Page 8-the Canadian Jewish Ne^ys, Thursday, September 20, 1984
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Curbing the deficit
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It is good to hear that the Progressive Conservatives intend to uphold the principle of universality in social programs:.
So said Tory finance critic John Crosbie, in reply to comments made by Rowland Frazee, chairman of the Royal Bank of Canada.
Frazee suggested that the record deficit of more than $30 billion must be cut by $7 billion through judicious cuts in universal government programs such as family ailowance benefits,'old-age security payments and unemployment insurance.He said these cuts could be achieved without burdening the poor and the disadvantaged.
In our view, Frazee should look elsewhere if he is truly serious about trimming the deficit.
He should examine the feasibility of closing the many legal loopholes dirough which the rich and very rich avoid paying their fair share of taxes. It is patently absurd that some workers pay more than some millionaires.
Let the banks stop lending huge sums for corporate takeovers which benefit the very few—
and the interest of which is written off as a tkx deductible expense.
Let the banks reconsider the policy of granting loans and mortgages for expensive dwellings which often stand empty for years. In such cases,the borrowers can write off the interest from their tax bilLThis money could be better directed to affordable'housing.
Frazee's idea would hardly be welcomed, in particular,by the man Out of a Job or by the pensioner scrambling to maintain a decent standard of living. '
What criteria would he apply in his bid to put a lid on the mounting deficit?
Does he not realize that many Canadians who want to work cannot because our economy does not generate sufficient employment opportunities? Does he not realize that pensions are a right, and riot merely a privilege?
If he and other Canadians with six-figure incomes find it absurd to be collecting government pensions, they should not bother applying for them:And, if they do, they should return them to Ottawa as a gift, or simply donate the ftmds to a suitable charity.
All Canadians, especially the elderly, must be on their guard to nip in the bud proposals which could place them into untenable posi-tions.They must not permit complacency to win the day .They should act vigorously if their interestis are threatened.
The meek, it is true, will not inherit the ■ earth..' ■
by hi^ech
Canada's law prohibiting the importatioh of hate literature has been badly breached by a racist group based in the U.S.
We are told, in a Canadian Press story originating in Winnipeg, that anyone with a home computer can circumvent the law of the land simply by calling a number in the state of Idaho.
By doing so, a caller — be he curious or malidous — can get around customs and postal regulations and receive racist books and periodicals from the Aryan Nations Liberty Network.
Very interesting, but obscene.
Does the government intend to do anything to stop this trafHcking in hatred?
An internatiorial embarrassment
stalls genocide bill
■ .■■/■.By . SHELDON KIRSHNER
Raphael Lemkin died in 1959, the mission in his life unfulfilled..
A Polish Jew, Lemkin was a brilliant legal scholar who had been a public prosecutor in Warsaw before the Holocaust. Traumatized^ by the deadi of his relatives and friends in die war, Lemkin spent his remaining years lobbying for a United Nations bill that would make genocide a crime under law.
Genocide was a word he knew well, for he coined it. "Genocide comes from the Greek ge-hos, meaning race, and the Latin cide, meaning killing," Lemkin said. "It is the mass murder of people for religious arid racial reasons." -, Representing no government and no organizations, Lemkin became a one-man lobbyist as he pressed his case with patience and persistence. And for a while, it seemed as if he would succeed.
The U.S. drafted the Genocide Convention and lobbied for its adoption. Ernest Gross, the assis^ tant secretary of state, told the UjN General Assembly: "In a world beset by many problems and great difficulties, we should proceed with this convention before the memory of recent horrifying genocidal acts has faded from the mind and conscience of man./'
Dean Rusk, the undersecretary of state, declared that ratification was essential to prove America's "moral leadership" in global affairs, and to show that the U.S. intended "to participate in the development of international law on the basis of human justice."
Since 1948, the year it was introduced for consideration, the Genocide Convention has been approved of by 92 nations, including Canada.
However, ironically enough, the treaty has not been ratiHed by the U.S. Senate.
, Every U.S. President in the last quarter ceii-tury has endorsed ratification, but the Senate refuses to do so. Among the groups that have led vociferous campaigns against the Genocide Convention are the Liberty Lobby — which denounced it as a "Communist hoax" — and the John Birch Society, which called it a "surrender of the constitutional rights of American citizens."
The convention has been held up in the Senate for all sorts of reasons.
With the ascendancy of neo-isolationism in the 1950s, Senate opponents claimed that the Genor cide Convention would threaten American sovereignty. John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state, noted that human rights should be promoted by "methods of persuasion, education and example," and not by "formal undertakings."
