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SKOKIE AND THE NAZI THREAT
A Coming Together of Religious Communities
in a Time of Crisis
Reflections by
Phyllis G. Koehnline
© 2000 Phyllis Koehnline
Chapel Hill, N.C.
FOREWORD
This is a story I have long wanted to write. The events took place on a local stage in
Skokie, Illinois, but they attracted interest around the world. Even today, to mention the
name of the town is to prompt some people to remember, inaccurately, “when the Nazis
marched through Skokie.” That’s not what really happened. The history of what did happen
has been recorded by others, and some of those sources are listed below. These are my
reflections on what I remember of people and events that changed my life.
I am grateful to those who have shared their recollections and their memorabilia with
me to help me with details: Skokie clergy Rev. Warren Thummel, former pastor of St.
Timothy’s Lutheran Church; Rev. Tom O’Connor, former pastor of St. Peter’s United
Church of Christ; Rabbi Neil Brief of Niles Township Jewish Congregation; Eva Weiner,
widow of Rabbi Weiner formerly of Temple Judea; as well as Harvey Schwartz, retired
attorney for the Village of Skokie. Harvey has encouraged me in this effort, commenting
that, “No one, until now, has written about our religious leaders’ role in the struggle —
which should not be overlooked.”
The research librarians of the Skokie Public Library guided me through the use of
their archives. In addition, two books and a radio script have helped me to fill in some
blanks and correct or confirm dates, as have numerous newspaper articles:
Downs, Donald Alexander: Nazis in Skokie [University of Notre Dame Press, Notre
Dame, Ind. 1985],
Hamlin, David: The Nazi/Skokie Conflict: A Civil Liberties Battle [Beacon Press,
�Boston, 1980]
Script of a broadcast by Chicago’s public radio station, WBEZ.
The Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Tribune
The Christian Science Monitor
The Jerusalem Post
The Skokie Life
The Skokie News
The Skokie Review
I
We stood beside the new bronze sculpture that had just been unveiled two days
earlier. A memorial for Holocaust victims, it was a commanding piece of art, now in a place
of honor in front of the Skokie Public Library on the Village Green. I remember the power I
felt radiating from it when I saw it for the first time.
A tall uniformed Jewish freedom fighter towers over the small grouping, his belt of
bullets across his chest, a defiant look on his face, his arms outspread as if to protect the
huddled family before him. The little boy clings to the old grandfather, and beside them, the
distraught mother kneels with the lifeless body of her baby across her lap. The anguish is
striking. The first glimpse conveyed both terror and urgency, and from the intake of breath I
heard from those near me, I could tell I was not the only one deeply moved.
Two of the four sides of the black granite base carry scriptures in Hebrew and
English, along with other quotations. On the front is the dedicatory panel: IN MEMORY
OF SIX MILLION JEWS AND OTHERS WHO PERISHED AT THE HANDS OF THE
NAZIS 1933 — 1945. A fourth side is engraved: IN HONOR OF THE GHETTO
FIGHTERS THE UNDERGROUND RESISTANCE AND THE U.S. ARMED FORCES
WHO HELPED DEFEAT THE SCOURGE OF NAZISM.
It had been a splendid afternoon that last Sunday in May 1987, when it was
dedicated. I was both proud and grateful to be among the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant
clergy of Skokie that had been especially invited to be present. There we sat, in clerical
collars and yarmulkes, with dignitaries from municipal and religious leadership from the
greater Chicago area, to watch the solemn unveiling. I was not alone in knowing the
importance of this event, and the sense of completion it signified. The Holocaust Survivors
of Metropolitan Chicago had worked long to make possible this memorial. Now, for the first
time, the 7,000 citizens of Skokie who had survived Hitler’s death camps, as well as the
families of victims, would finally have a place to pay their respects and to grieve. We knew
how right it was to have such a focus, not only for the survivors and for the other Jews in
Skokie, but for all the residents and visitors, a center for remembrance.
�Next morning the town awoke to dreadful news. I was horrified when I turned on the
television and heard that vandals had come in the dark of night and defiled the statue with
their Nazi, anti-Jewish sentiments. I soon walked over to the Village Green to see for
myself.
On one side of the memorial base, across the words on the panel, “REMEMBER
OUR MARTYRS ANNIHILATED IN AUSCHWITZ, BERGEN BELSEN,
BUCHENWALD, DACHAU, MAJDANEK, TREBLINKA, AND ALL THE OTHER
CONCENTRATION CAMPS” now appeared in big white letters: JEWS LIE! On another
side, across the scripture from Lamentations 1:12: “BEHOLD AND SEE IF THERE BE
ANY PAIN LIKE UNTO MY PAIN WHICH IS DONE UNTO ME,” there was a big
sprawling swastika. All around the sculpture were similar obscenities, including a swastika
covering the front panel.
We were all in shock. How could such a thing happen in 1987, all these years after
the cruel facts? The first impulse of Village officials, and I admit my own first impulse, was
to clean up the horrible mess immediately. As Mayor Al Smith said, “...there is no place in
Skokie for swastikas.” But after deliberation, he and others decided to leave everything
alone for the next few days, so that everyone could see that such things can still happen.
They did the right thing.
People came, hour after hour, to look and wonder. They stood and wept. They
talked in hushed tones. They prayed. They took pictures, one man saying he wanted to pass
them on to his children and grandchildren. They brought flowers, and I have never seen that
sculpture since without flowers on its base.
Now on Tuesday morning, our interfaith clergy group had decided to gather at the
sculpture in its present damaged state and have prayer. As I remember it, there was no
program planned, and no publicity. It was just something we felt we needed to do. But
Mayor Smith had told us that concerned citizens from all religions had been calling his office
to ask, “What can I do to help?” So when he heard of our plans, he may have invited others.
At any rate, when we grouped ourselves in front of the memorial, there were more than 100
residents gathered with us. There may have been some singing; I don’t remember. There
were certainly prayers said aloud. There was a reporter there, from one of the local papers I
think, and several of us had the opportunity to speak.
Rabbi Neil Brief, who was then the leader of our interfaith clergy group, said rightly,
“This is not the best way to make the place holy [meaning the vandalism], but this place has
now become holy ground.”
Father Bernard White of St. Joan of Arc Catholic church said the defilement of the
memorial had only made its message more powerful. “It keeps the idea of anti-Semitism and
Holocaust alive,” he said. “Now you have to come and face this reality. It is no longer
purely conceptual. Now you must see, feel, touch.”
I had thoughts I wanted to express, and into the microphone I said something like, “I
�want to thank all of you who taught me so much back in the late '70s, and were such a
blessing to me then, and have been ever since.” Speaking for the Christian community,
Protestants and Catholics, I added, “We want to assure you that once again we stand with
you, now in this latest trial, as we stood with you ten years ago.”
