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NEWS BRIEFS
Timetable on arms sales
WASHINGTON—The Administration has postponed formal
notification to Congress of its proposed aircraft sales to Saudi
Arabia, Egypt and Israel until after the Panama Canal debate in
the Senate. The Administration has now indicated that official
notification will be sent to Capitol Hill on April 26 or 27. Congress
will then have 30 calendar days in which to block any one of the
sales by passage of “resolutions of disapproval," with the Senate
Foreign Relations and House International Relations Committees
initially considering such resolutions.
The Administration has been very actively lobbying members of
Congress and staff aides for the aircraft sales with briefings by
White House, State and Defense Department officials.
1 Holocaust' shunned by Reds
NEW YORK, (JTA)—The producers of the NBC-TV film
“Holocaust" were refused permission to shoot any of the film in
East Europe where many of the Nazi death camps were located,
Robert Berger, the film’s producer revealed. He said he was turned
down by Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, East Germany
and Poland. The reasons given, according to Berger, were that
parts of the scripts were seen as too “Zionistic,” showed people
rising up against the authorities or depicted people who were not
Nazis as anti-Semitic.
Why was Chaplin’s body stolen?
LOS ANGELES—The mystery theft of Charlie Chaplin’s body
from its Swiss grave took a bizarre twist this week. According to an
Associated Press story, Chaplin’s body was stolen because he was
Jewish—and not for ransom. A Los Angeles newspaper quoted a
source close to the Chaplin family as saying, “The theft of Charlie's
body from his grave is strictly a matter of religion and nothing
else., .and Lady Chaplin was told immediately where she could find
the body."
Hollywood answers Vanessa
NEW YORK—A full page advertisement in the pages of
Variety, (April 12, 1978) the weekly journal of the entertainment
industry, has launched a national “Artists’ Committee for
Zionism.” The chairman of the committee, which is still in
formation, is the entertainer, columnist and author, Joey Adams.
According to the president of the Zionist Organization of
America, Rabbi Joseph P. Sternstein, Adams was approached by
the ZOA with the request that he help organize some kind of Artist
response to the Academy Award remarks of Vanessa Redgrave.
Among the individuals signing the advertisement in Variety were
Joey and Cindy Adams, Clive Barnes, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Red
Buttons, Myron Cohen, Virginia Graham, Lionel Hampton,
George Jessel, Jan Peerce, Lee and Anna Strasberg, William B.
Williams and Shelley Winters.
Another Jewish ambassador
WASHINGTON—Geri Joseph, of Minneapolis, former
co-chairman of ADL’s discriminations committee and a member
of the program and civil rights executive committees, has been
nominated by President Carter as U.S. Ambassador to the
Netherlands. Mrs. Joseph, a contributing editor to the
Minneapolis Tribune since 1971, was for many years a state and
national Democratic Party official and vice chairman of United
Democrats for Humphrey in the 1968 Presidential campaign. Her
husband. Burton M. Joseph, a Minneapolis executive, is ADL’s
national chairman.
Russians attack matzos
NEW YORK—Agents of the Soviet KGB raided a Riga
apartment in which Matzo was being made, halted the, baking,
smashed the Matzos already produced, ransacked the apartment
and arrested the participants. .
According to reports, five Riga Jews gathered in the apartment
of Simon Abramowitz of Panaris Street in Riga to bake Matzo.
Suddenly, the KGB burst into the room. They immediately doused
the oven with water and proceeded to break the already baked
Matzos into crumbs. The Abramowitz apartment was then
searched and left in disarray. Twelve Haggadahs with Russian-
Hebrew translation and a Russian-Hebrew dictionary were
confiscated. Four of the Jews were arrested and held for 24 hours
and released. Simon Abramowitz was arrested and sources in Riga
say that he is still incarcerated.
Nazis evicted In Detroit
DETROIT, (JTA) Police and coui t officers last week forcibly
evicted the local Nazis from a bookstore they operated on the city’s
south-west area. Several hundred bystanders in the largely
working class area chanted "get the Nazis out" as the police broke
the store door open and began removing its contents.
The eviction came after the building’s owner, Eddy S. Bullock
Jr., obtained a court order on the grounds that he had leased the
store to William Russell, a leader of the Detroit National Socialist
Movement, for use as a printing shop but no printing had taken
place.
to tlie*editor
Bikel scores
Redgrave
Editor:
For years the enemies of Israel
have sought to draw a false
distinction between anti-Semitism
and anti-Zionism. Vanessa
Redgrave’s attempt to do so at the
Academy Awards presentation
underscores her identification with
those who seek to liquidate the
Jewish state and in so doing to
exterminate the Jewish people.
