San Diego State College officials indicated today they planned a hearing on the incident in which a Brooklyn Jewish student attending a forum addressed by George Rockwell punched the Nazi on the jaw.
The blow, delivered by Edward Cherry, a 22-year-old physical education major, touched off a melee Thursday in which one of Rockwell’s two “stormtroopers” knocked the Brooklyn youth down with a flying tackle and was in turn tackled by a group of students who rushed up to the stage.
The student audience also greeted Rockwell’s anti-Semitic remarks with a barrage of eggs. The jeering students attacked Rockwell’s car, breaking a window and denting it before police were able to clear a path so that the Nazi and his followers were able to get into it and drive away.
College officials indicated they were convinced that the student was “sincere and not a trouble-maker.” One official said he wished the students had sat “in stone cold silence” while Rockwell was delivering his anti-Semitic speech but added that he guessed this was “too much to hope for in normal college kids.”
Rockwell was invited to the college by the Committee for Student Action, a group dedicated to freedom of speech. Some 2,000 students turned out to hear him. Dr. Ernest O’Bryne, college vice-president, said Rockwell “spoke openly of killing other Americans to ‘improve the country.’ Our students had never heard anybody talk like that before.”
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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.