We all remembered those days of the late '70s, and I will never forget the experience.
As I look back on it now, I feel I was a part of history being made. The story of the Nazis
and Skokie, Illinois, though well documented by others, is something I lived through as a
Christian pastor. My experience, what I observed, what I learned — what I was
remembering that day in front of that mutilated memorial — that is something I need to
record.
II
It started in the fall of 1976. Of course, it really started centuries ago, the age-old
persecution and harassment of Jews. But the Nazis-in-Skokie story began quietly one
Sabbath in October, when Jewish worshipers came out from services to find tucked under
their windshield wipers blue fliers adorned with swastikas and a big, bold WE ARE
COMING.
The National Socialist Party of America, a small, hate-ridden group of neo-Nazis
based in Chicago, had distributed those fliers all through the North Shore suburbs, and
Skokie was just one community among many. Although we couldn’t know it then, because
of the unique make-up of our Village, the appearance of those leaflets was a harbinger of
things to come.
As background, it’s helpful to know that Skokie, located in the first tier of suburbs
north of Chicago, had been a town that got stalled on the way to being born back in the days
of the Depression. Streets were laid out, sewer systems put in, everything ready, but with no
money the building didn’t happen. There were a few families there, but Niles Center, as it
was then called, was largely undeveloped. It was a perfect place, I am told, to teach people
how to drive, with all those unimpeded corners and streets in which to practice three-point
turning and parallel parking.
Then, after the Second World War, the building began. By the 1950s new houses
were going up every day. The Presbyterian church where later I was pastor was built in 1955
in a section of Skokie that was at that time still open prairie. It was thought to be an ideal
place to start a new congregation, because the community was coming to life, and soon there
would be many people living nearby. And so there were. But almost all of them, especially
�in the neighborhood around the church, were Jewish. There were homes built and some
apartment buildings, and still, as late as the 1970s when the Nazi threat occurred, our small
Evanshire Presbyterian Church was functioning in a thriving Jewish neighborhood.
That happened because, when Skokie was beginning to build up in those years just
after World War II, Jewish families living in Chicago began moving north, and as they did,
many of them came with their relatives who’d been through the war. Literally thousands of
those newcomers had been refugees from Auschwitz, Buchenwald and other camps,
sometimes the only survivors from families who had been wiped out by Hitler.
I heard from one of the rabbis that, as those people came into the USA and then into
the brand-new homes in Skokie with their American kin, they were encouraged to put all the
bad memories behind them. Their new life was starting, and they should only look ahead to
better times. That was not true in some families, of course, but if that did happen at all, it
would account for why some grandchildren, in some cases even children, had never known
the stories of the survivors in their own families. It would account also for the outpouring of
anguish and fear and anger that we later heard from them. I believe that in the next two
years that followed this threat, those survivors were finally doing their “grief work.”
I found out later that, though they may have kept quiet with outsiders, they did talk
with each other about such things in a social club (I guess we’d call it a support group today)
of neighbors who knew what it had been like. But I don’t know when that started, and I’m
sure not many of us were aware of it then.
That day in October 1976, I suppose many of those leaflets landed in the nearest trash
can, and were gone. But the message wasn’t gone. Just the sight of that symbol, even if it
had had no threat attached, was enough to start the waking nightmares for some of our
neighbors. But I didn’t hear about all those fears. In fact, I heard nothing more after this
incident until early the next year.
III
In February of 1977, Frank Collin, the leader of the National Socialist Party of
America (NSPA), sent letters adorned with swastikas addressed to the park districts of
Chicago’s northern suburbs, requesting permission to stage demonstrations. This, I later
learned, was an act of desperation on Collin’s part.
What had happened was that Collin and his followers were at a standstill. Needing
publicity to call attention to themselves in order to keep on existing, they were frustrated
�because they had been forbidden to demonstrate any more in Chicago. Their base was in
Marquette Park on the south side, a white blue-collar community into which blacks were
slowly moving. Collin and his Nazis appealed to the fear and prejudice they suspected were
present, and did all they could to incite hatred of the incoming blacks.
Their building itself had emblazoned on one wall: NIGGER GO HOME! They
took every opportunity to remind good upright citizens of the threat from other races, casting
blame indiscriminately, and had telephone hot lines which anyone could dial to get the latest
version of their vitriol. Whenever they did gather in public, onlookers often outnumbered
them and were usually so angry and ready to fight back, that Chicago police had to come in
to protect the Nazis! As David Hamlin points out in his account in The Nazi/Skokie Conflict,
this gave Collin and his group a protective barrier behind which they could safely shout
insults and obscenities. Of course, such high drama was what he loved. It always caught
reporters’ attention, and Collin got the publicity he craved.
But Chicago being Chicago, anything that took place there had political
ramifications. The Democratic leadership knew that, if they allowed Collin a free stage, they
would have no excuse to keep out anybody else, even Republicans! After so many problems
with keeping order where Collin was concerned, the city slapped a $250,000 insurance
charge per march on the group. Whether this was constitutional or not, Chicago managed,
by its own attorneys and its own made-up requirements, to keep all the ins and outs of the
decision-making process from ever getting settled. I understand that the sea of red tape that
accompanied most any litigation in the city could tie up everybody concerned endlessly.
Of course, while all this long-term legal business was multiplying, nothing else could
happen, not until things were settled. Such inactivity was exactly what Chicago wanted
where Frank Collin was concerned. It was exactly not what Collin wanted. He had to be
active and to be seen in public in order to have any effect at all. Now, restricted by the rules,
he did what he had often done in the past; he called in the American Civil Liberties Union.
But that didn’t help much. As Hamlin reports:
ACLU was already bringing suit on behalf of an amazing
assortment of groups — from Socialists to “Jews for Jesus” to
militant anarchists to hookers. All had sought help from
ACLU because Chicago had denied them their right of free
speech. All of them, now Frank Collin included, waited.
And waited and waited.
But nobody had said anything about Collin’s neo-Nazis not demonstrating outside the
city limits. Hence the northern suburbs became a place to vent their hatred, now of Jews
instead of Blacks. In fact, their flier sent to the suburban park districts explained that:
The Chicago Park District and the courts . . . have both
enforced what amounts to a complete ban of our right to free
speech in public. And, since we have been so banned, we
have decided to relocate in areas heavily populated by the real
�enemy —- the Jews! . . . In short, our successful opposition to
the Black Invasion of Southwest Chicago will now be turned
on the culprits who started it all: the Jews!
It was their intention to fire up “the Aryan American masses of the Jewized suburbs, who
have had enough of political manipulation, economic thievery and forced integration.”
Park districts north of the city received Collin’s requests for admittance, and simply
ignored them. All of them did. But not Skokie!
By that time, in round numbers, out of a population of some 70,000 in Skokie, 40,000
were Jewish, 7,000 of them survivors of the death camps. It was a perfect target for Frank
Collin and his gang.
