Page 2 - The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, April 12,1984
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RABBI W. GUNTHER PLAUT
We are nowadays much more aware of people who are hardof hearing and of the many problems — as well as opportunities — which are theirs. I thought, therefore, that I would share with you a report published in a monthly riewsletter issued by the Public Committee in Israel of Survivors m Ausehwitz, which reprinted a report from Los Angeles. There, some survivors and native born Americans, the deaf and the hearing, Jews and Christians, crowded a small auditorium at the local community centre. They had come to talk
Rabbi Plant
about the special fate of the deaf under the
Nazis.-; .
They participated in a 3-hour program organized by Temple Beth Solomon of the Deaf in suburban Los Angeles. The main speaker was Prof Horst Biesold of the University of Bremen in West Germany, a fornier teacher of the deaf.
He opened his address with two slides of the old Institute for the Deaf in Beriin. The first slide shows smiling students and alumni posing in a standard group shot in front of the Institute in 1933.
The second slide is of a simple plaque on the same building inscribed in German: "From this house one hundred and forty-six deaf Jewish citizens were dragged by fascist bandits and murdered in 1942. A memorial to the dead, a reminder of the living/*
Then Biesold guided his audience through the special hell which the Nazis reserved from 1933 on for the Jews and Gentiles who fell under the "Law foir preventing congenitally diseased descendants,''
Even before the beginning of the Holocaust, said the professor, the road through hell was marked by that combination of mercilessness, bureaucratic punctilio and perverted language that characterized the Hitler regime.
"Aryan" and Jewish deaf were ordered to appear' before "heredity health judges." In almost all cases the sentence was forced sterilization, even if the victim had healthy hearing children, and abortion if the deaf mother was pregnant. The Nazis established a special transport service, officially designated as "humanitariari ambulances company," to take the institutionalized deaf to observation or xieath camps.
Destroy the records
Deaf Nazis took a lead in hounding the equally handicapped Jews. Most faistitutional directors and teachers of the deaf not only supported and enforced the laws against their charges, but often proposed even more inhumane steps to the authorities.
Biesold noted with considerable frustration that his efforts to research Nazi crimes against the deaf' are meeting with bureaucratic indifference and outright hostility from present day directors of the German institutions for the deaf. Said He: "Recently I told one such director about my studies and shortly afterwards asked to see the school's archives. He informed me that he had given orders this day before to destroy the records."
Destruction of relevant records is, of course, a practice known to many nations and times, but the treatment of the deaf [like the blind] has a special dimension, which is singled out in the Torah: ''You shall not hisult the deaf nor place a stumbling block before the blind." It is a religious duty to make it possible for the handicapped to lead full, productive and rewarding lives like everyone else.
''Never again can Israel be threatened''
■"■.■■■By'. ■.;;,.■.,
SHELDON KIRSHNER
In the head-to-head racepitting\y alter Mon-dale against Gary Hart for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, the issue of Israel has been given bold prominence.
Mondale, the ex-vice president, is a longstanding friend of Israel. And on the hustings, he has spoken out forcefully anid consistently about the nature of America's fundamental commitment to the well-being and security of the Jewish state.
No one, in short, can teach Mondale any lessons on the indivisible link between the U.S. and Israel.
But Hart, the 46-year-old senator from Colorado/ is bending over backwards to dispose this theory. As such, American Jews who care for Israel can take heart fromHart,
In his 10 years as a senator, this cerebral son of a railway worker and former civil rights lawyer has compiled what some observers call a virtually flawless record on Israel and related issues.
"Alignment with Israel is right both morally and strategicallyj" he has said. "It was right in 1948. It is right-today. And it will always be right."
Hiart, who at the moment trails behind Mondale, was once publicly critical of Israel. When he masterminded George McGovern's 1972 campaign for the presidency, he urged , McGoverii to condemn an Israeli retaliatory raid mounted for the killing of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich.
But in the 12 years sinde Richard Nixon's monumental victory oyer McGovern, Hart has never called for U.S. censures of Israel. "What criticisms I have of individual Israeli governments," he has noted, ''I would primarily discuss behind the scenesi"
From the day he began his career in the Senate, Hart — something of a representative of The Big Chill generation now coming of age — has been firmly pro-Israel.
• In 1975, he was one of 76 senators who signed a letter addressed to the White House opposing the Ford administration's "reassessr ment" of U.S. relations with Israel.
• In 1976, he co-sponr sored a resolution to bar the sale of mobile Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Jordan.
• In 1978, he voted against the Carter administration ' s proposal to sell, Saudi Arabia 60 F-15 jet fighters.
• In 1981, he came out against a bid by President^ Ronald Reagan to provide Saudi Arabia AWACS aerial surveillance planes.
Thus, under Repub-^
Senator Gary Hart, centre, discusses issues at a New York City meeting with Julius Berman, left, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Mf^or American Jewish Organizations and Yehuda Hellman, right. Conference executive vice-chairman.
lican and Democratic presidents, Hart stood his ground vis-a-vis Israel and its security.
Last month, in a speech before the Conference of Presidents of M^for American Jewish Organizations, Hart delivered his most comprehensive overview on the Middle East.
It was a speech that must have warned the heart of every Zionist in America.
Israel's fate, he said, is "a cause that is basic to our national interest and which has a special claim of moral right."
