Former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion sharply re-buked today Israelis expressing opposition to a prize-winning Tel Aviv city plan because the architects were Germans.
The architects–B. Alexander Branc and Fred Angeler–both of Munich won first prize in a worldwide contest for plans for reconstruction of the Mashiyah section of Tel Aviv. The prize carried a cash award of $50,000. The former Prime Minister took his stand in a letter to Davar, the Labor daily, as the Achdut Avodah and Mapam factions in the Tel Aviv municipality decided to oppose acceptance of the German plan.
Mr. Ben-Gurion expressed “regret and indignation” against “such racial attitudes, ” which he said better fitted “a fascist party” and did nothing but place a “black smear ” on Israel and on the lessons of the Prophets.” He added that if one followed the line of rejecting the plan because it was proposed by Germans, one should not listen to Beethoven or Mozart and should not study Kant and other philosophers born in the same country as Hitler.
Liberals who investigated the background of the winning architects found that Branca had been an anti Nazi who spent the war years in a Nazi concentration camp, a finding confirmed by high Israeli officials who spent some time with Branca in the same Nazi camp.
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