Without the Village of Skokie even knowing a request had been received, the Skokie
Park District responded by levying a $350,000 bond for the NSPA to enter. This
requirement and the accompanying details had never existed before, and were simply made
up for this special occasion. The park officials evidently knew nothing of the case tied up in
the Chicago courts, or they would never have outdone that city in laying down an even more
extreme charge. This response on their part turned out to be a foolish move. It caught
Collin’s attention immediately and set Skokie apart from all other North Shore communities
that had not responded.
Collin’s next step was to write a letter directly to the Village, not the Park District,
announcing his decision to stage a half-hour silent demonstration on the steps of Village Hall
on Sunday, May 1, 1977. The purpose of it was, so he explained, to protest the extravagant
insurance cost levied by the Park District.
With advice from the Village’s attorney, Harvey Schwartz, who knew they could not
legally block any such group, Mayor Al Smith issued the permission, along with the
stipulation that counter groups would also be allowed to gather.
And that was that. Or so those who knew about the proposal thought.
However, the Mayor was aware that even the suggestion that neo-Nazis would appear
in Skokie was not something that could be just sprung on the population. In this town of so
many Jews, Al Smith, a devout Catholic, had been Mayor for about ten years. He was
highly respected and admired, and consistently reelected. It was his style to be open with the
residents of Skokie, whatever their background, and give them a sense of being part of an
important whole.
He called together the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant clergy to ask us to inform our
congregations about this proposed presence of Nazis. He wanted to be sure the people of
Skokie knew what was going to happen, and more importantly, he wanted them to be
reassured by the restrictions that the Village was laying down to keep everything quiet and
under control.
�I went back to my congregation with the information, as others did. I didn’t get much
reaction. It seemed perfectly reasonable to say, “They’re just a bunch of nobodies. Let them
come and ignore them.”
More than a year later, we were still receiving that kind of advice from others outside
of Skokie. As one letter from Malverne, N. Y., put it: “What good is a parade when there’s
no one there to watch it?”
It didn’t take us long back in early 1977 to realize this attitude would never work.
IV
As far as I could tell, we had all lived peaceably together in Skokie ever since my
family and I had made it our home in 1970. To us it seemed to be an ideal community.
Easily connected to Chicago itself by our “Toonerville Trolley,” the Skokie Swift, which
took us to the North-South train lines running through Evanston on the lakefront, Skokie had
many qualities of a large city, with good schools and surely one of the best suburban libraries
anywhere. Yet it kept a small-town atmosphere about it, and was proud of the fact that we
had the reputation of being the largest “village” in Illinois. Our house was near enough that
the children could walk to the high school, and we could walk to the library and to the small
downtown where soon we recognized and were known by the store owners and town
officials.
Skokie had an atmosphere all its own, with a decidedly Jewish flavor that we felt as
soon as we settled in. It was like a different world to us. I had never known there was such a
thing as kosher Coke, but there it was on the shelves of the Jewell grocery story when we
moved in just before Passover. That Mother’s Day my high school daughter, giving to a
good cause, had purchased a “Lox Box” for me through a youth organization from one of the
several synagogues in town. It was my first breakfast of bagel, cream cheese and lox.
We had moved there from Harrisburg, Pa., so my husband, Bill, could begin a new
community college, which eventually became well known as Oakton. He, a Protestant, had a
board of trustees, which was a mix of Jews and Catholics. The only woman on it was
Jewish. Doris introduced me to various organizations and amenities in town, almost all
Jewish, and I was frequently the only Gentile present in a roomful of Jewish women. I
usually felt at ease, not only because her friends were pleasant, but also because I was the
new college president’s wife. So our getting acquainted was part of their welcome.
�This immersion into Jewish culture was like no other experience I’d ever had. Not
only that, my dear father, so sweet and loving in most cases, really hated the Jews. Of
course, what he hated was the stereotypical Jew that was the butt of bad jokes and legend.
What would he have thought if he were still living to see his only daughter settling so
comfortably into a Jewish community, wishing people “mazel tov!” beginning to talk about
“schlepping” things, and learning about the High Holy Days! I loved it all! There was a
vigor and vibrancy in Skokie I wasn’t used to.
I often felt I couldn’t keep up with all the energy around me, and gradually I learned
what I could do and could not do in that milieu. After one term on the high school PTA
Council, for example, I decided that I was simply not political enough to hold my own in that
organization and I resigned. I was beginning classes at McCormick Theological Seminary in
Chicago, and didn’t have the time anyway.
We had many Jewish friends. We chose them just the same way we chose friends
among Gentiles, the way anyone makes friends anywhere. When I finished seminary
training, and on February 20, 1977, was ordained and installed as pastor of Evanshire
Presbyterian Church in Skokie, some of those Jewish friends came to the service, as did
Rabbi Harold Stern from Temple B’nai Emunah across the street from the church. And as
time went on, I fitted easily into our interfaith clergy group made up of Catholics, Jews, and
Protestants, all men. On public occasions I made a point of wearing a clergy collar and a
cross so I could be identified as the minority that I was on two counts, a Protestant and a
woman.
B’nai Emunah and Evanshire Church were good neighbors. One year when
Halloween night fell on Saturday, I arrived at my small church next morning early to find
windows soaped up, and the sign on the front lawn with the cross beside it all covered with a
soapy mess. Being alone in the building that early in the morning, I heaved a sigh and began
collecting gear to go out and scrub up the place. From my office I looked out the front
window and saw two men walking across the yard with buckets, scrub brushes and rags, and
went down to meet them. Who were they? The president of the B’nai Emunah congregation
and their custodian. “We knew you were here all by yourself this morning, so we thought
we’d give you a hand,” they said. We worked together cleaning up our sign, cross and all,
and they went back in time for their morning class with my thanks.
At the time of the high holy days, our parking lot was at B’nai Emunah’s disposal,
and on rare special occasions when we needed it, we had permission to use theirs. When the
adult day care center housed in our building began to raise money to pave our graveled lot,
so it would be easier for the elderly clients to walk from the bus to the church door, the
synagogue gave a sizeable check. Some of their own congregation were being cared for
daily in our building, and they wanted to help support our community mission.
�With all those connections, I thought I knew my Jewish neighbors well. But not as
well as I would come to know them later. I did know they had a history. As our children
made friends in school, and visited their homes, now and then I’d hear about a grandmother
who had numbers tattooed on her arm. But none of us ever heard any stories about what it
was like for that grandmother when that happened to her, or what it had been like for her
since then, for that matter. All of that was soon to change.
V
“We never knew anybody cared.” The woman looked at me with troubled brown
eyes brimming with tears as she held my hand. I looked down and could see the tattooed
numbers on her arm.
