Book Burning in Minneapolis paper

Interfaith leaders speak out against neo-Nazi book burning plans
A Holocaust survivor's words echoed most vividly at an interfaith gathering to denounce plans for a shadowy neo-Nazi gathering.
By Pamela Miller, Star Tribune
Last update: January 26, 2007 – 5:19 PM

Compared with the unspeakable things Margot DeWilde has seen, a neo-Nazi book-burning rally scheduled to take place somewhere in the Twin Cities today is not much.
Nonetheless, on Friday, DeWilde, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor living in, Plymouth, came to a library at the Sabes Jewish Community Center in St. Louis Park -- a place full of the books the phantom fascists have said they'll torch -- to join religious and political leaders in denouncing such hatred.

The program was a response to a website announcement that "National Socialist Movement" members will burn "degenerate books such as the Talmud," listen to "White Patriot" bands and film it all today "in the Minneapolis area."

The exact time and place of today's rally are not known, but the date is no coincidence. Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 61st anniversary of the Russian army's liberation of Auschwitz.

Efforts to find rally participants were unsuccessful.

Jewish leaders say the videotaping element is of special concern in the age of youtube.com, when such footage is likely to have wide viewership by young people.

"The risk that we may be boosting this event's profile is far outweighed by the opportunity to remind ourselves of the American values we share," said Steve Hunegs of the Jewish Community Relations Council. "I could not look a Holocaust survivor or the Minnesotans who fought in World War II in the eye if we did not speak out about something like this."

The audience, made up primarily of Twin Cities Jewish Middle School students, heard racism and book-burning denounced by JCRC president Alan Silver, Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson, Zafar Siddiqui of the Islamic Resource Group, Omar Jamal of the Somali Justice Center and James Olsen of the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches.

But the young people listened most intently to DeWilde, who spoke of losing her husband at Auschwitz and of the death march she survived near the end of the war.

"Hatred is not the way," she said. "Hatred only falls back on the person who feels it. We all have to live together in this world, to try, person by person, to bring a little peace to it."

Jonah Newman, 17, a student at Minneapolis South High School, read a 1933 letter from Helen Keller to Germans who had burned her book.

After the program, Newman, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, pondered the likelihood that today, somewhere near his home, Minnesotans his age may be dancing to racist music around flames fed by Jewish holy books.

"It's something to be concerned about, but they wouldn't be the only people who perpetrate hate crimes or are anti-Semitic," he said. "It's important to know they're out there and to say that this kind of thing is fringe and unacceptable."


Pamela Miller • 612-673-4290 • pmiller@startribune.com

http://www.startribune.com/614/story/962510.html