Volume One, Number 7
Friday, August 10, 2001

BIGOTRY MONITOR
A Weekly Human Rights Newsletter on Antisemitism, Xenophobia and Religious Persecution in the Former Communist World and Western Europe

EDITOR: CHARLES FENYVESI
(News and Editorial Policy within the sole discretion of the editor)

Published by UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union

PORAIMOS REMEMBERED. For the fourth year, the Roma (Gypsy) people and their friends held worldwide commemorations of the massacre of as many as 4,000 Roma - from infants to grandparents - who had been marched out of Auschwitz's special Zigeunerlager to the gas chambers during the night of August 2-3, 1944. The tragedy is certified by eyewitnesses from adjacent barracks who also recall that unlike Jewish families, Roma families were allowed to stay together. When the neighbors woke the next morning, not a sound came from the usually noisy Roma camp.

After the war, the Romany tradition of not dwelling on past misfortune discouraged commemorations or even a mention of the tragedy within the families affected. But over the past few years, remembering the Roma Holocaust, now known by the Romany word "Poraimos" meaning "The Devouring," has become an important part of the rising Roma political consciousness. Current research has been revising upward the figure of between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma victims suggested by the late Sybill Milton, a historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Writing in the Budapest daily "Magyar Hirlap" on August 2, Gabor Bernath of the Roma Press Center explains that the wide range of the estimates - which in Hungary's case it is between 5,000 and 50,000 - is due to the unsystematic registration of the Roma and the destruction of many of the records. Hungarian Roma leader and former member of parliament Aladar Horvath says: "Our people mattered so little that we weren't even counted."

On August 3 this year, Roma activists and Jewish Holocaust survivors listened to speeches and poems in Temple Emanu-el in New York and the Holocaust Museum in London, and similar events took place in Auschwitz, Prague, Budapest, Athens and cities in Germany.

This year's Poraimos commemoration coincided with demonstrations in London and Prague protesting attacks by neo-Nazis who call for ethnic cleansing of Roma in Central Europe. According to the Ustiben Working Group, Roma leaders visited the London embassies of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Poland. "We are alarmed at the rising number of murders by neo-fascists," Ladislav Balaz, chairman of Europe-Roma, said in an interview with Czech television. "Czech authorities must crack down on these groups. They are terrorizing our people who have no alternative but to flee the country." A similar message was delivered by Florina Zoltan of the Romani Kris/Gypsy Council at the Romanian embassy. Herself once wounded in a mob attack in her village, Ms. Zoltan said that in Romania "hundreds of Roma homes have been burned down in organized pogroms" while the police failed to provide protection. "As long as this situation continues," Ms. Zoltan said on Romanian television, "we will see more and more Roma becoming refugees."

In a related development, Britain announced that beginning on August 9, it will withdraw for three weeks its immigration officials who screened travelers at Prague's airport, The New York Times reported on August 8. The move came after politicians and human rights groups accused the immigration officials of racial bias by preventing Czech Roma from traveling to Britain. The British embassy told the Times that the passport control is "suspended on operational grounds because it's been effective. The number of asylum claims has fallen dramatically. If we see an operational need, we are ready to reintroduce" the screening. According to the Times, "some 1,200 Czechs, nearly all of them Gypsies" requested asylum in Britain this year before the airport controls were introduced on July 18. The Czech Roma population is estimated at 300,000.

NEO-NAZI SKINHEADS ACTIVE IN SAMARA. Skinheads have become more visible in Samara, according to Aleksandr Brod, UCSJ's Samara monitor and editor of the local Jewish newspaper "Tarbut." The estimated 200 skinheads active in this Volga region city of 1,165,000 engage in a variety of activities, ranging from distributing antisemitic and racist literature they get from Moscow to covering walls and fences in certain parts of the city with swastikas and slogans like "Russia for Russians!" and "We will save Russia!" They also attack ethnic minorities.

RUSSIAN PARATROOPERS MARK HOLIDAY BY ATTACKING TRADERS FROM THE CAUCASUS... Paratroopers celebrated their annual holiday, August 3, by breaking up stalls in the central Russian city of Voronezh's main market where traders from the Caucasus do their business, reports Galina Arapova, director of the Tsentralno-Chernozemny Center for Mass Media Rights. "The police were passively watching the hooligans' activity," she said. "It was practically a replay of last year." The following day, "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" published an item reporting that in Moscow, traders from the Caucasus at one point "seriously resisted" an attack by paratroopers, resulting in several of the attackers being injured with knife and gunshot wounds. The paper quoted the police explaining that the reason paratroopers assault people from the Caucasus is because the traders sell watermelons, which the paratroopers like to grab without paying. (A more plausible motivation is racism in the Russian military, especially among veterans of the two Chechen wars.) According to Reuters, the police arrested 101 paratroopers and 29 Azeri traders. Interfax said 15 people were hurt, 12 of whom were hospitalized.

