Month: August 2000

By ALLISON COHEN, Special to The Times

Wednesday, August 23, 2000

www.latimes.com:80/editions/valley/sfnews/20000823/t000079124.html

Challenger Middle School teacher Bruce Galler of Palmdale once saved two students from expulsion from the Lancaster campus after they scratched swastikas onto test booklets.

Instead of expulsion, Galler “punished” the boys — one Latino, the other Caucasian — by sending them to an after-school screening of “Schindler’s List.”

The boys got the message, Galler said. “They just cried.”

Galler, 35, expects to shed more light on the Holocaust for his students this fall as a result of a three-week summer tour of some of Europe’s most infamous death camps where millions of Jews were killed by the Nazis.

“It was a surreal experience,” Galler said this week. “I had an awakening of what really took place.”

Galler was one of 43 secondary school teachers from across the country who participated in the 16th annual Summer Seminar on Holocaust and Jewish Resistance — a teacher training program founded by Holocaust survivor Vladka Meed.

“A trip like this will make me more credible,” said Galler, who teaches social science and English. “I thought I knew a whole bunch more than I did.”

Galler visited death camps in Auschwitz/Birkinau, Majdanek and Treblinka, as well as sites of the Jewish resistance, such as the Warsaw Ghetto.

The goal of the program is to improve instruction relating to the Holocaust in U.S. public secondary schools. Teachers pay 40% of the cost to attend the tour — for Galler, about $2,000 — and sponsoring groups and foundations pay the rest.

Already, Galler’s students read the “Diary of Anne Frank” and then visit the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

But now, having seen the fragments preserved from the Holocaust’s atrocities, Galler can provide photographs and a firsthand account. Among the stacks of belongings he saw that were left behind by Jews before they were gassed or shot by the Nazis are such items as shoes, luggage and eyeglasses.

One experience that deeply affected Galler was seeing a huge mound of ashes preserved next to a crematory at Majdanek.

“My credibility increases,” Galler said, “when I can say I’ve seen a crematorium … and I’ve seen ashes as big as [our] school.”

After the stops in Poland, the teachers studied at two Holocaust institutions in Jerusalem.

“I understand so much more now, and I’m anxious to pass the information on,” Galler said. “But I don’t think this is a history that anyone likes to teach.”

Since 1985, 701 teachers have participated in the program. For an application for next year’s tour, contact: American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Attention: Vladka Meed, 122 W. 30th St., New York, NY 10001. Application deadline is April 15, 2001.

By Jack Katzenell

Associated Press

Sunday, August 6, 2000

Controversy raged in Israel on Sunday after a rabbi who heads the biggest ultra-Orthodox political party said the six million Jews who perished in the Nazi Holocaust died because they were reincarnations of sinners.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, leader of the Shas party, also declared that Prime Minister Ehud Barak has “no sense” because he is trying to make peace with the Palestinians, who are “snakes.”

Yosef was speaking in his weekly Saturday night sermon broadcast over the party’s radio stations and is even beamed overseas by satellite.

He called the Nazis “evil” and the victims “poor people,” but he said the six million “were reincarnations of the souls of sinners, people who transgressed and did all sorts of things which should not be done. They had been reincarnated in order to atone.”

Barak told the cabinet Sunday the statement is unworthy of a rabbi of Yosef’s status. “His words could harm the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust and could hurt the feelings of their families and the feelings of the entire nation,” the prime minister said.

Legislator Yosef (Tommy) Lapid, who heads the secularist Shinui party, said Rabbi Yosef is “an old fool” who has done a service to those who are trying to rehabilitate Adolf Hitler’s reputation.

“In the world it will be said that a distinguished rabbi in Israel is in effect confirming what Hitler said, that the Jews are sinners,” said Lapid, who is himself a Holocaust survivor.

The two main radio stations were inundated with phone calls and messages, most of them criticizing Yosef’s statement. Yehoshua Mashav, a listener, told Israel radio that in plain language Yosef was saying Hitler was innocent and that “he was simply the messenger of God sent to give the Jewish people their just desserts.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international center for Holocaust remembrance, said the rabbi absolved the perpetrators of the Holocaust of their responsibility. “If those Jews deserved to die for past sins, why blame those who carried out the death sentence?” said Ephraim Zuroff, director of the group’s Jerusalem office.

Israel’s Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, who is also a Holocaust survivor, said Judaism has a concept of reincarnation and of the righteous dying to atone for sin in a previous life, but he told Israel radio that did not account for the Holocaust.

“I have no explanation for the Holocaust,” said Lau, who was a child at the time and lost most of his family in the death camps. He appealed to Israelis to “stop probing into it (the Holocaust) in such a blatant, painful, hurtful manner.”

Shas chairman Eli Ishai said criticism of Yosef is unjustified. “Rabbi Ovadia weeps for every Jew who is killed … but nobody, not even a saint, has not sinned. Everyone dies in a state of sin. Nobody can be perfect all his life.”

Yosef, who ordered Shas to quit Barak’s coalition as the prime minister was leaving for the Camp David summit, described the Arabs as “snakes” interested mainly in murdering Jews. He said Barak, who is trying to achieve a permanent peace with the Palestinians, has “no sense.”

“What kind of peace is this?” Yosef said. “Will you put them beside us? You are bringing snakes beside us. … Will we make peace with a snake?”

Col. Jebril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service in the West Bank, said Yosef’s statement about Arabs was racist. A religious leader should be trying to promote tolerance among Jews, Muslims and Christians, Rajoub told Israel radio.