Ohio Jewish Chronicle, 1983-03-17

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VOL.61   NO. 11
MARCH 17,1983-NISAN 3
Devoted to American
and Jewish Ideals.
m
Beth Jacob
Will Honor
Max Robins
Last minute preparations
are underway for the Beth
Jacob Brotherhood's
Twenty-First Annual Concert and "Man of the Year"
Award. According to ftabbi
David Stavsky, "Max
Robins, an outstanding attorney and devoted friend of
the congregation," will receive the Man of the Year
Award for his exemplary
service to the Beth Jacob as
a volunteer attorney.
Max Hobins
The featured guest artist
,for the concert will be Gantor
Jeffrey" Nadel of Beth
Shalom Congregation, Washington, D.C. The second artist for the evening will be
Beth Jacob's Cantor Elwin
Redfern. Cantor Ben Zion
Weiss, a native of B'nai Brak
Israel presently of Beth
Jacob of Dayton, Ohio, will
round out the program.
Milton Arnoff, president of
the Beth Jacob Brotherhood,
stated that a special program book in honor of
Robins will be presented to
him Sunday evening.
The Concert will begin
promptly at 7:3(j p.m. Sunday, March 20. It is open to
the public, and all friends of
Robins are invited to attend.
Tickets; for the concert ($5
for adults and $2.50 for students) may be obtained from
any Beth Jacob Brotherhood
member and at Eastmoor
Pharmarcy or the Synagogue office.
BBWTofete
Charter Members
At April 17 Affair
B'nai B'rith Women, Zion
Chapter charter members
will be honored for their
many accomplishments
during the chapter's 50 years
in Columbus on April 17 at
the Leo Yassenoff Jewish
Center. A supper and special
entertainment are being ■
planned.
The evening will also include reminiscenseS of the
"good old days."
Nine Congressmen Urge Reag<
To Investigate Charges That U.S.
Protected Nazis At End Of WW II
Pictured above is part of a group of 20 members of
the Board of Rabbis of Northern California who met on
Feb. 24 in front of the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco to express their outrage at the treatment of Soviet
prisoner-of-conscience Anatoly Scharansky.
No Easy Answer Seen
For Jews In U.S.S.R.
By Judith Franklin
Chronicle News Editor
MOSCOW—Authorities In the capital city have stepped up their campaign to institute a stricter work discipline and have conducted Impromptu raids ol homes there, during which
they have demanded that residents
produce their Identity papers. Listed
on those papers are places of employ:
ment. This stir has caused great
anxiety among the refuseniks Irt Moscow as many Jews, unable to secure
employment as a result of their applications Id emigrate to.lsr.ael, fear they.,
will bo arrested on charges of "parasitism/''
''In the camp where I was, they had
■ a regular form of punishment: an Isolated room, where one ...solitary
prisoner was kept ... The Isolation
cell could-klll anyone. The hunger was
terrible ..."
Edward Kuzuetsov,
Released Soviet Prisoner
A congregation of some 20 members
ol the Board of Rabbis of Northern
California met Feb. 24 in front of the
Soviet Consulate in San Francisco to
express their outrage at the treatment
of Soviet prisonorof-consclence Anatoly Scharansky. .
Together, "they fasted, prayed and
studied religious passages relating to
the redemption of captives. Their fast,
in sympathy with Scharansky, coincided with the Fast of Esther.
Catholic and Protestant religious
leaders and a number of prominent
Blacks from throughout; the United
States were among delegates from 30
countries taking part In the third international Conference on Soviet Jewry
In Jerusalem March 15-17. .       '    •
What do these four incidents have in common? The
first two represent the problem; the others efforts to
help effect a solution.
According to Dr. Jerry
Goodman, executive director of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, in Columbus recently to speak to
the Israel and Overseas
Jewry Task Force of the Columbus Jewish Federation
and to brief Ohio State University professors at Hillel,
there is no easy remedy for
the situation in \yhieh Soviet
Jews now find themselves,
"I wish there were a button
you could push," he said,
that would make everything
all right, but since there
isn't, he advocated the "shotgun approach," trying
everything possible in the
hope that something might
work.
At the present time, Jew
ish emigration from the
Soviet Union is at a virtual
standstill, Goodman noted,
and no one seems to know
why. The traditional belief,
he said, is that it reflects the
deterioration of relations between the United States and
the Soviet Union which began in 1979 and lias worsened
under the Reagan administration.
'Goodman explained * that'
the Soviets, sensing that the
American public was sympathetic toward the plight of
the Jews, had used the issue
of Jewish emigration as a •
bargaining point in international summitry. Conversely, he pointed out, because
no negotiations are currently
in progress, there is no need
for bargaining and thus, no
need to allow Jewish emigration.
Jews are not the only ones
unable to leave the Soviet
Union, Goodman noted.
There is no real emigration
for anybody. Instead, Soviet
officials make arbitrary (He
emphasized the word "arbitrary.") exceptions, allowing a few members of various ethnic groups like
Greeks or Germans to "repatriate," return to their
homelands, based on a principle called "family reunification."