… AS POPULAR DAILY PRESCRIBES ETHNIC CLEANSING. On July 26 the popular Moscow newspaper "Moskovsky Komsomolets" published an article by Yulya Kalinina characterizing people from the Caucasus living in Moscow as dishonest, dirty, filled with lust for Russian women and unalterably alien. She began by posing a rhetorical question: Will the countries successful in the 21st century be only those "with a monolithic population, united by common history, traditions and customs, language, and views? Perhaps living that way would be better and more comfortable than living in one company with internal enemies?" She claimed that her argument is free from racism, and she praised "our Caucasian guests" for rarely drinking alcohol and being "very enterprising and flexible." Then she warned that after a few years of "active, tropical reproduction, they will gobble up Moscow whole... I would not want this to happen."

SYNAGOGUE BOMBERS ARRESTED IN MOLDOVA. In the breakaway Moldovan region of Trans-Dniester, security services arrested skinheads suspected of involvement in the bombings of the Tiraspol synagogue in April and June, according to the Moldovan newspaper "Nezavisimaya Moldova" of August 1. Nobody was injured in either incident.

UKRAINIAN POLICE NAB TWO SUSPECTED GRAVE DEFACERS. Police arrested two young men suspected of vandalizing Jewish tombstones in Shepetovka, Ukraine, according to the newspaper "Den" of August 7. One of the defaced tombstones marks the grave of Rabbi Pinkhas Shapiro of Korets, a Chasidic leader whose grave is visited by Jews every year from all over the world. The newspaper reports that as the annual pilgrimage is scheduled to take place in the near future, the local authorities are extremely embarrassed by the incident that took place on August 1. "Den" writes that one suspect is 23, and the other is a student at a local university. They face charges under Article 212 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code, which prohibits the desecration of graves and gravestones.

JEWISH CEMETERY DESECRATED IN GERMANY. Unknown persons desecrated the Jewish cemetery in Nentershausen in Germany's Land Hesse, the news agency DDP reported on August 6. Police said that 28 tombstones were dug up; some of them were toppled and broken. The crime was discovered on August 5 but it might have been committed a few weeks ago.

ITALY TO ADOPT HARSH NEW LAW TO HALT IMMIGRATION. The immigration law proposed by Italy's new right-wing government is harsh, reported on August 7 "Milan Il Sole-24 Ore," a leading financial daily. The bill features a long list of restrictions including the requirement of a work contract prior to an immigrant's entry to Italy; forced expulsions; "extremely harsh penalties" for those who aid and abet illegal immigration; and police and naval patrols empowered to stop and search vessels even in international waters. The draft has the imprimatur of two key cabinet members and coalition leaders: Umberto Bossi, Minister for Reform and Northern League secretary, and Gianfranco Fini, Deputy Prime Minister and National Alliance chairman. Bossi called the bill "a big gift for all Italian workers" and compared the current state of immigration to a swamp that must be drained. "Of the 220,000 immigrants holding a residence permit, about 120,000 have never done a day's work," he said, making it clear that there will be no more immigrants until those already in Italy get jobs. The immigration bill is so far the boldest venture by the three-month-old government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Its introduction follows news media commentaries describing Berlusconi as avoiding controversy and casting overboard his electoral promises of radically conservative measures.

*** QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * In an interview conducted in an editorial suite of Czech Television, Richard Samko, a Roma reporter, told The New York Times: "The problem is that whenever I leave this building, I feel just like any other Roma - the lowest and dirtiest person in the country."

THE SOLZHENITSYN DILEMMA: IS HE A BIGOT OR A BEACON?
Commentaries on Russian history's "sorry downward vector"

T.S. Eliot, the high priest of twentieth century poetry, appears in his recently released private writings as a crude bigot who could not stand Jews and blacks. He also raised his voice in the 1930s against what he perceived as the baneful Jewish influence on Western culture. But Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a master of twentieth century prose and what Russians call "a moral authority," is not so easy to write off as a thinker, though there are people who accuse him of a deep antisemitic bias and Great Russian chauvinism. Such criticisms have intensified since the recent publication, in Russian, of the first volume of his work, "Two Hundred Years Together," dealing with Russian-Jewish relations up to 1917. (The second volume covering the rest of the twentieth century will be printed soon.)

However, others, including some who know him, dismiss the charges and continue to admire Solzhenitsyn as a beacon of independent thought. Many of us who lived under Communist rule cannot forget his prophetic cry, "Live not by lies!" and are not surprised that after his years of exile in Vermont followed by a less-than-happy homecoming he has, as David Remnick reports in the August 6 issue of The New Yorker, "managed to alienate almost everyone."

Reducing Solzhenitsyn to a common antisemite smacks of Lenin's criteria, set up by asking two questions. The first: Is he for us or against us? The second question judges a thought or a fact by asking: Does it advance our interests or set them back? The two questions bifurcate reality in a crude Leninist way and are aimed at blinding us to answers other than the two permissible options. "Solzhenitsyn is a genius, one of the century's greatest writers, and his influence in Russia is enormous," Semyon Reznik, author of thirteen books on Russia, including five books on antisemitism, told this newsletter. His most recent book, just published, has a title he translates as "Seduction by Hate: Blood Libel in Russia."