She and I were standing in the meeting hall at one of our local synagogues, amid a
crowd of people who were talking quietly in groups of two or three, clasping hands. This
was not a meeting I had planned to attend.
Earlier in the evening a group of Christian clergy and lay people had begun gathering
at the back door of my church, ready for a monthly meeting of the Skokie Cooperative
Ministry. But before we went inside, one of the ministers drove up and stopped us. He
informed us of a gathering of Jews at the nearby Niles Township Jewish Congregation. They
were there to strategize with, as I recall, representatives of the Anti-Defamation League.
Right away we all agreed we should go there to show our support.
We entered the hall quietly, took seats near the back, and listened to all that the
speakers on the platform and the people in the audience had to say. But during the question
and answer period that followed, as it was growing late, several of us made a move to leave.
Some of the lay people with us were very elderly and were getting tired.
As we walked across the room towards the exit, the president of that congregation
recognized some of us, stopped to speak to us. Then he made us wait while he went up on
stage. He interrupted the speaker to tell him who their guests were. Then nothing would
satisfy the leaders but for each of us to come up on the platform to be introduced: “The Rev.
Tom O’Connor from St. Peter’s Church of Christ, Pastor Warren Thummel of St. Timothy’s
Lutheran Church, Rev. Harry Conner of Central United Methodist Church, Rev. Phyllis
Koehnline, Pastor of Evanshire Presbyterian Church; Father James Murtaugh, St. Peter’s
Catholic Church . . .” and on and on. On the stage we stood together to a thunderous
applause, and pushed Warren forward to speak for us.
�“Friends,” he said, “we want you to know that the Christians in Skokie, pastors and
congregations, stand with you in these troubled days.” He expressed our willingness to be
there for them in the face of the recent Nazi threat. “Now,” he concluded, “you have to tell
us what we can do to help.” The applause was slow in starting, but built to a crescendo.
When the meeting broke up, people crowded around us expressing their thanks, and
that’s when the woman said to me, “We never knew anybody cared.”
Warren and I talked about that experience years later. He remembered the two
grandmothers who had embraced him that night and shown him their tattooed numbers,
saying quietly, “We were there.” As he related this to me twenty years after the event,
Warren’s eyes filled with tears, as did mine. The memories are still almost overwhelming.
We had never known our neighbors had felt so isolated.
VI
Back in April when the May 1 date was first announced by the Nazis, Christian
priests and ministers informed our congregations as the Mayor had requested us to do. As
far as I could tell, there was not much reaction in the churches. Not so in the synagogues!
Rabbis immediately began hearing from their own members who had survived the
death camps or from relatives of victims. It became clear that, no matter what the law said
about rights, and no matter what precautions had been taken to keep everything peaceful,
there must never be in this town any suggestion of the horrors of the past, no brown shirts, no
swastikas, no Nazi slogans. It made no difference that they would just be brought in by a
rag-tag group of misdirected people aiming only to cause problems. It must never happen in
Skokie!
The Anti Defamation League knew that the best thing would be to let the Nazis
come, and have everyone stay home and completely ignore them. That may well have been
the strategy they had in mind that night when they met at the synagogue. Many of the rest of
us thought the same way in the beginning, including the Mayor and Rabbi Karl Weiner, the
leader of our interfaith clergy group in those days. But members of his own congregation
changed his mind, and gradually most of the rest of us began hearing enough to make us
rethink our first opinion. As Rabbi Weiner later remarked, “For me to turn away was to turn
them over again to the Nazis. This time we must do something to fight back.”
More fliers showed up, not in synagogue parking lots now, but on other cars to stir up
needed resentment among non-Jews. They carried slogans like WHERE ONE FINDS
�THE MOST JEWS, THERE ONE FINDS THE MOST JEW HATERS and calling on
Skokie to SMASH THE JEWISH SYSTEM. It was rumored that some Jewish residents
got threatening phone calls, and we began to hear survivors speak up in Village Hall
meetings. We heard stories, told with anguish at the recalling, and evoking horror and tears
among us, stories of children torn from parents, of seeing loved ones in a long line-up,
finally disappearing into a building or a train.
Newspaper accounts carried direct quotes from survivors who were now telling their
stories openly. In the meeting at Niles Township Jewish Congregation that we had
inadvertently become part of, we heard the same kinds of testimony that we read about in the
papers and heard ourselves in other Village and synagogue meetings. For several weeks we
listened to those painful recollections that were obviously still vivid and menacing. Passions
ran high, and as I heard those who had finally begun to speak, I felt more and more intensely
the horrors and fears, and began to realize what a threatening situation our town was facing.
“Do not tell me it cannot happen here.”
The speaker was remembering the assurances he had gotten years ago back home:
Don’t worry about it. They’re nobody. They can’t do any harm.
“Do not tell me it cannot happen again.”
“I was liberated on May 5, 1945. I came to America. I
became a citizen. I read the Constitution. I read the First
Amendment. Do you think I do not know what it says? Do
you think the First Amendment allows a man to walk through
my streets and threaten me with murder? . . . So now, what do
you think that does to us?”
One man in an interview was reluctant to give his name to the newspaper reporter at
all. Instead he rolled up his sleeve and identified himself by his number.
I usually could not see face-to-face most of the speakers in these gatherings, as I
often sat near the back. I didn’t recognize their names as people I knew personally, though
their next-door neighbors might well have been sitting near them, now hearing someone they
thought they knew well telling about horrors they could hardly imagine. Several people in
town acknowledged that they were just now learning things about their friends and
neighbors.
As a minister, I believed the role of the Christian community at this point was to
listen, and that’s what I told my congregation. It was clear these people needed to be heard,
and that was something we could do. Harvey Schwartz, Village attorney, confirmed to me
many years later, “That meant a great, great deal, just having a Christian listen.” It was in
this listening that the Village became aware of how any appearance of Nazi emblems in
Skokie would be sure to open old wounds and bring back old traumas.
�Several speakers and newspaper reporters early fell into a general misperception and
spoke of the Nazis “marching” in Skokie. An early newspaper report had carried the
information that Chicago Nazis were threatening to come “through” Skokie. Actually, all
they had asked for was a half-hour of silent demonstration on the steps of Village Hall. But
that word “through” misled people into thinking immediately of brown shirts and swastikas
goose-stepping through the streets of our town. I myself thought that, and now I have come
across early recorded remarks of my own that indicate I was expecting a march. So I
inadvertently helped perpetuate the misunderstanding which I think most residents shared.
Although I did not carefully date and label each newspaper clipping I saved, I have
one Chicago news story which surely came from that week at the end of April. It too falls
into the common talk about a “march.”
Area residents who survived the Nazi holocaust during World
War II made it clear to village officials on Monday, April 25,
that they will take action if members of a Chicago-based Nazi
group carry out plans to march in Skokie on May 1.
The very idea exacerbated the fears. Another survivor quoted in the paper warned:
There is no way to control our actions if the Nazis march.
