Ohio Jewish Chronicle, 1985-05-02

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1 VUI BRAKY,   OHIO   HISTORICAL,  SO&i&rC
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OQLS. 0,  43211
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VOL.63   NO. 18
1WAY2,1985-IYAR11
Devoted to Amorlcan
end Jewish Ideal*.
i
1
May 5 Set Aside
To Commemorate
Victory Over Nazis
The 40th anniversary of
the victory over the Nazis
will be .marked on May 9.
This will be the topic of discussion for those who will
gather at the Leo Yassenoff
Jewish Center to commemorate this day. The
memorial prayer "Kel
Moleh Rachamim" for the
soldiers who died during
World War II will be led by
Cantor Baruch Shifman of
- Agudas Achim synagogue.
Rabbi Samuel Rubinstein
will address the participants. The meeting will be
held 6i\ May 5, 3 p.m. in
Room 309 of the Leo Yassenoff Jewish Center.
Stein Family Sponsors
Mother's Day Breakfast
At The Agudas Achim
A gala Mother's Day
Champagne Breakfast sponsored by the Stein family in
memory of their mother,
Minnie Stein, will be held al
the Agudas Achim Syna^
gogue on Sunday; May 12.
■ ■- -The-Minyannaire;JRrayer.
Service will be held in the
main sanctuary at 8:30 a.m.
Breakfast prepared by
Brotherhood chefs will be
served at 9 a.m. in the Silberstein Social Hall.
Children, parents, and
grandparents are invited to
celebrate this special day by
'attending family morning
services and enjoying a special breakfast of orange
juice, compote of fruit,
champagne, blintze with
sour cream, scrambled
eggs, hash browns, assorted
bagels, cream cheese, butter, jelly, coffee, and hot
cocoa. " .
In addition to breakfast,
there wjll be flowers for all
mothers.
Reservations • are requested by Wednesday, May
8. Call the Synagogue offi.ee
237-2747 for reservations;
European Jewry Reported To Be
'Profoundly Distressed, Outraged'
By Reagan Visit To War Cemetery
..,..._. Pictured above, are scopes from the films "The
Fixer".(top) and "The Well" (bottem)tofbe shown at
the Leo Yassenoff Jewish Center on May 5 and May 8,
respectively. .     * ■
'The Fixer'To Be Shown
Sunday, May 5, At Center
On Sunday, May 5, the
film, "The Fixer" will be
shown at the Leo Yassenoff
Jewish center, 1125 College
Ave. at 2 p.m. .The film,
which is sponsored" by the
Melton -Center for Jewish
Studies at the Ohio State University, is the first in a series
offered by the Israel/Judaic
Department of the Center.
The showing of "The
Fixer" will be followed by a
discussion led by Ilan
Avisar, Assistant Professor
of' Hebrew at OSU, and
Morris Beja, Chairman of
the English Department at
OSU. The program is free
and open to the public.
"The Fixer" is based on
the  novel  by  Bernard
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 12)
NEW YORK (JTA) -
President Reagan was urged
last week by the European ,
branch of the World Jewish
Congress to cancel his planned visit to the Bitburg military cemetery in West Germany where German war
dead, including at least 47
Waffen SS soldiers, are
buried.
In a telegram to. the Presi-'
dent, the WJC European section chairman Greville Jan-
ner said European Jewry
was "profoundly distressed
and outraged" by the planned visit to Bitburg. "We
presume that this insensitive
gesture can only be the
result of bad advice which
we urge you to reject," the
telegram said.
Janner, a member of
British Parliament and '
President of the Board of
Deputies of British Jews,
speaking to the WJC American Section here, said, "I am
astonished that a man who
"has been regarded as a person of sensitivity and understanding, not least for Jewish causes, would even consider the possibility of
visiting the graves of
Nazis."
The American section of
the WJC, at its regularly
scheduled session, was to
have heard a report from
Janner on his official visit to
the Jewish communities and
governmental leaders of
India, Singapore, New Zea-
Temple Israel Will Honor
Endowment Benefactors At
Annual Foundation Sabbath
First Jewish Woman Elected
To Basketball Hall of Fame
SPRINGFIELD, Mass.
(JTA) — Senda (Berehson)
Abbott, a pioneer in the development of women's bas-
, ketball, will be the first Jew-
. ish woman to be enshrined in
the Basketball Hall of Fame
on Monday, July 1.
Lee Williams, executive
director of the Hall, indicated that this marks the
first time a woman will be
' enshrined in the national
Hall of Fame. Presently
there are 143 men and four
' teams  inducted into the
museum and shrine dedi
cated to the American game.
Abbott was known as "the
Mother of Women's Basketball." While serving as director of physical education
at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., she introduced the sport to the female
students. The first women's
game was played March 22,
1893, at Smith.
