“We cannot allow the resurgence of neo-Nazism…We cannot allow the Nazi uniform and swastika to invade our homes again,” declared Erna I. Gans, Holocaust survivor from Skokie, Illinois. The first woman president of the Dr. Janusz Korczak Lodge B’nai B’rith, Mrs. Gans was invited to address the Jewish Postal Employes Welfare League of Manhattan and Bronx in a special session here last night.
“One should question, and not blindly follow the letter of the law,” she stated, in reference to the recent Supreme Court decision allowing the Nazis to march in Skokie on June 25. “We differ with the interpretation of the First Amendment; no law is absolute,” she said, echoing the plan to counter demonstrate in Skokie as well as in other heavily populated Jewish areas such as Boston and New York.
“While the courts wrestle with the legalities, the American conscience does not allow the legalities to stand in the way,” stated Vincent Zimbrotto, president of the Mail Carriers of New York. “It is important that we show them in Skokie that those that would march against human dignity will be stopped before they get started,” he said.
State Senator Jeremiah Bloom of Brooklyn said “We cannot forget; we must remind each other that we have a right to freedom, a right to peace and a right to live.” Rabbi David Kahane, of the Sutton Place Synagogue, where the meeting took place, stated that on June 25 in Skokie, “there must be a counterdemonstration of white and Black, Jew and Christian, young and old to let the world know that this time we will not be caught napping.”
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.