It was also argued that ratification would create a constitutional issue by tilting the balance Of authority on criminal matters betvyeen the federal government and the states to the former. By the time Raphael Lemkin died, the treaty
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Jimmy Carter
for which he had worked so tirelessly was as good as dead in the Senate.
In 1970 President Richard Nixon formally asked the Senate to reconsider. Its foreign relations committee voted 10 to 4 for the convention. But the Senate itself balked.
When he Was President, Jimmy Carter spoke out several times on behalf of the treaty, but his words went unheeded.
At a recent B'nai B'rith conference in Washington, President Ronald Reagan pledged he would work for Senate ratiflcation of the convention. But Reagan, like his predecessors, may Hnd this is easier said than done, (CJN Sept. 13).
There is no doubt that obduracy on the part of the Senate casts aspersions on American foreign policy — particularly in light of the fact that the Soviet Union has ratifieid the treaty.
GeraldJCraft, president of B'nai B'rith International, putlTbest: "Our failure to ratify the convention has brought us nothing but embarrassment internationally, and has impaired America's role as a champion of human rights." THE SURVIVORS OF LODZ
Forty-one years ago,Lodz -— the Polish textile centre and home of one of the largest pre-war Jewish comrnunities — was liberated from the Nazi yoke.
When the Russian army marched into the city, all but 7,000 to 10,000 of its Jewish inhabitants were alive. On the eve of the German invasion, Lodz's Jewish population was 250,000.
Last month, 1,500 Lodzer survivors gathered at the Concord Hotel, in Kiamesha Lake, NY, for what can be described as a reunion.Not since 1944, when the Nazis liquidated the ghetto, had so many Lodzers assembled in one place.
The gathering was organized by the Lodzer Young Men's Benevolent Society, and coincided with the publication of the first English translation of the Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto, edited by Lucjan Dobroszycki.
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Richard Nixon
Jews and Nazism evoked whole range
of emotions among Germans
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GERMAN AND JEWS The relationship between Jews and Germans, particularly during the Third Reich, was not as l;^imensional as some would auto-, matically a^ume. Jews and Nazism evoked a whole range of emotions among Germans. The situation was indeed complex.
Sarah Gordon, a professor of historyat New York's Pace College, looks at the issue rather wisely and dispassionately in her solid work. Hitler, Germans and the Jewish Question (Princeton University Press, $14.50).
Working primarily with German sources, Gordon paints a picture of attitudes which is neither too dark nor too light, but which is full of shades of gray. This is a book that will not please German apologists or Jewish paranoics.
In a country where the intermarriage rate was high and where assimilation was accepted by the majority of German Jews, anti-semitism was no minor phenomenon.
Anti-semitism affected all occupational sectors of German society, and middle class Germans were especially drawn into its vortex. But, warns Gordon, anti-semitism was not the issue whkh impelled the bourgeoisie to support Hitler.
The middle classes feared Communism, and were disillusioned with the ability of parties other than the Nazis to represent their political and economic interests.
Before 1925, she points out, surprisingly few of the top Nazi leaders could be classified as vini-lent anti-semites, and none of die more prominent men in the Nazi Party joined it exclusively because of anti-semitism. This, of course, would change,
V It is her contention that the Germans who aided Jews or criticized persecution, often at great personal risk, were only a small percentage of all Germans.
Until 1938, most Germans were, indifferent to the suffering being experienced by Jews. But, claims Gordon, large segments of the population condemned the Nazi murder of Jews and the destruction of Jewish property, which characterized German policy after Crystal Night. However sympathetic Germans may have been ' to Jews, such sentiments were squelched by the Nazis — Hitler using violent anti-semitism to terrorize his fellow Germans.
From 1939, die Nazi state placed a general ban on the publication of any information pertaining to anti-Jewish measures. Even news of restricted shopping hours and food rations of Jews was suppressed.
The propaganda ministry wanted to create an image of Jews as'' mere abstractions rather than people." ButGoebbels, the Nazi in charge of the ministry, realized tfiat publication of unsavory details would have revealed the Nazis' abrogation of law, order and respect for life and property , — qualities which Germans generally valued.
Despite the restrictions, many Germans were familiar with the atrocities being perpetrated in "ihe name of Germany.
They knew of the deportations and were privy to rumors of shootings in Eastern Europe.
Still, most Germans did not know of the exr istence of concentration camps, she writes.
By 1940, the bulk of Germans had already ceased thinking about Jews — Jews having been segregated from Germans physically, occuption^ ally, sexually, socially and psychologically.