A native of Vilna, Lithuania/ Abbott, working in
conjunction with Dr. James
Naismith, founder of the
\game,  wrote  the official
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 14)
The Temple Israel Foundation will pay tribute to
Eleanor and the late Jack
Resler, and the family of the
late Ida and Alfred Kobacker — Arthur and James Kobacker and Regina Fadiman
and Sally and Sidney Blatt—
at the -annual Foundation
Sabbath, Friday, May 17, at
8 p.m. The Named Funds
and gifts made by the benefactors indicates their concern for the preservation
and perpetuation of their
heritage and the importance
of a strong synagogue life.
Included in the Reslers'
gifts is the property on which ,
Temple Israel now stands.
Surplus land was subsequently sold and the proceeds were placed in the
Foundation. Camp scholar- .
ships and special activities
for the Temple's youth are
land and Australia from
where he just returned. But
the continuing controversy
over Reagan's intention to
visit Bitburg and lay a
wreath on graves of German
soldiers dominated the
meeting.
Following the general
meeting, attended by representatives of all the 32-mem-
ber organizations of the
WJC-American Section, the
nine-member executive
committee adopted several
resolutions which included
an endorsement of a mass
demonstration in Lafayette
Park across from the White
House, scheduled for May 5,
in protest against the planned Bitburg visit.
provided by the Blatt Fund.
The annual Kobacker Institute presents programs for
I. David Cohen
the clergy of the Jewish and
non-Jewish communities
and is designed to increase
understanding and enhance
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 7)
Conference of Presidents of
Major American Jewish Organizations, said yesterday
after a separate meeting of
the Conference that the
heads of Catholic and
Protestant church groups,
labor unions, veterans
organizations and civil
rights groups were being invited to participate in the Lafayette Park rally.
The rally, sponsored by
the Washington Jewish Community Council, is expected
to draw Jewish leaders from
throughout the country, and
will be followed by a cere-
. monial visit by a small group
to Arlington National Cemetery, Bialkin announced. He
added that local Jewish com-
At the same time, Kenneth -jnunity groups across the
■Bialkin,   chairman   of  the (continued on page m
Swiss National Bank Admits
Helping Nazis During WW II
. GENEVA (JTA) -, - The „
Swiss National Bank has admitted, in a study written by
its former archivist, that it
helped finance the Nazi war
machine during World War
II by accepting more than 1.6
billion Swiss-Francs' worth
of gold looted by the Nazis
from Jews and from the
treasuries of occupied
countries.
The study, by Robert Vog-
ler, just published in the
Bank's quarterly bulletin,
demonstrated that while the
Third Reich had the equivalent of no more than 22 million. Swiss Francs' worth of
gold when the war started in
1939,; it exchanged gold, for
1.638 billion Swiss Francs in
transactions with Swiss
banks between 1939 and 1945.
The Allied powers had
warned the Swiss that the
Germans were selling them
gold stolen from the Belgian
National Bank, among
others, and from Jews deported to Nazi concentration
camps. The bank gold was in
the. form of coins; the gold of
the concentration camp victims was melted down from
teeth fillings, eyeglass
frames, wedding rings and
other personal jewelry.
The Nazi Reichsbank sold
most of its gold to Swiss
banks tq pay debts and to
pay for vital war material
such as fuel, chrome and
tungsten purchased from
Portugal, Spain and Rumania. Those countries refused to accept gold. They
demanded Swiss Francs instead to buy items available
only in neutral Switzerland
during the war.
Claims Bank Was
'Extremely Naive'
A spokesman for the Swiss
National Bank declared that
the Swiss bankers of the war
period showed a serious lack*
of political sense and must
have been "extremely
naive" to accept the claim
by Reichsbank president
Emil Puhl that Germany's
sudden gold windfall was
legitimate. It was on the
basis of Puhl's word that the
Swiss government permitted
the banks to enter into transactions with the Third Reich.
• ■ "■■ Vogler, in his study, drew
on documents from the Swiss
National Bank which were
classified secret until five
years ago and on, a book,
Looted Gold From Germany
by historian Werner Rings.
He appeared to question
whether the Swiss bankers
_;were really acting out of incredible naivete when he
observed that "only so-called
looted gold could explain the
difference (in Germany's
gold reserves before and
after 1939) even if one adds
the gold 'legally' taken over
from Austria in 1938 and
Czechoslovakia in 1939."
According to Vogler's
study and Rings' book, 300
tons of Belgian, French and
Polish gold was shipped
from Dakar, Senegal, to occupied France whence it was
transported to Berlin,
melted and recast into Prussian coins bearing a pre-war
date. The coins were shipped
to Switzerland in exchange
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 13)