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Thursday, August 17,1989 — THE BULLETIN — 5
By GLENN RICHTER "Heil Hitler!" "Ji/£/e#f raws/"
This was July 1989, not 1943. Yet theseshouts rang out over Auschwitz — the very byword of the Holocaust — as seven American Jews were viciously assaulted and beateii by Polish construction workers, employees of a Carmelite convent whose nuns say "they are there only to pray for the dead.
Our journey to Poland was a bittersweet brew of genetic remembrance and agony. Each of us — Rabbi Avraham Weiss and myself from the Coalition of Concern; Jacob Davidson and Elie Wurtman from North American Jewish Students Network; Tamir Elias and Moshe Shapiro from Tagar Zionist youth movement; and doctoral student and linguist Jose Badua — has family roots there, and relatives snuffed out in the Shoah. We were determined to focus public attention on a festering sore between Jews and Catholics.
In 1984, Carmelite nuns occupied a building at Auschwitz used by the Nazis to store the gas chambers' Zyklon-B crystals — and left empty since the War. Their action directly contravened the 1972 United Nations Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and National Heritage which declared Auschwitz inviolate. In 1987, Jewish and Catholic representatives signed a solemn agreement in Geneva stipulating that the nuns would leave the convent by Feb. 22, 1989. That pact has been ignored.
In contrast to this land of anti-Jewish violence, we came in a spirit of moral, peaceful protest in the tradition of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.
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"Palestinian Arab despair at the unbearable Israeli occupation spawned the
uprising."
FACT In a special Feb. 1988 report of the American Academic Association for Peace in the Middle East's Middle East Review Rutgers uni-
Iversity Professor Michael Curtis wrote: [This] "extravagant rhetoric... disregards the ineptness of Palestinian representatives who refuse to renounce the goal of destroying Israel and enter into direct negotiations with Israel, whose legitimacy would be unconditionally recognized. It ignored [Palestinian Arab] rage and frustration over the indifference of the Arab
, to prevent the eniergence of a moderate ,Rglesti,-3 nian leadership. . . it does injustice to the significant improvement in the quality of life in the territories since they were occupied by Israel, . . and it neglects to account for the growing provocation of the Islamic Jihad and other religious fun-darnentalist organizations in the West Bank and Gaza.
"The recent riots were not the result of manifest economic and social injustice brought on by a brutal occupation. Neither were they civil rights demonstrations following the classic model of Martin Luther King, Jr. The underlying problem is not the occupation, in fact, but the refusal of those clainiing to speak for the Palestinians to recognize the legitimacy of Israel. The present territorial status arose because of the 1967 war provoked by [Egypt's Gamal Abdel] Nasser, and continues because of this refusal."
PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat himself was quoted by Reuters on June 2,1988 as saying, "Our people in the occupied areas revolted In response to the insult at Amman (the Nov. 1987 Arab League summit which focused on the Iraq-Iran war] against them and their representative, the PLO." Apparently referring to plans for Arab-Israeli talks with a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation vyhich would not include PLO members, Arafat added, "they tried [at the summit] to Implement a U.S.-lsraeli scheme and draw some of our Arab brothers into It."
Two days earlier the same wire service cited Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian Arab writer, on the Arab League to the effect that "the Arabs should design an effective and realistic strategy to liberate the occupied areas rather than trying to beg Israel to negotiate." An unidentified "leading radical" told Reuter that "the Arab countries are impotent militarily and don't even understand what the intifada is. The closest contact Arab states have with our uprising is when they suppress by force demonstrations in their countries in sympathy with our martyrs. We know of demonstrations brutally dispersed in Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria and elsewhere."
Reprinted from Myths and Facts, a publication of Near East Research, inc. Complete copies of Myths and Facts are available for U.S. $3.95 • •-^-oasas^Hsssn from Near East Report, 500 North ^-''-'-w^wg^v^ Capitol Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.20001.
Warsaw provided thejarring economic and political background to our visit, where 44 years of Communist rule and Polish resistance have left the country in financial shambles, with an unpayable $39 billion foreign^ debt and a currency so weak that the banks hawk an official black market rate for the zloty nearly five times that of the standard conversion. Consequently, several members of our team flew from Warsaw to Cracow for the equivalent of U.S. $2.50.