Not if there are a thousand police, a thousand National Guard.
It was for this reason, ironically to protect not the survivors but the Nazis, that our
officials finally decided to take out an injunction against the NSPA’s entering Skokie.
On Sunday, April 24, my church bulletin carried in it an announcement of a gathering
to which we were invited, along with other local Christian and Jewish congregations, to hear
a Roman Catholic who had lived through Hitler’s reign of terror in Belgium and had been
active in the underground. I don’t know who went to that.
A letter came next day from Karl Weiner on Temple Judea stationery addressed to
members of the interfaith clergy, enclosing a rough draft of a statement he suggested we
make, and calling a meeting in the Temple library on Tuesday, April 26, to put it into final
shape. I have that draft among my papers with many pencil markings on it, but no copy of
the final declaration. As I remember, it was printed in the Chicago and Skokie newspapers.
At one of the first Village meetings, many survivors and family members spoke:
“We have made promises to ourselves and to our dead parents
that we will do all in our might . . . to make sure that there is
not another Auschwitz in America . . . We know we will not
stand still and look through the windows as they are walking
— after everything we went through, we may be the beasts.
We will not let our children go through what we went
through.”
�“As a survivor and a fighter, I cannot come to the point of
patiently sitting at home when I’m told that it’s only a bunch
of hooligans on the street and that it will pass over. I cannot
forget the lives of my brothers and sisters who perished.”
One citizen made clear why he and others could not just stay home and let them
come:
“We must face the music now and seek an end to the menace,
for if we wait until they are strong, we’ll be weak.”
And they wanted the Village to do something!
“We’d like legal action to be taken before . . . we show up
and tear these people apart.”
Mayor Smith and the Village officials already knew that something had to be done,
and in that meeting he promised:
“If you know me at all, by God, then you have to know that I
will do everything in my power to protect the rights and
dignity of the Jewish community in Skokie.”
Harvey Schwartz, corporate counsel, could tell then that the survivors would carry
the day, and something had to be done. So he also assured the gathering that the Village
would do everything possible to work something out, even including taking legal action.
VII
They did take legal action. The court case to prevent Collin’s entrance was set for
Thursday, April 28. Once again, the ACLU was defending him. It was, I believe, during
this and subsequent hearings that criticism of the American Civil Liberties Union began in
earnest and soon mounted. Hundreds of people phoned to complain about their defense of
Nazis, and membership began to fall as people canceled. Ironically, the ACLU attorney,
David Goldberger, was Jewish, which caused further criticism.
Attorneys for both sides met at the Richard J. Daley Civic Center in Chicago, with
hardly any time for adequate preparation by either side. Skokie argued that, no matter what
�Collin and his group did, it would be harassment of Skokie’s Jewish residents, and that there
would inevitably be rioting, and probable harm to the demonstrators. The ACLU argued that
you could not act to prevent something just because you think it may happen.
Sol Goldstein, a well-known representative of the survivors, spoke at that hearing:
“There will be bloodshed, loss of property and maybe loss of life.” He admitted that in none
of the meetings where survivors had discussed the proposed demonstration had violence
been mentioned. He said for himself, “I don’t intend to use any, but as a survivor, I don’t
know if I can control myself.”
David Goldberger, legal director of the Illinois ACLU and Collin’s lawyer,
maintained throughout that the 1st and 14th amendments to the U. S. constitution guaranteed
the Nazis the right to demonstrate in Skokie. He further said that no matter how much
“they” want you to do it, you can’t “muzzle” somebody. “If an injunction is issued, the
village of Skokie will be dancing on the grave of the First Amendment.”
As Hamlin writes up this event, he cites five witnesses brought by Skokie: the Mayor
himself, an organizer of the Jewish community, a survivor, and the familiar Sol Goldstein.
The fifth witness was one of the neo-Nazi flyers which was read aloud and put into evidence.
It was soon clear that all authorities, all except the ACLU, were on the side of Skokie.
Collin was questioned, and his ensuing rantings and affirmation of all the obscenities
contained in the flyer were his own condemnation. Goldberger’s arguments did not prevail.
The result was that Circuit Court Judge Joseph M. Wosik took action to prevent the National
Socialist Party of America from entering Skokie on May 1.
The reaction from Collin was simply to announce that they would come a day early,
April 30. In response, Harvey Schwartz tells of the frantic action late that night. “We ran
over to the home of Judge Harold Sullivan, Judge of the Second municipal court,” he told
me, “to request that the May 1 injunction be broadened so that it would cover any other
date.”
This was done, he explained, without any other parties being present, and without
notifying anyone else. Judge Sullivan’s action resulted in a piece of paper which was handed
to the police, and used to stop Collin and his group when they arrived at the Interstate 94 exit
to Skokie at Touhy.
It didn’t really matter to Collin. He had achieved his goal whether he came or not.
He had upset the Jewish population and the town officials and other citizens. More
importantly for most of that week he was in the headlines. Just what he wanted.
�VIII
I have no idea where I was on that Saturday, April 30. I’m not sure I even knew
about the possibility of the Nazis’ coming on Saturday. The change of date on Collin’s part
had been a last-minute ploy to get around the May 1 injunction. Apparently, as far as I knew
— and most of my congregation — there was still the possibility that the injunction would
not work, and they would come that Sunday afternoon. I find a portion of my sermon for
May 1, in which I said:
I call special attention to…today, when our Jewish neighbors are
facing a harassment which we cannot possibly share to the fullest.
Sympathetic as we might try to be, we can never fully appreciate
what has been going on in their minds ... these past few weeks in
Skokie, in the face of threats that stir up of old fears and hatreds.
You’ve read the newspapers, and you know that the Nazis planned to
come here this afternoon, not to cause any trouble, so they say, but to
exercise their right — and it is their right — of free speech to espouse
what they believe in. We don’t know whether they are coming or
not. The courts have ordered them to stay away, and we hope they
do. They may come anyway.
There are members of our Christian family, led by the clergy, who
have been exposed in recent days to a glimpse of some of the old
horrors that have lain partially buried in the minds of many who
themselves survived the Holocaust, and many who lost their own
families in those terrible years. Some of you, because you are their
friends, may have at some time been let into their private chamber of
terrors.
Skokie appears to be a place where people can live together in
harmony whatever their background. That’s a blessing. But there
may be many today who are remembering how several years ago
non-Jews, either out of ignorance or apathy, sat by and let atrocities
happen. Our local Christian family is taking guidance right now from
the local rabbis. And the message is this: To all people: If the Nazis
do come to walk the streets of Skokie, don’t go near them. Go in the
other direction. Don’t give them the satisfaction of arousing your
attention.
