Protests against the rise of neo-Nazism in France and elsewhere in West Europe have taken place here and in New York.
Some 500 people attended a meeting last week at the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies at Yeshiva University of Los Angeles to express their outrage at the bombing of a Paris synagogue Oct. 3 while at the same time praising the heroism of two Righteous Gentiles who saved a Jewish family from the Nazis in Poland during World War II.
“We assemble here today with a mixture of happiness and outrage,” Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal Center, declared. “Happiness because we are here to honor two people who are amongst the righteous who cared enough to risk their lives to save. Jews during the Holocaust, and outrage because the France of Rousseau and Zola — the birthplace of revolutions against tyranny — has become once again afflicted by the curse of Nazism and anti-Semitism.”
Hier stressed that “what happened in France is symptomatic of a new sickness sweeping Europe and the West, and 35 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must stand united in our commitment to the physical and spiritual survival and growth of the Jewish people.”
Alex and Amelia Roslan, the Christian couple honored, took courageous action at great risk to their own lives and saved three Jewish boys during the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland. One of those boys, Dr. David Gilat, now a professor at Tel Aviv University, flew to Los Angeles to take part in the program.
MEETING WITH FRENCH CONSUL GENERAL
Meanwhile, leaders of the Los Angeles Jewish community expressed their concern over the bombing during a 45-minute meeting with Jean-Claude Moreau, the French Consul General here. Lawrence Ireil, president of the Jewish Federation-Council of Greater Los Angeles, stressed that the neo-Nazi resurgence in France concerns Los Angeles Jews because “anything affecting Jews anywhere in the world affects us all.” Irell also spoke of the reported links between the Palestine Liberation Organization and neo-Nazi groups in Europe.
Moreau said the government of France has attached a “very high priority” to the investigation of the synagogue bombing. “The government of France shares your emotion and concern and has taken immediate steps to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.” But he noted that there is no guarantee that it could not happen again since there is great difficulty in trying to prevent acts by “small groups of terrorists.”
RALLY AGAINST U.S. LABOR PARTY
Meanwhile, in New York City, some 200 people participated in a two-hour rally in mid-Manhattan organized by The Generation After, on anti-Nazi activist organization comprising children of Holocaust survivors, to protest the presence in the city of the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC) and its electoral front, the U.S. Labor Party (USLP) which is headed by Lyndon LaRouche.
Shirley Ranz, spokesperson for The Generation After whose honorary president is Simon Wiesenthal, and who is herself a child of Holocaust survivors, said that LaRouche’s movement “is a well-financed anti-Semitic, racist and fascist one that advocates the reimplementation of genocide against Jews and all others who stand in its way.”
According to documentation in Our Town, a New York City weekly, The New York Times and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the USLP has declared war on “the Jewish lobby,” international bankers, Jews in the U.S. and the Anti-Defomation League of B’nai B’rith.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
