“We don’t think the Nazis really want to march in Skokie,” Stanton M. Lacks, assistant director of the national fact-finding department of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, said here. “We believe that they want to harass the residents and gain publicity. Both the neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan are now getting media coverage far out of proportion to their numbers.” Lacks made his comments on “Heritage and Destiny,” a local television show co-produced by ADL and the Albany Jewish Community Council.
Lacks claimed that there are only 30 members in the National Socialist Party, which had planned to march in Skokie, Illinois. The event was scheduled for April 20, in conjunction with Hitler’s birthday, but a temporary stay, now overruled, has so far prevented the march. A new permit must be issued at least 30 days in advance, so plans for the march will have to be postponed.
The total figure for all neo-Nazis in America, including party members and sympathizers, is only 1000, according to Lacks. This number is broken up into nine or 10 groups, with 30 to 100 members each, and efforts to form a unified umbrella organization have so far failed, he said.
Asked what ADL’s policy is regarding to the planned Skokie march, Lacks said, “The ADL believes very strongly in the First Amendment, but the Skokie issue is not a clear-cut case of the First Amendment and free speech. The Nazis have chosen a Jewish community with a large concentration of Holocaust survivors, and we believe that their intent is to harass the population. Of 40,000 Jews in Skokie, 7,000 are survivors.
“Our theory is that the march is a psychic assault on the citizens of Skokie and that this is no longer a matter of free speech, but of activity,” Lacks said. “The ADL has also initiated a law suit which argues that swastikas should not be allowed to be worn, because they represent psychic assault and not symbolic speech.”
SUGGESTS SILENT TREATMENT
Lacks suggested that the best way to handle the Nazis is by doing nothing. He cited an occasion when American Nazi Party leader George Linocoln Rockwell, who was killed by a party member, spoke at Yale University and the totally silent response from his audience “devastated” him.
“Our best advice is for the entire community to shut down,” he said, “and not give publicity to the Nazis. We realize, however, that it’s difficult for survivors with strong feelings to follow this advice, so we suggest a peaceful demonstration is second best.” In Skokie, if the march takes place, a counter-demonstration of 50,000 is expected, he said.
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