If you feel you want to make a positive statement and show support
of your Jewish neighbors, try to influence them to stay away, or go
with them or on your own to the Freedom Rally which is being held
in the Temple Judea parking lot right now, some distance from the
middle of town. I presume it will be going on for a while longer yet,
and I plan to go over immediately after church. I’m going to wear
�my collar and a cross, because I would like to say to them that our
Christian family is concerned, and is standing with them. For we are
all children of God, we are all members of the wider human family,
within which we try to give each other mutual support and
understanding and love. As the Psalmist said (Psalm 133): “Behold,
how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.”
We did have that rally that Sunday afternoon, and that must be when I found out
about what had happened the day before. My friend, the Rev. Tom O’Connor, pastor of the
United Church of Christ directly across the street from Village Hall, told me about it in such
detail that ever since then, the scene has been vivid in my mind.
According to him, at the appointed hour on Saturday, the crowd of residents gathered
on the steps of the Hall holding signs and waiting. They had firm instructions to remain
quiet, to stay in place, and be a silent witness, Jews and Christians together. The press was
there, reporters from The Chicago Tribune, and The Chicago Sun Times, and the local
community papers were there, as well as reporters and photographers from the TV news
shows.
Harvey Schwartz described how he and Mayor Smith stood together looking out of
the upstairs windows of Village Hall at the restless crowd beneath them. At the last minute,
the Mayor’s telephone rang, and he got the word that the injunction had worked. The Nazis
had been stopped at the Touhy Exit of the Edens Expressway. The two men hastened down
to pass on the word to the crowd. But the excitement, the fear and anger, and by now the
impatience with waiting made for so much noise, the Mayor couldn’t make himself heard.
Tom was in the crowd, wearing his clerical collar, and Mayor Smith handed him the
bullhorn. “Tom, see if you can get through to them. Tell them to go home. It’s all over.”
Tom told me he did his best. “They’re not coming!” he shouted. “They’ve been
stopped. You can go home now.” At first no one would believe him. They may well have
been afraid it was just a ploy to get them to leave. Finally, however, some of the crowd
began to disperse, little by little, the ranks thinning slowly as people left the porch and steps
of Village Hall and moved to the sidewalk. Some actually started on their way home, but
most gathered in excited groups or clustered around Tom and the Mayor to find out exactly
what had happened.
One of the survivors, a middle-aged woman who had been on the back row, up
against the front wall of Village Hall, was one of the last to break free. She rushed down the
steps and attacked Tom in a fury. Wielding her umbrella, she hit him on the shoulder and
screamed at him. “This is none of your affair! You go home!” Tom said he tried to stay
calm, and friends soon pulled her away. Then it was all over.
“Let them come, and just ignore them”? Oh yes.
The next day that woman called on Tom at his church and apologized to him. She
�had had the appalling experience the evening before of watching the 6:00 o’clock news at her
dinner table and seeing herself on screen acting like a crazy woman. She could not believe
what she had done, and had never dreamed she could behave that way.
Had she acted the way many other survivors might have if the Nazis had come that
day? If so, then it was true that good, respectable citizens really could not be sure what they
would do when confronted with even a suggestion of the evil that had wiped out their
families and destroyed their lives. We were fortunate that things ended as peacefully as they
did that day, Tom’s battering aside.
We were just glad it was over.
But, of course, it was not over. On Monday, May 2, the injunction was extended
indefinitely, followed by the passing of three ordinances: $350,000 liability and property
damage insurance, prohibition of incitement to racial hatred, and banning of military
uniforms and dissemination of racial hatred literature. This, of course, had dire
ramifications. In effect it banned the Boy Scouts and the Veterans of Foreign Wars from
marching in Skokie’s own Fourth of July parades in uniform! Of course, things had to be
worked out so that exceptions could be made, on a case-by-case basis.
The American Civil Liberties Union appealed the illegality of the injunction, and
nothing was really settled yet. Collin next announced that they would try again. This time
he set the date of July 4.
Meantime, in June that year I attended a continuing education class on McCormick
Theological Seminary campus in Hyde Park on the south side. The first day of the seminar
we introduced ourselves as we gathered around a huge conference table. Then we had
opening prayers, in which anyone who wished could offer a prayer of thanks or of petition.
The man sitting across from me, upon learning that I was a pastor in Skokie,
proceeded to pray for “the strife-torn village of Skokie.” When prayer time ended, I couldn’t
contain myself. “We’re not strife-torn!” I insisted. “We’re doing just fine; all of the
community is rallying around and supporting each other. Christians and Jews are working
together on this.” I knew the only potential strife, besides the threat to march, was coming
from outsiders who wanted to join us and demonstrate. We wanted outsiders to stay home
and leave us alone! I told him all that.
I was sorry to be so blunt, but we were being besieged by well-wishers who seemed
to want to be where our action might be. We began hearing of busloads of supporters who
planned to be in town on July 4. These were nice gestures, and showed real concern. But we
knew what a mess it would make if, along with our own troubles, we had to worry about
extra traffic and extra crowds and extra security. It was enough that the Anti-Defamation
League was often in town giving advice. Much of that was helpful, but a militant arm of the
Jewish Defense League had talked of equipping our citizens with clubs! We didn’t need
that, and we didn’t need all the attention we were getting!
�Meantime, in The Chicago Daily News of June 23, Mike Royko, iconoclastic
columnist, revealed the startling news that Frank Collin had Jewish blood, and indeed was
the son of a survivor of Dachau. He urged Collin’s opponents to stand on the sidelines when
he came through Skokie, and shout, “So’s your old man!”
On June 26, Jack Mabley wrote in The Chicago Tribune, “This Nazi’s Got a Real
Problem . . . Curse of Dachau Survivor: Son is Jewish-hating Nazi.”
By the time those columns appeared, my husband and I were off on a big trip to the
Middle East, planned mainly to celebrate my ordination that year. I was sorry to leave in the
midst of all that was going on, and had left with Rabbi Weiner the names of a few of our
members who could be called on for support if necessary.
We were in Jerusalem on July 4. I remember wondering what was happening back
home on that date. What did happen was that the Nazis did not come on Sunday. But Bill
and I didn’t know about it until two days later when we bought a copy of The Jerusalem
Post, and on page 3 saw “Skokie” glaring at us from a caption under a photograph. The
caption read:
American Nazi leader Frank Collins [sic]. . . tells his
followers outside a Chicago courthouse on Monday that the
Nazis will hold their march through Skokie, Illinois
“sometime this year,” following a court order banning such a
march last weekend.
Below it was another picture captioned:
Jewish Defense League founder Rabbi Meir Kahane asserts
his opposition to such a march at a rally in Skokie on Monday
attended by several hundreds of his supporters.
We bought a copy of the Post and learned that, once again, the injunction our Mayor
and Village council had requested to keep the neo-Nazis out had held. I was relieved, and
curious as to how that came about.