The myriad of kipot and Hebrew speakers in hotel lobbies testifies to the thousands of foreign Jewish tourists, including Israelis, who drop badly-needed hard currency into Polish coffers. Given all this, U.S. State Department officials, knowledgeable journalists and other "experts" assured us not to expect violence.
Two generations ago, Poland was the soul of World Jewry. Today it is a barely living Jewish museum. One synagogue remains in Warsaw, one-third Jewish on the eve of World War II. Mindful of foreign tourism, the government has helped restore the edifice and installed an Israeli rabbi, but its regular worshippers number only a handful. With so few young Jews, intermarriage approaches 90 percent.
Despite creeping democracy, one must presume police bugging of phones. Our conversations with foreign journalists were held outdoors. Though tired from President Bush's recently completed visit, many agreed to make the eight-hour roundtrip journey from their Warsaw base to Auschwitz.
We sped south along the road to Cracow, Poland's old capital, passing low, crude wooden log houses with a small door and window, familiar from books on the shtetl. Flocks of white geese cackled along the side. Dozens of much more modern homes popped up like random mushrooms, belonging to Poles who unofficially worked abroad to bring back foreign currency.
Roadside madonnas in this intensely Catholic country dot the 35-mile rural stretch westwards from Cracow to Oswiecim, site of Auschwitz at the edge of town, and a home to Jews for 400 years before the Holocaust. Rabbi Weiss' father, in fact, grew up there. As we neared the town, we picked up the railroad tracks which had carried four million — 75 percent of them Jews — to their unspeakable deaths. The Vistula river, which flows back up to Cracow and Warsaw, meandered nearby.
Perhaps 400 yards away from Auschwitz's main entrance, its back against the outside of the camp's concrete and barbed wire fence, lies the Carmelite convent. Its presence has stirred deep-seated emotions among many Jews, who view it as a desecration of the memory of Auschwitz's Jewish dead. The Nazis well understopd the extent of Polish Catholic anti-Semitism when fh6y ibhoib 'Pd^ahxi^as t|^ ^it|^ W thMr'i^xfetitiniation. ckmps: Next'to the brbwh bnck c^ cross has just been erected. The complex is surrounded by its own seven-foot-high wrought-iron fence.
With journalists and cameramen surrounding us, we repeatedly rang the bell at the gate, calling out in a multiplicity of languages that we wished to enter the grounds to speak with the nuns about the convent's presence. The response from within was silence. We tossed over the fence our bags, laden with enough food to last though the next day (the Sabbath), then clambered over ourselves. We donned prayershawls, Moshe and Tamir blew shofars. Our peaceful sit-in had begun.
After establishing ourselves at the convent door, we taped up signs in Polish, English, French and Hebrew urging the convent to relocate immediately and to respect the Jewish dead.
Looking around, we realized the nuns were digging in, making no move to fulfill the legal agreement to leave. Thousands of bricks were stacked in piles. A whole new wing had been added. A 30-foot wooden construction ramp ran from the front door to the gate. We covered some of the bricks in fr^nt with a large Israeli flag, and placed two unlit Sabbath candles at the top of the ramp.
As we sat at the convent door, quietly studying from the Torah, singing softly and moving back to the fence to speak with the growing crowd of local spectators, buckets of water mixed with white paint and urine cascaded down on us from jeering construction workers leaning out the convent's second floor. Nuns peered out the windows. Several bent nails dropped on our heads.
Two hours into our action, a half dozen of the construction workers emerged for their first direct attack. They ripped our signs and lunged at our bags, throwing them over the fence. As they chased after Jacob, we let our a roar of protest. Policemen, who had been sitting in their cruiser, suddenly appeared. Rather than protecting us, they asked the workers to desist. Caught between unexpected vehemence from our quarter and a direct police request, they retreated into the convent. We stretched our hands through the fence, retrieving our possessions.
