The Defense Department has ordered the Armed Forces to “cease immediately” all promotion of the Oberammergau Passion Play in West. Germany because of its “sectarian nature” and “anti-Semitic lone,” the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith has revealed.
The ban, specifically directed to the Armed Forces Recreation Center, West Germany, which had been arranging tours to the controversial pageant, declared such promotion “inappropriate” and ordered that “no efforts be made in the future to promote similar commercial sectarian events.”
The Defense Department memorandum, issued by Maj. Gen. R. Dean Tice, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, acknowledged that the action came in response to an ADL inquiry and information on the play.
Disclosure of the ban was made in a report on the 1980 version of the Passion Play made yesterday by Nat Kameny, chairman of ADL’s program committee, of the closing session of the 67th annual meeting of the agency’s National Commission.
Kameny and Theodore Freedman, director of ADL’s program division, returned last week from Oberammergau where they attended a special preview of the spectacle as the guests of German officials, including the Mayor of the Bavarian town. The villagers stage the production every 10 years to honor a vow made in 1684.
CHANGES NOT ENOUGH
Kameny said that white a “genuine effort” has been mode to eliminate objectionable elements in the drama, “these changes do not go nearly for enough.”
Noting that the villagers “emphatically deny” anti-Semitic intent, he said that they nevertheless “do not comprehend the anti-Jewishness emanating from the traditional passion story accusation that the Jews collectively are eternally guilty of decide.”
He declared that the current version, which incorporates revisions suggested by ADL after analysis of the play’s script, does reflect greater historical accuracy and today’s enlightened Catholic theological attitudes.
“But,” Kameny went on to say, “although diminished when compared to its predecessors, serious problems and major concerns remain.” Hopefully, he added, these will be addressed in time to revise the script and staging for special 300th anniversary presentations already scheduled for 1984.
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