Before we left home, the ACLU’s case for free speech even for Nazis had made its
way to the U. S. Supreme Court, which had ruled back in June that the injunction against
Collin must be either reviewed or dismissed “immediately.” The Illinois Supreme Court
passed that word on to the appellate court. But, by the time we were gone, the appellate
court had dragged out the business so long, that a date was not set for that review until July
6, two days after the proposed demonstration. That meant, of course, that by July 4, since
nothing was finally settled, the injunction still held. The Nazis still could not enter Skokie.
Hamlin calls these questionable goings-on “shameless manipulation” by the Illinois courts
on behalf of Skokie, leading to what he termed a “near contempt” of the U.S. Supreme
Court.
�Nevertheless, by whatever means, one more time Skokie had escaped being invaded
by the Nazis. How long could this go on? That early summer we could not have predicted
what a long and convoluted process this was going to be.
IX
A year was to go by before there was any definitive ending to this saga. But things
happened both in my church and in the press to keep the matter constantly before us. During
these weeks, once word of our request for an injunction was known, our town began to be
national news. People who had never heard of us before recognized the name Skokie, as
many still do today.
There were many written expressions of concern and support which were most
welcome, and were shared among us all. Nearby churches and denominational organizations
expressed their support in formal resolutions or just through encouraging letters and phone
calls.
There’s a notice in the Evanshire Church bulletin for August 7 of a showing of the
film, Corrie: Behind the Scenes with The Hiding Place, based on the book by Corrie Ten
Boom and her account of shielding Jews in Amsterdam.
For several Sundays our church bulletin also carried encouragement for members to
use printed resources available as preparation for a serious study of the Holocaust set for
August 21. Strange as it seems to me now, that was something many of us knew very little
about. One man in my congregation had been among the troops that liberated one of the
camps, but he would say very little about the experience. I got the impression it was too
awful to talk about. Our study brought in writings from many sources, including Elie Weisel
and Anne Frank, and many comments from survivors. That concentrated effort certainly got
my congregation into a deeper concern for our Jewish neighbors, and a like concern for
keeping things peaceful in Skokie.
The Chicago Sun-Times carried a debate on August 28. Two constitutional scholars
were interviewed, Victor G. Rosenblum, professor of law and political science at
Northwestern University, and Geoffrey R. Stone, associate professor of law at the University
of Chicago Law School. Rosenblum wrote convincingly that the survivors must be protected
from “emotional harm,” while Stone upheld the guarantee of Freedom of Speech as of prime
importance. Thus, and in other such articles, the subject remained in the public eye, and
incidentally Frank Collin was frequently in print, which, of course, was just fine with him.
�On the home front support for our cause poured in, communications from local
churches and religious organizations, and others at a distance. Other cities planned their own
demonstrations in opposition to the presence of Nazis in Skokie.
Jack Matzer, Skokie village manager, reported that the Village was getting more than
fifty letters a day supporting their stand, some from as far away as England and Scandinavia.
In February of 1978 the Knesset in Jerusalem tried to pass a vote in protest of the Nazis
appearing in Skokie, but it failed. Such actions indicate the wide-spread awareness and
concern for our small town and its unique situation.
Skokie’s size, of course, contributed to the problem. As David Guttman, a
psychologist at Northwestern University, had said, Collin and his group demonstrating in
Chicago where there were certainly thousands of Jews would be only “a public
demonstration of offensive ideas,” whereas in Skokie it would be “an invasion” and the
whole community of survivors would be hurt, not just individuals.
In April of 1978 things began happening rapidly. On April 6, the 7th Circuit of U. S.
Court of Appeals reversed a prior 45-day stay which was keeping the Nazis out. On April 11
Collin mailed a permit application for June 25, 1978. On April 15 Skokie officials
announced this new threat.
Meantime our local Jewish/Christian clergy group had become even more closely
knit than ever, and took strength from one another. I remember one day when Rabbi Brief
joined us for lunch. He had come back to Skokie from Chicago where he’d been in a
meeting of rabbis, choosing to miss their luncheon so he could meet with us. He told us that
when he explained why he was joining us instead, some of his colleagues expressed envy
that he could be part of such a supportive group.
We were in agreement that we needed to do something positive to find a way for our
community to come together for healing and strengthening, and we needed to do it as a
proactive measure, not as a reaction to whatever Collin thought up next.
So we planned a service of worship for Sunday afternoon, April 16, the first day of
Holocaust Remembrance Week. What happened that day is surely the high point of this
entire year-long saga, and I will never forget it.
X
“The peace of God be with you.” Father Galaty spoke those words into the
�microphone in the high school football stadium, and, as people clasped hands and spoke the
words to one another, I could almost feel the electricity sweeping across the bleachers. The
effect was stunning.
I had been among those six or seven who met to plan that April 16 service. The
process itself was exceptional, in that each of us made a significant contribution which was
welcomed by the others and integrated into the whole. It was remarkable how open to
suggestions we all were, and how much in agreement. But we already had the advantage of
“speaking the same language.” That is, we had certain understandings among us of what an
interfaith worship ought to be like.
Some time before we moved to Skokie, the Christians and Jews there had already
built up a good relationship, with frequent dialog that I’m told took on new life after the
1967 war, in order to increase understanding. A Skokie News article reports in 1977 that:
Over the past 5 years reconciliation has grown to the point
where there is a sincere basic trust in each other and genuine
respect for each other’s faith.
According to Rabbi Neil Brief, the first community Interfaith Thanksgiving Eve
service had been instituted back in November 1971. Though Skokie has many religious
groups today, in the '70s “Interfaith” meant Jewish, Catholic and Protestant, as they were the
only congregations in town. The plan made then and carried out all the years I lived there
called for Thanksgiving Eve services to be held on a rotating basis, moving each year from a
Jewish synagogue to a Protestant church to a Catholic church. The sermon was brought
sometimes by “the new kid on the block” of whatever faith, but often by representatives of
all three faiths. For those occasions we had already worked out some ground rules.
Since the beginning, the planners had agreed to worship as the children of God,
bringing from the various traditions elements that would be appropriate for all the people.
That meant certain elements had to be left out. For example, I would not pray “in Jesus’
name,” a priest would not pray to Mary or the saints, the rabbi would not give thanks that we
were all Jews.
That agreement immediately eliminated some who thought if they could not be true
to their own tradition, they would not be worshiping. In addition, there were some Orthodox
rabbis who refused to worship with non-Jews and in a building where there was a cross. One
conservative Protestant was heard to say, “It’s not a prayer if it’s not prayed in the name of
Jesus.” For him, what we proposed was so watered down as to be of no value.
Those of us who did not agree with that assessment believed that if each of us did it
in our own exclusively Jewish or Protestant or Catholic way, we would be merely giving
instructive demonstrations, and not really worshiping. With that difference of opinion, only
those of us who wanted to gather as the whole people of God took part on a regular basis in
the community Thanksgiving Eve services.
