The Canadian Jewish Congress protested yesterday to the West German Ambassador to Canada, Dr. Rupprecht van Keller, against the recent announcement that the 1980 Passion Play in Oberammergau will be based on a “flagrantly anti-Semitic text.”
In a letter to the Ambassador in Ottawa signed by CJC executive vice-president Alan Rose, the CJC said: “It is inconceivable to the Canadian Jewish Congress, as it must be to our fellow citizens of all faiths in Canada, that at a time when we are witnessing a recrudescence of neo-Nazism in the Federal Republic of Germany and elsewhere in Europe, an incitement to anti-Semitism could be staged under the guise of the religious presentation.”
The letter added that the CJC is “anxious to learn what action is being considered by the Federal or Bavarian (State) governments to prevent this anti-Semitic travesty from taking place. We believe that the Federal Republic of Germany, which has sought to overcome the dark history of the Nazi period, cannot permit such a public spectacle to take place.”
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