The senator, describing Israel as an ally, said it had blocked "Soviet expansion" in the Middle East. The thousands and thousands of
young Israelis who have died in six wars in the last 36 years have saved thousands of young Americans from the same fate — and we must never forget that sacrifice."
Israel, he added, is "the world's greatest monument" to the six million who perished in the Holocaust. "Never again can Israel be threatened," he declared.
Hart outlined his policy toward Israel under seven points:
• The U.S. stands with Israel — on difficult issues as well as easy ones.
• A Hart administration would not sell "high technology war systems" to Israel's ene-
mies. Conservative Arab states which seek American weaponry would have to come to the peace table and negotiate with Israel.
• The "linchpin" of U.S. policy would be its special relationship with Israel.
• His government would develop "true" strategic cooperation with Israel.
• He would reject the 1982 Reagan plan — which Israel has flaitly turned down — becuase it "predetermines" the ultimate sovereignty of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the status of Israel settlements there. He would move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
By • ■
TAMMY KAROL
MONCTON,NB—
Non-Catholic parents may no longer have to keep their children in catechism classes in Moncton' s French j unior high schools.
Thanks to the efforts of B'nai B'rith Canada, elementary students at these schools have been able to take ethics classes as an alternative to the prescribed Bible study courses.
Junior high schools in the French Catholic system have been unwilling thus far to offer the ethics courses. BB Canada 's president, Don Jubas, told the media last week during a trip to the Atlantic provinces, that he's concerned about the junior high situation and will continue to pursue the matter with school officials.
Presently, non-Catholic students from grades 7-9 in the French system can either stay in their catechism class or go to the school library.
There are nine Jewish youngsters in Moncton's 23 French schools, according to Arthur Hiess, executive director of BB's League for Human Rights in Eastern Canada, three of whom are at the junior high level.
Other Jewish students attend one of the city's 33 English Protestant
schools.
Jewish religious education is available only in Moncton's one synagogue, Hiess said.
According to Natanya Ettienne, a member of Moncton's Jewish community, catechism is taught in all the French schools and in the small number of French immersion classes in the English and Protestant system.
What is disturbing about the catechism course, she said, is its use of an anti-Semitic textbook at the grade 4 level.
The textbook, issued by the Archbishop of Quebec, refers to Jews as beiing Christ killers, Ettienne explained.
Ettienne's own son is in grade 5 at a French Catholic school in her district. He has refused to attend catechism classes since grade 1 because he feels uncomfortable in them.
Two years ago, six non-Catholic students began boycotting the catechism classes together with Ettienne's son.
As a result, teachers cancelled catechism courses a year later in classes where there were noh-Catholic students, and Ettienne received threatening phone calls from individuals interested in retaining these classes.
At the same time, BB was contacted by the Moncton Jewish com-munity about opposition to the teaching of catechism. Since then BB oEDcials have been meeting with local school boards and the provincial goyemment to offer "morality/ethics" courses as an alternative to non-Catholic students.
"This is not just a Jewish-Catholic issue," Hiess told The Canadian Jewish News, pointing out that it affects other groups such as Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses.
Last September, as a result of BB pressure, the French Catholic schools circulated a questionnaire to parents of some 650 students who attended their elementary schools.
The questionnaire asked parents whether they preferred their children to be taught catechism, moral/ethics or none of these and 20% of the group chose the latter two options.
As a result, two ethics classes have been offered this year for the first time in Moncton's French Catholic elementary schools.
The junior high schools have still refused to offer ethics as an alternative to the catechism courses, but Ettienne is Optimistic this will change by next fall.
•-He would work to "revitalize" Israel's cool relations with Egypt, and would not negotiaite with, nor recognize, the PLO until it recognized Israel's existence, abandoned all terrorism and accepted "all pertinent'' United Nations resolutions.
Hart said that the issue -of a Palestinian "entity" can only be resolved "in full consideration" of Israeli security needs.
• Hart would make the U.S. independent of Arab oil supplies. "Israel's security and America's economy must no longer be mortgaged to oil sheiks."
Cynics may say that promises are easily made, then broken, in American politics.
Yet Hart, who has been accused by Mondale of shifting his views, particularly on Jerusalem, feels he is not shortchanging American Jews who vote for him.
"I offer not rhetoric, but commitments," h*-told the Conference 01 Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. "Arid if elected President, I fully intend to honor the commitments I make to you today."
Fervent pro-Israel statements by Mondale and Hart have raised the concern that both candidates are pandering to Jewish voters.
Anthony Lewis, the syndicated columnist, writes that many American Jews are not happy "at this extravagant courting" of their votes. "In conversations in the last few days some have been uneasy and even angry at the phenomenon. They have called it, among other things, shameless politics, pandering, vulgar, stupid, insulting."
Hyman Bookbinder, the Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee, says in a New York Times piece that Mondale and Hart have dwelled too much on whether the U.S. embassy should be moved to Jerusalem. : It is not, Bookbinder notes, the central issue of the campaign insofar as Jews are concerned. "Whattroubles me most is that this grossly exaggerated flap adds to the widespread and wrong impression that candidates need address only the Israel question when they appeal to Jewish voters.
"It is indeed pandering when candidates appeal to Jewish voters solely on the Israel issue and thereby imply that is all these Jewish voters want to hear.''
Jews, he concluded, are interested in the whole spectrum of national and international issues. "The Jewish interest cannot be pursued except in the context of the general interest."
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