As the clock ticked on, our spirits remained high, but our guard was lowered. We were worn by the frequent jeering from townsfolk -- led by a black-clothed student priest — our attempts to explain our position to the crowd, and increasing cold. We wrapped ourselves in brown blankets we had taken with us. Some older Oswiecim Poles hooted at us in Yiddish: "Shabbes is coming — go home!" Nuns and their families who are there to serve them, peered at us from convent windows.
At 5 p.m., about ten of the construction workers appeared at our side. One, with a blue beret, who had been particularly vicious in the first attack, detached himself from the knot and went after our remaining'signs. We placed our bodies in front of him, moving with him. but without physical contact.
"Watch it!" someone yelled. Suddenly, a full attack was on.
POLISH WORKER drags Rabbi Avraham Weiss on his stomach down rough wooden construction ramp at convent on Auscliwitz site, then out convent gate.
"Back to the convent door, sit down, lock arms!" Rabbi Weiss ordered.
"Knock off their skullcaps — drag them out!" yelled the student priest. "Heil Hitler!" shouted Blue Beret.
Two workers lifted a blanket in front of us, as if to prevent the press photographers, clicking in rapid fir^ at the fence, from witnessing. Blue Beret picked up a stick. Perhaps thinking it better that the attack be fully seen as an object lesson, the blanket was lowered, now to be used for more nefarious purposes.
With our backs to the convent door, Jose was on the far left of our line. Workers pounced on him, threw the blanket over his head and began to suffocate him. Elie and I strained to pull the blanket away. Hands grabbed at Jose's full head of hair. Knuck-Jes pounded hini. In a tumble of flying fistsjlie was, prbpellfed to the gate (now opened by the'cbnvent grbundiske^^ followed by Elie and me in a vain effort to snatch him back.
Tamir and Moshe were next to be ejected in the fray. Rabbi Weiss and Jacob somehow clambered their way back to the convent door. The Rabbi, who suffered a heart attack and quadruple heart bypass operation less than three years ago, was dragged on his stomach down the rough wooden construction ramp, then out the gate. His suit was in shreds. Bruises lay across his face.
The full fury of the workers now centered on Jacob. Methodically, they punched and kicked him. As they pulled him down the ramp, he fell off its side, jiacknifed. Blood ran from his mouth. Pulling him by his hair, they pushed him halfway through the gate, then shoved the gate closed to crush his legs. Desperately, I doubled Jacob's legs over his head, crudely rolling him out. Our bags, kipot and blankets lay in a jumble outside the fence.
The police, apparently on instructions from above, had watched this entire grisly episode from their car, never making a move to restrain our attackers.
Jacob could not rise. Working quickly with a wet rag. Rabbi Weiss bent over him, clearing away the blood from his mouth and nose. "Get an ambulance!" he demanded. A foreign journalist ran for help. The ambulance never came.
The construction workers stood on the other side of the street, grinning. We yelled at a priest who had been there for hours, joining the jeering, "So this is your Christian love?" Only now, faced with a barrage of press cameras, he walked silently away.
Glenn Richter is national coordinator of both the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and the Coalition of Concern. Since 1985, the Coalition has staged demonstrations at President Reagan's visit to Bitburg, Germany; against Kurt Waldheim in Austria, Rome and Istanbul; and against Yasir Arafat during his Geneva U.N. speech.
A hardbitten reporter for a leading Western news service, himself a Pole, watched with tears in his eyes.
After a quarter-hour, Jacob was able to rise groggily, but snapped into alertness when another police car finally rolled by. Jacob jumped into the street, motioning it to stop. "Arrest these men, they attacked us," we pointed to the culprits. "The other police are doing nothing." The officers slowly wrote down our names only from our passports, clambered back into their vehicle, and rode away. Unscathed, the construction workers were clearly enjoying themselves.
"Where's Jose?" we asked each other. Unseen in the confusion, Jose had experienced a flashback to the suffering of his childhood in Castro's Cuba, and felt a compulsion to escape the scene. He approached the first police car. Getting no help, he kept walking. Poles followed him. throwing a rock which drew blood on the back of his neck. He ran to a woods, emerged on a road, flagged down a taxi and ordered it to return him to Cracow. As they passed the convent, the driver commented, "The Jews are rnaking trouble. No Jews in Poland, nq Masons. Just Catholics amiJ?oles." ^
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