Ohio Jewish Chronicle, 1983-02-10

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Serving Columbus and Central Ohio Jewish Community for Over 60 Years
VOL.61   NO.C
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FEBRUARY 10,1983-SHEVAT 27
Devoted to American
and Jewish Ideals,
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Navon Says
Hi Will Retire
From Politics
JERUSALEM (JTA>-
President Yitzhak Navon announced last week that he
will not seek re-election
when his five-year term expires next May and will retire to private life.
"I do not intend to ask the
Knesset to elect me to
another term and I do riot
plan or intend to enter political life," Navon told a press
conference at the Presidential residence this morning. He said he would devote
his time to writing books and
to social and. educational:
work which he did not
specify.
He said he had concluded,
after long and difficult deliberations that he could not fulfill the office of President for
another five years. The office, though prestigious, is
largely ceremonial and it is
widely believed that Navon
could win re-election by the
Knesset with ease had he
chosen to run.
His decision not to has
raised hopes in some Labor
Party circles that; Navon'
may eventually be- persuaded to return to the
political scene and possibly
head that party's ticket in
new elections.
Although Navon, a former
Labor MK, said specifically
that he would not enter
politics after leaving office,
many observers believe that
he has set for himself a
"cooling off" period after
which he may reconsider political activity. ;
He has been an immensely
popular Chief of State and
Laborites do not overlook the
fact that as the first President of Israel of Sephardic
ancestry he would doubtlessly appeal to many Sephardic
voters. Sephardim, or
Oriental Jews, comprise
over 60 percent of Israel's
population. They voted overwhelmingly for Premier
Menachem Begin's Likud
party in the last two Knesset
elections.
Former Gestapo Chief Jailed
According to newspaper reports, Klaus Barbie, known as
the "Butcher of Lyon," was flown from Bolivia to France last
weekend to be tried for ' 'crimes against humanity.'' They
stated that the Nazi war criminal was jailed in Montluc, the
fortress prison where, as head of the Nazi Gestapo in Lyon 40
years ago, he allegedly tortured and killed thousands of
World War II resistance fighters. ._
Hoffman Charged With Murder
BONN (WNS)—Karl-Heinz Hoffman, who headed a group
of West German rightwing extremists who received military
training in PLO installations in Lebanon, was charged in
Nuremberg with the murder of Jewish publisher Shlomo
Levin and his companion, Frida Poescke, .in Erlangen on
Dec. 19, 1980. Hoffmann was the leader of so-called sports
group named after him and which was outlawed by the Interior Ministry in 1980. Some 15 members of the group, led by
Hoffmann personally, later turned up in PLO military camps
where they trained in the use of arms.
Canadians Shocked By Book
Which Says Canada Blocked
Jews From Entering Country
TORONTO (JTA)-
Shock waves are still reverberating over Canada in the
wake of a book published in
Toronto a little over four
months ago. The book.JVarie
Is Too Many (Lester, Orpen
and Denys), by historians
Irving Abella and Harold
Troper, both residents of
Toronto, reveals that, before
and during World War II, the
Canadian government pursued a policy of actively
excluding Jews from entry
into the country.
This revelation, the result
of monumental archival
excavations conducted by
the two researchers in
Ottawa, has come as a surprise to most Canadian
Jews. While there was a perception that the Canadian
government between 1933
and 1948 was reluctant to
facilitate. Jewish immigration to Canada, no one before
Abella and Troper ever realized the scope and intensity
SPECIAL INTERVIEW
German Jew Recalls Time Of Infamy
By Gerhart Riegner
Editor'snote: Sunday, Jan. 30, was
the 50th anniversary of Adolph Hitler
becoming Chancellor of Germany. Or.
Gerhart Riegner, secretary general of
the World Jewish Congress, was then a
21-year-old law student, working as
the assistant of a district judge in Berlin. In reply to questions from the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency's London
correspondent, Maurice Samuelson,
Riegner gives the. following personal
memories of the birth of the "thousand-year Reich," its Immediate impact on the 600.000 Jews of Germany,
his feelings about present-day Germany and the anniversary's lessons
half a century later.
This is part II ol a two part series.
Part-1, in the Fob. 3 issue of the
Chronicle, dealt with the beginnings of
the Hitler era in Germany.
LONDON (JTA)-Of
course, nobody foresaw or
could foresee in 1933 Auschwitz and the policy of total
extermination as it was
practiced during the war.
But those who had read Mein
Kampf, who had studied the
party program, who had
listened to the party leaders,
could not have any doubt
that the new leaders meant
what they said and that there
was no future for Jews in
' Germany.
German Jews Were Not
Prepared .   .
Events like this came as a
deep shock to the Jews of
Germany, Although they had
witnessed the dangers for
many years, they had never
really believed that it would
happen and were not prepared. The great majority
"awakening".
It was the Zionists who
gave leadership in those
days of panic. There was the
unforgettable article of the
"Our 'damned Jewish optimism,' . . . which has
helped us to survive many situations, is no sure guide
in the brutal power struggle of the 20th century."
believed they were an inseparable part of the
German people and did not
understand what was
happening. Only a minority
had been Zionists and had
warned what might be at
stake.
