Nazi Victims Hit Butz’s Book

The American Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates and Nazi Victims today called on Robert H. Strotz, president of Northwestern University to “speak out and have the tenure of Mr. Butz reviewed.”

In condemning the book by Arthur R. Butz, a Northwestern University professor, that says the Nazi slaying of Jews is a myth, the Federation said the university “has an obligation in the name of academic freedom not to keep silent over such despicable conduct of a member of its faculty.”

Solomon Zynstein, Federation president, in his letter to Strotz, said that the university could not “become a privileged sanctuary of distortion of historic facts. Why should tenure protect him in this case and what has his case to do with academic freedom? I am dismayed and ashamed that you interpret tenure to mean immunity for any kind of intellectual and moral obscenity. By so doing, are you not distorting the notion of academic freedom?” Zynstein is a survivor of the concentration camps.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Chaim Herzog, met for one hour Thursday with the Soviet Ambassador, Oleg Troyanovsky, the Israel Mission to the UN announced. The meeting took place on the eve of Herzog’s departure to participate in the talks UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim will hold with Israeli officials in Jerusalem next week. The Soviet Ambassador clarified Soviet policy on the issues that Waldheim will investigate during his tour of Middle Eastern countries, the Mission said.

The World Council of Synagogues Thursday selected Arthur G. Levine, president of the United Synagogue of America, and Rabbi Simon Greenberg, vice-chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, to represent the World Organization of Conservative Judaism at the World Zionist Organization Executive. Greenberg will sit on the Executive in Jerusalem, while Levine will attend the Executive in N.Y.