400 Jews, Non-jews at Memorial Service for Synagogue Bomb Victims

Some 400 persons, Jews and non-Jews, attended memorial services here yesterday for the victims of last Friday’s neo-Nazi terrorist bombing of a Paris synagogue in which four were killed and 32 injured. The service, sponsored by the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, was held in the patio of the JCF building.

Speakers included Dr. Donald Jacobs, a Protestant minister who is director at the Interchurch Council of Cleveland; Rabbi Daniel Roberts, president of the Cleveland Board of Rabbis; Father John Helinski, chairman of the Social Actions Committee of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese; Jacques Royet, Consul General of France; and Asher Naim, Consul General of Israel.

Ed Richards, special assistant to the Mayor, read a message on behalf of Mayor George Voinovich. Last April, Voinovich was in Israel where he planted a forest in memory of his daughter who was killed in an automobile accident a year earlier. Yesterday he added four trees to the forest in memory of the four who died in the Paris bombing.

The service was concluded by Rabbi Louis Engelberg, chairman of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council, who read the 23rd Psalm and recited Kaddish.

(In New York, about 20 members of the Jewish Defense League staged a peaceful three-hour sit-in at the offices of the French Embassy’s Cultural Division here today to protest the neo-Nazi bombing of the Paris synagogue. They issued a statement urging French Jews “to leave for Israel because their situation is hopeless in France.” The statement said that “should they remain, they must take self-defense measures by purchasing guns, protecting Jewish institutions, etc.” The JDL also demanded that “the French government provide adequate police protection for Jews.”)