception, with all the pomp and circumstance they can muster. The patent effort 1s to rehabilitate him, and Implicitly to rebuke "the Jews" for pursuing him so unmercifully.

In emphasizing the virtue of Austria as a "Catholic nation" and Kurt

Waldheim as a "Catholic," the Vatican would have done well to ponder the life and death of Fr1edr1ch Jaegerstaetter. Jaegerstaetter was a simple

Christian, a Roman Catholic farmer in the Tyrol, who was beheaded because ne refused to fight in Hitler's Austrian army. Or, if that moved no one in the bureaucracy, they might have pondered the role of Waldhelm's fellow-

Austrians Adolf Hitler and Adolf Eichmann.

Neither the modern saint nor the contemporary devils disturbed the planning, however. Sheer politics was to rule where Christian principle had vacated. Those of us who are repelled by the political obscenity, as

1n Its own way as shaming to Christianity as the antics of Jimmy and Tammy bakker, are left to recall how In the distant past there were popes and bishops who rebuked emperors and excommunicated kings. Not today: the princes of the church jump Into bed with the princes and powers of this world's darkness, against whom the scriptures warned.

If Pope John Paul II stood 1n the line of the great leaders of the church, he would do one pastoral thing before anything else: he would advise Kurt Waldheim to resjgn. But this pope and his bureaucracy evidently have missed what 1s going on in Christian theology and in the vital centers of spiritual renewal in Christendom. They may have heard the easy words of Lest We Forget 2406 0ATE:6/24/87

the worldly politicians Kohl and Reagan at Bltburg, but they missed the magnificent message of Richard von Weizsaecker who three days later put his people back on the track of repentence and recovery of Integrity. The old trlumphaUst stance of rulers 1n Christendom, with their bad religion and

calculating politics 1s again affirmed for all the world to see. All the

more commendable 1s the courage and faithfulness of a Sister Rose Therlng

and her colleague from Seton Hall University. Providentially, they were

leading a group 1n Jerusalem last week when the Incredible news broke. And

they on the spot released a statement condemning the reception of Waldheim

oy the Vatican.

Rose Therlng 1s a nun, a professor 1n the School of Education at Seton

Hall, and an important person In the rethinking of Christian preaching and

teaching In the post-Auschw1tz churches. Her doctoral study was devoted to

an analysis of antisemitism in Catholic textbooks, and under John XXIII and

his spiritual Influence It led to significant change 1n Catholic materials

in use 1n the United States. More recently she has been an officer in the

National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel, and a participant 1n

many seminars and conferences on Christian/Jewish relations.

Rose Therlng and Father Boss man represent post-Holocaust Christianity.

The Vatican bureaucracy represents in this Waldheim affair, as jn a number

of other situations, a pre-Hoiocaust style of politics. It was politics of

that spirit that gave Adolf Hitler his first entry Into social

acceptability, when Pacelli overrode the German Catholic bishops and signed

the Concordat with Hitler behind their backs. As long as he was winning,

Hitler could count upon Pace Ill's encouragement and support in his posture

as the champion of Christian Europe against atheistic Bolshevism.

Much of the truth of the Roman Catholic Church's role In the coming to

p wer of the Nazis has been ignored in recent years. The hope of everyone Lest We Forget 3406 DATE:6/24/87

of conscience, Jews and other Christians, has been that the example and spirit of John XXIII would be carried on. And with the blossoming ecumenical dialogue no Christian from another church wanted to make a great deal of the bad record of PacelH and his Curia. But now that the old spirit and the old style 1s coming back strongly, It may be time to raise again some serious questions about the record.

Ihe questions that will not down, however successful the ecclesiastical politicians may be for the moment, are these: Why did the

Roman Catholic leadership, and most of the German Protestant too, sympathize with Hitler? What was the role of the Vatican 1n destroying the welmar Republic? What was the precise role of the Vatican 1n helping hundreds of Nazi war criminals escape as the war ended? Why 1s it so difficult for the Roman Catholic church leadership to face the meaning of

Jewish death and survival as openly and courageously as, fdr example, the

Protestant churchmen In the Netherlands or the Protestant church leaders 1n

West Germany? When will the church move beyond the formal elimination of explicitly antisemitic teaching.to the constructive building of respect and cooperation with Jewish community leaders?

In America we are already, Catholics and Protestants and Jews - and especially at the local level - practicing a cooperation that the bureau­ crats now trying to salvage Kurt Waldheim have never seen and do not under­

stand. And 1t 1s precisely that understanding and cooperation that makes us

Americans know that the Waldheim affair 1s not a "Jewish Issue," as the

Vatican 1s trying to make 1t. It 1s even more acutely a Christian affair,

tor 1 n Its resolution lies an answer to the question whether the Christian

leaders, have learned the lesions, of the Holocaust and of their own martyrs.

during the Third Reich. Lest We Eorget 4406 DATE:6/24/87

Moved by these questions, a group of Protestant churchmen released a statement some days before the Pope received Waldheim wjth such a demonstration of support. We could have had dozens of signatures, had there been no urgency. As 1t was, seven churchmen - all clergy, and from seven denominations - joined with me. They were George Williams of Harvard

(United Church), William Harter of the United Presbyterians, Hubert Locke of the University of Washington (Christian Churches), James Wood of Baylor university (Southern Baptist), David Lewis of the Assemblies of God, Roy

Eckardt of Lehigh University (also United Methodist) and Burton Nelson of

North Park Seminary (Evangelical Covenant). That was a group sufficiently representative to release to the media the following message: THE PAPAL

INVITATION TO KURT WALDHEIM IS PRIMARILY A ROMAN CATHOLIC PROBLEM. HOWEVER

AS PROTESTANTS WE WANT TO MAKE OUR DISTRESS KNOWN. THE INVITATION DISGRACES

IHE MEMORY OF CHRISTIAN MARTYRS WHO OPPOSED NAZI IDOLATRY. THE INVITATION

DISHONORS THE MEMORY OF THE VICTIMS OF THE NAZI HOLOCAUST. THE WOUNDS OF

THE LORD'S PEOPLE CANNOT BE HEALED SO LIGHTLY (JEREMIAH 6:14).

Amenl And let those hear who have ears to hear, and let them see who have eyes to see the Truth.

Franklin H Littell, Anne Frank Institute of Philadelphia