The frightful acts of terrorism
committed by the PLO against
innocent civilians as part of its
‘armed struggle' to ‘purge the
Zionist presence from Palestine’
have horrified the conscience of all
decent people. Miss Redgrave’s
public espousal of the PLO and her
artistic and financial involvement
in a PLO propaganda film brand
her as one who condones the
murder of civilians, the destruction
of the Jewish state and the end of
the Jewish people. And all her self-
serving statements of opposition to
anti-Semitism, all her condescend
ing references to the ‘stature of
Jews’ cannot hide the fact that she
is an active participant in that
terrorist campaign.
We repudiate the disruptive and
counter-productive tactics of such
groups as the Jewish Defense
League. But our rejection of the
JDL does not mitigate our
revulsion at the public support
which Vanessa Redgrave has given
the enemies of Israel and the
Jewish people.
Theodore Bikel
Chairman. National Governing
Council, American Jewish
Congress
Is paranoia
justified?
Editor:
I would like to respond to your
editorial in the April 7 issue
entitled, “Are the Nazis coming?”
In the last paragraph, you wrote
the following:
“Call me paranoid if you wish,
but I am not comfortable with
marches that celebrate Hitler’s
birthday."
You. nor any other Jew in this
world should be considered
paranoid for feeling uneasy about
all of the widespread anti-Semitic
incidents going on in this world
today. Quoting Rahhi Stanley
Garfein of Temple Israel in
Tallahassee. Fla., who was
interviewed in last Sunday's
Tallahassee Democrat for an
article on the Holocaust:
“Many Jews who didn’t go
through the Holocaust had
relative* who did. The events of
World War II have affected the
character of all Jews. We have our
radar to detect any glimmer of
hatred. We are sensitized not
because we are paranoid but
because it has been a reality.
Paranoia is where nothing exists."
Meryl Geldharl
Student. Florida State University
Webster answers
(The following letter from G. A C. Merriam Company was
received in response to a letter from Mr. Schpeiser (see The
Southern Israelite, April 14, page 5) concerning the definition of
the word "holocaust.")
Mr. Marvin B. Schpeiser
Director, Community Planning
Atlanta Jewish Welfare Federation, Inc.
1753 Peachtree Road, N.E.
Atlanta, Ga. 30309
Dear Mr. Schpeiser:
What you interpret as a dropping in the New Collegiate
Dictionary (eighth edition, 1976) of the second sense of holocaust
as it appeared in the Collegiate Dictionary (fifth edition, 1936) is in
reality only a revision of the definition to take into account the
broader usage reflected in the examples we have collected during
the intervening forty years. The most recent definition reads “a
thorough destruction esp[cially] by fire" because the destruction is
not in every instance a result of fire. The definition leaves out
“human beings” because some of our evidence applies to things
other than humans. Here are a few examples:
In many cases the population of guano birds shows
marked cyclical changes—usually a gradual building
up followed bp-holocaust.
...touched off a holocaust that all but finished Texas
City, Texas.
In the July 1967 holocaust in Detroit, unofficial
estimates were that about 2700 stores were ransacked.
...peace-loving nation in which nuclear power does
not threaten the world with a holocaust.
The specific sense of holocaust you are interested in, that in
Germany during the Second World War, is alluded to in a few of
our citations, but it was not given as a separate specific sense in the
unabridged Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961),
of which the Collegiate is an abridgment, undoubtedly because the
definer felt it was suitably covered in the more general definition.
Your statement that you think the “destruction by fire” sense
should have been “primary” indicates that you expect the
definitions to be listed in the order of their frequency of occurrence
or their “importance.” This is a practice of a few dictionary
publishers, but Merriam-Webster dictionaries have traditionally
listed the definitions in the general order of their historical
development, with the earliest known usage listed first and later
developed senses following in order. In this way, the consultant
who is interested in semantic development can readily see the
relationship between the various senses of a word.
Robert Copeland
Associate Editor
The Matzah Of Hope
The Soviet Jewry Committee
of the Atlanta Jewish Welfare
Federation has distributed the
“Matzah of Hope," with the
cooperation of the Bureau of
Jewish Education, to children
in all the religious. Day and
Sunday schools in the area so
that they and their families can
recite the prayer in behalf of our
oppressed people in the Soviet
Union.
The prayer below may be
incorporated into the Seder
service so that all will remember
our people who are denied their
freedom.
On Passover, all Jews celebrate
freedom. Yet our brothers in the Soviet
Union must still observe this holy time
in secret. These are the Jews for whom
the exodus is not yet a reality.
The Matzah of Hope represents those
who are not with us tonight—Jews who
have been refused exit visas and who
suffer daily harassment...Prisoners
of Conscience who endure the hard
ships of cruel imprisonment. Their
“crime”: the desire to live as Jews,
among Jews, in a free land.
We pause for a moment during this
Seder to reaffirm our solidarity with
Soviet Jewry. We pledge ourselves to
continue to work for their freedom. We
vow that, once they are free, we will
help them rebuild their lives. We will not
rest until the task is complete, for until
all Jews are free, no Jew is free.
p »f« 5 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE April 21, 1978