The American Federation of Jewish Fighters, Comp Inmates and Nazi Victims has issued a call from its headquarters here to its own members as well as to other Jewish organizations and groups of all religions, races and creeds to send symbolic delegations to Skokie, to counter the expected Nazi march on June 25.
Declaring that “Skokie is now a symbol for the whole world,” Solomon Zynstein, president of the Survivors Federation, also announced a further action program to halt the Nazi demonstration. He said his organization of survivors of the Holocaust would urge President Carter, Congress, the State of Illinois and the courts not to permit the Nazis to march; would distribute educational material exposing the evils of Nazism and the need for vigilance, and would be in Skokie to counter the Nazi march if it took place.
The survivors organization issued its call after hearing Sol Goldstein, a Skokie Jewish Community Leader, tell the group at a meeting at its headquarters here that he expected at least 50,000 persons from the Skokie area to counter the Nazis because he and all Jews and men of good will were committed to the “legacy of the Six Million Jews who perished in the Holocaust that the Nazis never be allowed to raise their heads again, and to perpetuate a free society.” Goldstein is chairman of the Holocaust Survivors Association in Chicago and chairman of the Individual Liberty and Jewish Security Subcommittee of the Public Affairs Committee of the Jewish United Fund of Chicago. Appeals are now before the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the Nazi march.
NOT QUESTION OF FREE SPEECH
“Every Jew was in Auschwitz; the free world was in Auschwitz,” said Goldstein, who added that the march of the Nazis is not a question of free speech. “The authors of the First Amendment never believed the amendment would have the right to decide who should live or who should die and the swastika means the Jewish people should die,” he said.
Zynstein added that “you cannot buy freedom of speech, assail the rights of others. Everyone has the right to be a Christian or a Jew or any other religion without being harassed or insulted, or suffering mental anguish.”
Both Zynstein and Jose Tekulsky, chairman of the board of the Survivors Federation, said their organization is united behind the stand of the people of Skokie to halt the Nazis. The two leaders said that symbolic delegations from their organization would go to Skokie from New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Montreal, Los Angeles, New Haven and other cities, “our banners in this peaceful counter-demonstration will say ‘Brotherhood,’ ‘Freedom,’ “No more Holocaust.'”
“We the survivors of the Holocaust know best from the experiences of history what can grow from the seeds of poison. Nobody paid attention to the small Nazi Party in Germany in the 1920s and look at the catastrophe that ensued in World War II,” said Zynstein, himself a survivor.
He added that “it is unbelievable that in a free America, the swastika is alive and the Nazis want to march in the streets with the same slogans of hate and racism. We witnessed what hate means. We declare today that as long as we are alive, we will not be silent to the scourge of Nazism.”
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, told the survivors group that there would be demonstrations in New York protesting the Nazi march.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
