UAHC to Hold Memorial for Kent University Students Killed by National Guard

Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, vice-president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, today condemned the action of the Ohio National Guard in which four students at Kent State University were killed Monday, and said he was “utterly appalled” by the “cavalier” statement of President Nixon in his reaction to the tragedy. A memorial service for the four dead students will be conducted at the headquarters of the UAHC tomorrow. Officiating will be Albert Vorspan, director of the Social Action Department of the UAHC; Rabbi Balfour Brickner, director of UAHC’s interreligious activities, and two representatives from the UAHC’s youth groups. Two of the dead students were reported to be Jewish–Sandra Lee Scheuer. 20, of Youngstown, O., known to her parents as Gittel, and Allison Krause, 19, of Pittsburgh, said to be sympathetic to her parents’ desire for her to marry a Jewish man (her boyfriend, Barry Levine of Valley Stream. L.I., is Jewish). It was not certain today whether the other two victims–Jeffrey Glen Miller, 20, of Plainview, L.I., and William K. Schroeder, 19, of Lorain, O.–were Jewish or not.

Rabbi Schindler asked whether there can be “even a vestige of compassion or sensitivity in the President of the United States when his unfeeling statement–issued through a spokesman–makes as its primary point that the fatal incident should remind us all again that when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy.'” Expressing “grave fear for the destiny of our country,” he called on American “leadership” to “respond and act more rationally to the voice of justified outrage.” He will speak further on the situation at the national meeting of the National Federation of Temple Brotherhoods, an affiliate of the UAHC, in Cleveland on Thursday. Yeshiva University in New York was one of a dozen area colleges permitting absence today from classes by students sympathetic to the Kent State victims. An administration spokesman said the religion of the victims did not appear to be a factor in the students’ plans for memorial services and rallies, which began yesterday.

The university’s Albert Einstein School of Medicine and the Jewish Peace Fellowship will be represented at Saturday’s “emergency” anti-war demonstration across from the White House. Allan Solomonow, JPF national program director, said the demonstration will offer “the single demand of immediate and total withdrawal of all U.S. forces from all of Indochina.” He said the rally was called because “somehow words fail in face of so immense a tragedy, so bloody a “peacemaking.’ ” The Yeshiva campus rallies are linking “deep concern” over U.S. military action in Vietnam and Cambodia and “introspection and re-examination” of the military action against the Kent State students. While Yeshiva classes have not been canceled, the administration has announced that students “are free to follow the dictates of their conscience with no penalty for absence.” A. Leo Levin, vice-president for Academic Affairs, called an emergency meeting of the Academic Graduate Council for Thursday evening at the center. (In Tel Aviv, the United States Embassy acceded to requests by 30 American Jewish students here and lowered its flag to half-staff yesterday in mourning for the four slain students. But Embassy Counselor Owen Zurhellen Jr. said he had agreed to the requests only after the students agreed to hold an additional prayer service for American war dead. Spokesmen for the students said they would hold the second service on Sunday.)