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The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, October 15, 1987-Page 7
. By-,---DAVID BIRKAN
Julius Streicher was hung for war crimes on Oct. 16,1946. The death of the arch propagandist of mass anti-semitism may have been foretold in the Bible.
Schoolteacher Streicher. born in Swabia in 1885, was ousted from a number of schools for his outspoken anti-semitism. Streicher decided to found his own journal to exploit it. He became a pioneer in Nuremberg's Nazi party.
In May 1923, he published the first issue of Der Sturmer, a name, he told friends later, chosen in a moment of inspiration to symbolize his all-out campaign against Jews and Communists. The 4-page bulletin with few ads became by 1927 a thick racy tabloid selling 14.000 copies and boasting an actual readership many times that number. By late 1934. paid circulation jump>ed to 113.800; it was well over 500,000 by 1939.
Streicher started by accusing Nuremberg's Jews of causing corruption and unemployment. To attract wider readership, he turned to the popular standbys of sensation, sex and crime. Der Sturmer became the German schoolboy's clandestine equivalent of Playboy, according to biographer Randall Bytwer — except that the graphically described pro.stitution and homosexuality were blamed directly on the Jews. (Streicher kept his own private life, which rivalled any newspaper expose, out of print.)
Cartoons obscene
Remembering his pedagogy. Streicher developed a punchy ^ style with short sentences, basic vocabulary, and no qualifiers. It became the fayoriteoflaborers. factory workers, and farmers! In 1925. Streicher hired itinerant illustrator Philippe Ruprecht. Under the peri name FIPS. he filled the next 20 years of issues with the obscene cartoons thai became the paper's trademark.
Der Sturmer held a morbid fascination for its victims, as well. Streicher claimed that Jews had helped the paper financially by buying it. In 1925, Nuremberg's (Jewish) journal Licht Verlag condemned the "large numbers of citizens of the Jewish faith who buy Der Sturmer and then take it home concealed in a copy of the 8-UhrBlatt or the Morgenpresse."
Nazi bigwigs praised the paper, not only because it was under their support and control. They found it fascinating. Hitler, according to an interyiew,"was simply on thorns to see each new issue ... it was the one periodical that he always read with pleasure, from the first page to the last." Fellow propagandist Joseph Goeb-bels, intellectual and aloof, admired Streicher's ability to reach the common people.
In the 30s. Per Sturmer had a Jew oh its staff. Streicher said he paid him handsomely, but never shook his hand.
Headlines incite
The paper's rampant billboard-sized display cases carried banners like "The Jews'are our misfortune'' and "Gei-man women and girls: the Jews are your destruction. "Special supplements, often coinciding with the mass Nazi rallies in Nuremberg, carried extensive national advertising,^ and reached print runs of 2 million copies. Themes included ritual murder, Jewish criminality, the world Jewish conspiracy, and Jewish sex crimes, A leading Nazi commented: "Der Sturmer has made clear to the people the danger of Jewry. Without it, the importance of a solution to the Jewish question would hot appear as critical as it
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The shaved-headed, brutal-looking Streicher, whb helped organize an economic boycott of the Jews and the,national kristallnacht pogrom, came to demand their total destruction.
He was arrested'by the Allies after World War n. Tried in Nuremberg, he was found guilty of war crimes, ,
Recent computer-assisted biblical studies in at the Technion focus on the Jewish queen's apparently redundant plea to her king in the book of Esther: "And let Haman's 10 sons be hanged upon the gallows." They were already hanged by the time she salid It, The three letters taf, shin and zayin highlighted — by being written smaller than the other letters — in the list of__ Haman's sons spell out the year 1946 in the Gregorian calendarrreseairchers point out.
As the noose was being tightened aroiind his neck, Streicher >- one of 10 Nazis to be hung on that second day of Succoth — blurted out: "Purimfest, 1946!"
ist served in Haganah
. -.By: m-
MARSHALL KRANTZ f
The Jewish Bulletin
SAN FRANCISCO -
Dr. Ruth Westheimer blames her frank talk about sex on her Jewish heritage.
"Being rooted in Judaism permits me to be so explicit." the sex therapist told a recent Israel Bonds luncheon in San Francisco.
Westheimer, known to millions of North Americans as "Dr. Ruth," received the group's Tree of Life Award in recognition of her professional achievements. The 59-year-old New Yorker hosts her own television show, has made innumerable radio and TV appearances, and has published six books.
A child of Holocaust victims, she said that her autobiography, to be published in November under the title All in a Lifetime. is"not just my story but also the story of many others."
In 1939,attheagcof 10, Westheimer was sent toa school in Switzerland in what.she said was a token attempt to rescue German-Jewish children. Her parents, who remained in the family's native Frankfurt to stay with Westheinier's aged grandmother, are presumed to have died in Auschvyitz.
The Swiss school became an orphanage not
Dr. Ruth
only for Westheimer but for most of the other approximately 100 children there whose parents met a fate similar to Westr heimer's. The children were taught menial trades, but Westheimer, who was trained to be a housemaid, had other goals in mind,'
After the war, she immigrated to Palestine andl joined the Haganah, where she trained as a sniper. Westheimer's most vivid combat experience was during an artillery bombardment of the kibbutz where she taught kindergarten. A bomb exploded near her anid she narrowly missed having her feet blown off.