The central institutions of
German Jewry had fought
well against the Nazis and
their calumnies. But they
had done so by trying to persuade the enemy of the insanity of its theses by rational arguments. They had
never realized that they
"■were completely missing the
point, that the enemy's beliefs come from deep irrational, emotional and mythical sources which no logical argument could overcome.
There was even a small
group of German "nationalist" Jews who had sympathy
with the Germans' national
late Robert Weltsch in the
Jewish Newspaper Juedi-
sche Rundschau, with its slogan: "Wear the Yellow
Badge With Pride,"
And there were the unforgettable speeches of Martin
Buber and the sermons of
Rabbi Joachim Prinz, which
later helped to re-establish
the morale of German Jews
and notably of the Jewish,
youth.
Even after Hitler's coming
to power opinions among
German Jews varied a great
deal. Only a small part real-,
ly understood that the Nazi
rule constituted a decisive
and irreversible turning
point in German history.
The tragedy was that
many of them did not comprehend the ruthless and fanatical character of the new
regime which aimed at
world domination, not recognizing any ethical or moral
limits to its action and whose
only valid principle was
"right is what is beneficial to
the German people" as' they
understood it.
Many Jews, . and many
non-Jews, thought that the
"regime could not last and
hoped that the German nationalists would restrict Hitler's appetite. In short, they
did not understand the fundamental change that had
taken place.
I remember vividly the
evening before my departure from Germany in
the middle of May 1933. We
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 14)
FEATURE
Buckle Up! It's A Mitzvah
By Dr. Irving Greenberg
Director, National Jewish
Resource Center
V (Copyright 1982)
Editor's Note: The weekend ol Feb.
tl-14 has been designated National
Safety Sabbath, according to the Ohio
Department of Highway Safety. Safely
Sabbath .'s sponsored by the National
Safety Council. The Chronicle, In
conjunction with this event, presents
the following feature article.
Boy, have I got a mitzvah
for youl It is recognized as a
mitzvah no matter whether
you are Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform—or secular.
Men, women and children
are equally eligible to perform it. It takes less than a
minute to do; it costs you
nothing; you can fulfill it
whether you read Hebrew or
not. As with such other good
mitzvahs as "honor your
father and mother," the reward for doing it is great: a
longer life in this world as
well as future considerations. The mitzvah is:
fastening your seat belts
whenever you drive or ride
in a car.
Every year, some 52,600
people die in auto accidents
and up to one hundred times
that many are injured. Most
'deaths or injuries occur
when the car stops abruptly
due to crash and the occu-
of  Canada's   anti-Jewish
bias.
Abella and Troper indicate
in their book that one man; >
Charles Blair, was;tbe major
executor of Canada's exclusionary immigration policies
towards Jews. As a Deputy
Minister for Immigration,
assigned, for obscure^ bureaucratic reasons, to the
Department of Mines and
Technical, Surveys, Blair
had the responsibility to discharge the policies of the
government of Prime Minister Mackenzie King.
Blair discharged them
with a cruel zeal. Authors
Abella and Troper show in
their devastating indictment
that Blair was an unrepentant anti-Semite who was so .
secure in his position that he
left behimd ample documentation filled with scurrilous anti-Semitic remarks.
At one point during the early
. years of the war, Blair described. Jews trying to get
into Canada as "pigs at the
feeding trough."
While Blair was the main
instrument in blocking
Jewish immigration into
Canada he was not, according to Abella and Troper,
acting unilaterally. In fact,
he was expressing the views
of the Cabinet and the Cana-
(CONTINUED ON PAGE IS)
Names New Spiritual Leader
Rabbi Alan G. Ciner of
New York City will become
spiritual leader of Agudas
Achim Synagogue on Feb.
15, succeeding Rabbi Samuel
W. Rubenstein, who is retiring after 32 years of service. .
pants are thrown with enormous force against the car
or out of it.
Studies have shown that
almost half of all auto occupant fatalities—and many
serious injuries—could have
been avoided if the victims
had been wearing seat
belts—and therefore physically restrained—at the time '
of the accident. Yet the most
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 141
Rabbi Alan G. 'Ciner
Ciner, 36, is a 1968 graduate of Yeshiva University
and was ordained by the
Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of New
York in 1971. _
Ciner returns to the rabbi
nate after an absence of nine
years. During that time, he
served on the faculty of Yeshiva University in New
York City and was a senior
consultant with the firm of
Business Brokerage and
Commodity Industries in
New York.
- Rabbi Ciner received his
masters degree in Jewish
history from Bernard Revel
graduate school at Yeshiva
University.
For two years after graduation, he was spiritual leader of Wihands Road Syna- "
gogue Center in Baltimore,
Md. He lectured extensively
on college campuses in the
Baltimore area.
Since his ordination, Rabbi
Ciner has enjoyed wide experience in many different
areas. While in the Washington D.C. area, he served as a
spokesman for the Jewish
community at Congressional
and State Department meetings.   He  served  as  vice
(CONTINUED ON PAGE S)