For the Jews, however, the
decisions seem more arbitrary, he noted, and in addition to applying emigration
restrictions, Soviet officials
use the laws of the country to
curtail Jewish religious activity. Circumcision is
against the law as is the
teaching of Hebrew. No
B'nai Mitzvah have been
held in a Russian synagogue
in over two decades. Moreover, although two rabbis
are being trained in Hungary, Goodman explained,
probably because of pressure from the west, the
dwindling number of rabbis
in the country is not being replenished.    ,
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 15)
WASHINGTON (JTA)-
Nine Congressmen have
written President Reagan
asking him to inaugurate a
special investigation of
charges that the U.S. government protected Nazi war
criminals at the end of World
Warll.
The letter, drafted by Rep.
William Lehman (D. Fla.)
came after the recent allegations that U.S. agencies provided protection for former
gestapo chief Klaus Barbie,
who is facing trial in Lyon,.
France.
"We need to get to the bottom of this matter,'' Lehman'
said. "These are serious allegations that cannot be ignored and the Congress and
the American people have a
right to know the truth."
Statement By The
Congressman
The letter was co-signed
by Reps. Phillip Burton and
Don Edwards (both D. Cal.);
Dante Fascell (D. Fla.);
Hamilton Fish and Bill
Green (both R, NY); Samuel
Gejdenson (D. Conn,);
Stephen Solarz (D. NY) and
Sidney Yates (D. 111.). It
asked that the Justice Department's Office of Special
Investigations carry out the
inquiry   because   of   its
"unique expertise."
"We believe that our government has an unmistakable moral obligation to investigate the Barbie case in
order to set the record
straight on any involvement
of the executive branch
agencies in gaining the
cooperation of Nazi war
criminals in exchange for
admission into the U.S. or for
facilitating their entry into
other countries," the Congressmen wrote. They urged
that "the U.S. must, once
and for all, make clear What
its position is on Nazi war
criminals and their perpetrators."
ADL To Take Action
Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai
B'rith announced in New
York that it will file a request under the Freedom of
Information Act to compel
disclosure on charges that
American intelligence
agencies shielded; Barbie
and other Nazi war criminals after the war. Nathan.
Perlmutter, ADL national
director, called Barbie "a
Nazi skeleton in America's
closet."
Abraham Foxman, ADL
associate national director,
said  the  ADL  wants   the
Only Jewish Minister In France Defeated
PARIS (JTA)—-France's only Jewish minister running in
nation-wide municipal elections, Culture Minister Jack
Lang, was heavily defeated in Paris' predominantly Jewish
Third District. Lang, a Socialist, had wooed the Jewish electorate, which seems, according to first poll studies, to have
failed him. His competitor, Gaullist Jacques Dominati,
known as pro-Israeli, did not specifically seem to court the
district's Jewish electorate.
Three Sentenced In Shooting
LONDON (JTA)—Three members of a Baghdad-based
Palestinian terrorist group were sentenced to 30 and 35 year
prison terms in Central Criminal Court here recently for the
attempted assassination of the Israeli Ambassador to
Britain, Shlomo Argpv last June 3. Hassein Said, 23, a Jordanian national who fired the shots that left the 53 year-old Israeli diplomat almost totally paralyzed, and Marwan Banna,
20, also of Jordon, who drove the getaway car, were given 30
year sentences by Judge William Mars Jones. Nauoff Rosan,
36, a Iraqi citizen, described by the prosecution as the leader
of the gang, received a 35 year sentence.
'Illegal Ports Of Entry'Closed
TEL AVIV (JTA)—The Lebanese government is shutting
down "illegal ports of entry" to end the evasion of customs
duties and other regulations by Lebanese importers, it was
reported from Beirut. The crackdown, officially aimed
against smuggling, is also intended to slow down the import
goods from Israel. Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia
which is Lebanon's principal trading partner, have complained that Israel is dumping its goods into Lebanon from
where they could infiltrate into other Arab countries which
maintain a boycott of Israel.
American government to
"make public information
concerning allegations that
this country, after World
War II, protected Nazi war "
criminals, including Barbie,
with false identities and new
names, in return for their
cooperation in providing intelligence on Soviet activities in Europe."
The ADL's request for in-_
formation will be filed with
the Central Intelligence
Agency, the State Department, Defense Department
and the Treasury Department.
Organization Opposes
Nuclear Arms Race
NEW YORK (JTA)-The
Synagogue Council of America has appealed to the
governments of the United
States and the. Soviet Union
to agree to a bilateral,
mutually verifiable total cessation of the manufacture
and deployment of nuclear
weapons.
In a recently adopted
statement, the Council also
called on President Reagan
and Congress to press vigorously to achieve "effective
non-proliferation treaties
and to stop the transfer of
nuclear arms technology to
other nations."
Rabbi Walter Wurzburger,
president of the Synagogue
Council, stressed that this
statement was not meant to
imply an endorsement of
numerous proposals for a nuclear freeze. Various Jewish
organizations, both religious
and secular, have made
statements in recent years
calling for a bilateral halt of
nuclear arms technology,
but the Synagogue Council's
statement is the first nationwide unified declaration on .
the issue from the major
rabbinical and congregational organizations.
Wurtzburger said the
Council's statement will enable the organization "to
marshall its resources and to
mobilize the Jewish religious
community in an effort to
prevent mankind from drifting into a nuclear holocaust." Rabbi Irwin Groner
of Southfield, Mich., chairman of the Council's domestic affairs committee, said
that the "unanimous declaration puts the Jewish community on record as being
deeply committed to joining
all responsible efforts to
avert the threat of nuclear
• war."