Westheimer attended the Teachers' Seminary in Jerusalem, and then moved to France with her first husband so he could study medicine and she
on tightrope
By
LEILA SPEISMAN
TORONTO -
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has initiated genuine reforms in the USSR and is walking a tightrope for it, according to a leading Canadian po-■ litical scientist arid new's commentator.
McMaster. University professor Adam Brompke, a columnist for the Toronto Star, told the New Fraternal Jewish Order that Gorbachev is' 'impatient to forge ahead with a drastic overhaul of the Soviet system."
For all the good press the Soviet leader is getting, he is not universally supported, Brompke said. The KGB, the army and the old line bureaucrats are either unsure or downright negative about him. They may, he fears, either uidividually or collectively, oust him. Conversely, "Gorbachev may tire of fighting all the opposition and fall back into the old ways," said Brompke.
Gorbachev, who came to -power in early 1985, brought a new kind of leadership, "eloquent, smooth and decisive."
He moves fast, and keeps his opposition (of -which there is a good deal) off balance. "There is always the possibility,"
warned Brompke, "that in his impatience, Gorbachev may take one chance top many."
While he is working steadily to consolidate his position in the Politburo, he is, said Brompke^ a "populist" leader, going over the heads of his opponents to the people for support. "He would have done well in the Ontario elections."
Glasnost, Brompke feels, is no myth. One actually hears criticism and debate, even on the news. The release of many dissidents, including Scharan-sky and Sakharov, an attempt to curb the excesses of the KGB, and even the appearance of a limited form of election are signs, he said, of some dempcra- \ tizatibn of the system.
There has been an extensive overhaul of the economy, with less. centralization, the encouragement of initiative, both in the public and private sectors, and even changes in the banking system.
"There is a real attempt to return to Lenin-style communism," wfakfa, Brompke said, was subverted by Stalin and those who came after him.
There is a marked change in foreign policy, he went on, with less involvement in the Third World and a genuine push towards better'^relations with the West.
coujd attend the Sor-bonne. She earned the equivalent of a Bachelor's degree in psychology there in 1956.
The same year, she went to the United States to visit an uncle in San Francisco, and en-route saw an advertisement in New York that turned her life in a completely different duection.
The advertisement announced scholarships for children of the Holocaust to the New School for Social Research. Westheimer won a scholarship, and graduated from the New School in 1959 with a Master's degree in sociology. She went on to earn.a doc-
torate in education from Columbia University in 1970.
Westheimer became steep«l in sex education and therapy while working at Planned Parenthood in the 1960s. But it wasn't until 1977 that she had an encounter with the electronic media that would lead to the celebrity she presently enjoys.
She delivered a lecture to New York broadcasters in which she urged them to air more sex education programs. One of the broadcasters invited her to appear on a local radio program, and Westheimer was so popular that soon she had her own show and began appearing on other ra-
dio and television programs.
Westheimer said that despite the loss of her parents, the early years she spent with them were a tremendous influence in her path to achievement. She said she also found the same was true for the other orphans she spent time with in Switzerland.
"There were no social misfits,'' she said. ''Not one woman became a pros^ titute, and not one man ended up in a menial job. The reason for that is because for the first six years, we all spent them in loving Jewish homes, and that's where our values were being set."
By
ROSE KLEINER
NEW YORK -
The children and teachers of New York's many Jewish schools have much to celebrate in this new year of 5748." For many years to come they, and New York's Jewish community, will be the beneficiaries of what is the largest gift to Jewish education ever granted by an individual in North America. :
According to J. J. Goldberg in the Jewish week. Joseph S. GrUss. a Manhattan investment banker; has signed over a gift of $30 million to U J A-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies.
Gruss' generous support of Jewish education dates back to 1973. In that year he presented a $100,000 challenge grant to the federation. It was to be matched ; by an equal arnount to create a Fund for Jewish Education.
By 1978 Gruss committed himself to a $1 million annual donation, to be matched by an ■ equal
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amount from both the federation and from UJA. This annual challenge grant had risen to $1.5 million by this year.
The Fund For Jewish Education provides annual operating expense grants to 173 day schools and yeshi-" vas. and to 219 supplementary schools in the New York area. About 100.000 children attend these schools.
TTie fund also grants gifts to 49 day schools which ; run programs for students with special needs; for education of immigrant children, particularly from the Soviet Union and Iran; and for outreach programs.
With the shortage of qualified good teachers in North America, Gruss' contribution in the area of teachers' benefits js of special significance. The Fund For. Jewish Education provides for cost-free life insurance, health insurance and pension supplements. About 4,500 full-time teachers in 294 schools will ■ be recipients of the.se benefits.
In addition to the Fund
Vancouver's Stanley Park
for Jewish Education. Gruss has endorsed seven other "life monument funds" in his. and in his wife's, name. These funds either supplement the work of the main fund or have inaugurated new programs.
Among other things the fiinds have created scholarships for needy students of all-day Jewish high schools.
The funds are responsible for the "excellent teachers" program which awards SI0.000. over two years, to outstanding teachers in day schools. During the past year about 160 awards were given out.
The funds connected with Gruss have distributed over $9 million last year alone. His, $30 million grant; will extend these funds to perpetuity.
Born in Poland 84 years ago. Gruss came to the U.S. iri 1939. His Wife, an attorney, died earlier this year. ■
Besides his contributions to Jewish education through UJA-Federation, Gruss has donated millions to individual institutions.
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