Reznik says that "many critics found antisemitic trends in Solzhenitsyn's works, including his historical novels 'The Red Wheel,' but he angrily denied the accusations, stating that he has never had negative feelings toward Jews." Reznik argues that Solzhenitsyn's personal relations with Jews do not matter when considering the influence of his writings on millions of readers and the strongly antisemitic reactions some of them provoked. Reznik speaks of "a culture of scape-goating Jews, presenting them as enemies of the Russian people, the Orthodox religion and the state. Russian literature has been divided into two camps: those who promoted the scape-goating culture and those who opposed it, and, sorry to say, some of Solzhenitsyn's works place him in the first camp." In "Two Hundred Years Together," Reznik finds "antisemitic tendencies articulated more clearly than in his novels." For instance, Solzhenitsyn rejects the consensus that the tsar's government organized the pogroms, but he also states that it is slander to say that the Russian people were responsible. "But then who was responsible?" Reznik asks. "There is no alternative but to blame the victims, and Solzhenitsyn presents reasons to think so, though he never states that directly." Nevertheless, Reznik cautions, Solzhenitsyn is "not a radical antisemite who blames the Jews for everything. He wants to be in the middle. His latest book was written to refute allegations that he is antisemitic. In fact, it demonstrates the opposite."

Alexander Axelrod, director of the Anti-Defamation League's Moscow office, told this newsletter that Solzhenitsyn "is biased against Jews" and believes "that Jews are alien to Russia and are responsible for many of its troubles. " But, Axelrod adds, "I wouldn't describe him as a racist/antisemite. His message is more subtle, and most of his readers will not be able even to distinguish the author's bias - unless they are Jewish and know Russian Jewish history." Axelrod does not see "any point in maintaining a dialogue with him. It is unfortunate for him, for Russia, and its Jewish community that this book was written and published. For him, because this is most likely to be his last major work, and through this prism at least some people will remember his name. For Russia, because most readers do not see any problem with the book - see the rave reviews in 'Literaturnaya Gazeta' and elsewhere."

In the New Yorker article, editor David Remnick calls Solzhenitsyn's new work "peculiar" and "taken up with putting Jewish suffering into a wide context of Russian suffering; there is an insistent effort made to point out that the vast majority of the population, especially the serfs and then the peasantry, were deprived of their rights just like the Jews." Remnick quotes Solzhenitsyn's condemnation of "the large number of Jews who took part in the revolutionary movement against the tsar," then points out his disavowal of conspiracy theories that blame the Jews for the revolution. Remnick notes that Solzhenitsyn blames "Russians and Russian failures - from the 'arrogance of the nobility' to the 'abandonment' of the peasantry - for the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917." Remnick describes Solzhenitsyn's worldview as "shaped by an intense devotion to Russian patriotism, Russian suffering and Russian Orthodoxy," and cites his judgment that "it was our own Russian weaknesses that determined our sorry history's downward vector." Author of the award-winning book "Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire," Remnick is one of the few American journalists who has interviewed Solzhenitsyn. Remnick denies that in his personal relations Solzhenitsyn is anti-Jewish or that his books are.

Reznik, Axelrod and Remnick agree that Solzhenitsyn is not a historian whose job is to glean and winnow facts. Remnick is puzzled why he took up a two-volume history of Russians and Jews at this stage in his life and notes that he ignored contemporary scholarship on pre-1917 Russian-Jewish relations. Axelrod dismisses speculation that he had "a serious political agenda" writing his latest book.

Clearly, he is a novelist, and his truth is of a partisan variety. He thrives on the political polemics he heard in the gulag and he combines them with his own, much as Chekhov relied on the banal conversations he eavesdropped on in provincial salons. In its July 23 survey of Russian Jewish reactions to Solzhenitsyn's new book, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency quoted Lev Krizhak, a Jewish student of history at a Moscow university. "Solzhenitsyn is not a historian at all," Krizhak said. "He is an obsolete creator of myths. He is not interesting any more, he is himself a myth."

At 83, Solzhenitsyn has indeed become a myth, and he is as obsolete as Tolstoy presenting the dilemmas of patriotic Russians steeped in French culture fighting Napoleon's invasion in the War of 1812. Solzhenitsyn is also a mythmaker. But that is his strength, and that is what makes his books worth reading. (I am reminded, a bit unfairly, of J.R.R. Tolkien's description of his fantasies of Middle Earth as "subcreation.") Unfortunately for Jews and other minorities, Solzhenitsyn is not a friend of people other than his own, the Russians, whom he has defended fiercely against their Communist oppressors and, only a little less fiercely, against what he has called "the junk culture" of Western consumer society. But just because he is not a friend does not mean that he is an enemy. His books need to be read and his ideas argued - not trashed.

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