�So meeting that spring of 1978, I believe at Temple Judea, was the core of leaders
who were already used to working together, agreeing that in this instance we should continue
to follow the guidelines that had worked so well. We each made our suggestions, and
everyone had something significant to contribute.
Two of the rabbis, Neil and Karl, provided prayers in Hebrew and English for the
opening of the service, which Shlomo Shuster, our very popular cantor, would chant in his
glorious voice. The assembly could pray with him, as the transliteration of the Hebrew, as
well as the English translation would be in the bulletin. The rabbis also suggested quotations
from modern writers such as Elie Weisel to intersperse throughout the hour, and provided us
with the “Prayer for All Martyrs” from the Jewish prayer book.
We all agreed that the lament of Psalm 130 would be appropriate for the beginning of
the hour, and that the affirmation of faith in Psalm 118 would be fitting near the end. I think
it was Jim Murtaugh, the Catholic priest, who suggested from the Christian scriptures that we
read 1 Corinthians 13, the “love” chapter. He read it aloud for the rabbis to hear, as some of
them seemed not at all familiar with it. But they liked it, and we all agreed it would be just
right.
Louise, a young student intern at the Methodist church and the only other woman
involved, wrote a pastoral prayer and I wrote a responsive “Litany for God’s People,” in
which I traced our shared faith as children of one God.
Most of our selections were printed in the bulletin distributed that afternoon,
including the words to the two hymns, “All People That on Earth Do Dwell,” and the more
modern “God the Omnipotent” which is set to the music of the Russian national anthem.
They were familiar to the Protestant ministers, but were readily accepted by the entire
planning committee, once the words were read aloud, since the tunes were recognizable and
the lyrics said what we needed them to say. I marveled at how neatly everything seemed to
fall into place, and how each of us was able to introduce a useful idea. Then Bill Galaty of
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church made a suggestion that turned out to be the climax of the
service.
His thought was that we “pass the peace.” The rabbis didn’t know what he meant by
that, so he explained that in many churches prior to the Eucharist the priest says to the
congregation, “The peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you,” and they reply, “And also
with you,” and then turn to those around them and pass the peace. Bill proposed that we use
“The peace of God be with you,” which is also a part of many services. They loved the idea.
Then, by mutual agreement he and each of us who had made specific contributions were
assigned to be the persons to stand at the microphone to lead the parts we had supplied.
The high school football field was the only logical place to hold a service that we
hoped would attract thousands of people. No building was large enough, and to go outside
Skokie for space seemed inappropriate. There was no problem in the '70s with worshiping
on school grounds, so the arrangements were easily made. It was indicative of the readiness
for such a public expression of our solidarity that everyone involved was highly cooperative,
�including the local police department. One of the high school choruses provided music
accompanied by a portable organ from a synagogue.
It was a beautiful sunny spring afternoon when the crowds started entering the gates.
The stands began filling up before the first strains of music sounded, while the clergy waited
outside, lining up. We were all in our various religious vestments, clergy shirts and collars
with black Geneva gowns and colorful stoles for some of us, white albs with cinctures
knotted about the waist, black cassocks and white surplices, vari-colored yarmulkes, as well
as some dark suits and ties. The field rippled with the color of the stoles and the contrast of
black and white, as we processed to our places on the temporary platform at the fifty-yard
line. While the bleachers filled, the buzzing of voices carried across the field, the music
played and a light breeze picked up and tossed our robes and stoles as we began moving
forward. There was a festive air throughout the stadium.
Amid all the brilliance of the day and the scene, one bit of color predominated. Each
clergy person and each person in the bleachers wore around the left arm a black band with a
yellow Star of David on it. They had been supplied by the National Conference of Christians
and Jews so that we could all be Jews that day.
Voices carried over the loud speakers, music filled the air, and that huge crowd was
hushed as we listened in silence to the sobering words of remembrance. But as we read
together the opening Psalm 130 (“Out of the depths I cry to Thee, O Lord!”) as a reminder of
the suffering of the Jews, and made our way through the readings and music and the prayers
to the affirmation of Psalm 118 (“O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love
endures forever!”) spirits soared.
Near the end of the hour, Father Galaty stepped to the microphone, his dark-rimmed
glasses glinting beneath his black hair. “The peace of God be with you,” his voice boomed
out over the loud speakers. Those of us who were used to the words responded, “And also
with you,” and turned to those around us to pass the peace. There was a moment’s
hesitation. Then, without any verbal prompting, little by little the people in the stands
followed us, neighbor turning to neighbor, stranger to stranger, clasping hands, and we heard
the murmur of their voices drifting across the field. “The peace of God be with you.” I felt a
great wave of energy rush across the stands as people were caught up in the significance and
wonder of the words. It was a moment I will never forget.
And so the service ended, Shlomo singing in Hebrew, the Jewish and Christian clergy
speaking in echo each line of the benediction: “May the Lord bless you and keep you. May
the Lord let His countenance shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up
His countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.”
The enthusiasm of the crowd was remarkable. As we left the platform and began
walking across the grounds with the crowd, the people stopped the clergy to express their
thanks and joy at what had just happened. They wanted to examine our various religious
robes and talk to us about parts of the service. More than once we heard, “We must do this
again!” and expressions of hope that we’d do something very similar at that year’s
�Thanksgiving service. In fact, those services did seem to take on new life after that day.
One man who had lost every member of a family of thirty-some was quoted as
saying, “After this worship service, I no longer feel alone. We are all children of God!”
The same sentiment was expressed to another minister by a couple who had suffered
greatly during the Holocaust, and who had come out of World War II embittered and cynical,
full of hatred. For some reason they came to that service, and later admitted, “We couldn’t
have believed this if we hadn’t seen it! For the first time in thirty years we can finally
believe that we are not alone.”
Perhaps even more dramatic was the reaction of a Skokie resident, a member of the
Jewish Defense League which is more radical than some of us are comfortable with, tending
toward violence. He testified to one of the clergy that evening that, after experiencing what
he found in that worship service, he now felt it was his duty to approach the national JDL
leaders with his new conviction that Skokie does not need the kind of “help” they proposed
giving. He had seen that violence has no place here, because Skokie has something else
going for it.
That night the four-part television series, Holocaust, began. Then Monday morning,
after that spectacular beginning to the week, I went into the kitchen to get breakfast, and
turned on the television. There on NBC’s Today Show, I saw myself leading my litany. It
had been a glorious occasion that we would long remember, and one that I still relive vividly.
How blessed I felt then, and even now all these years later, to have been part of such a
positive statement.
But the summer had hardly begun yet. The ACLU was still making its case, and the
Nazis were still waiting to march.
Here follows the Litany we used in the outdoor service:
A LITANY FOR GOD’S PEOPLE
ALL:
ALMIGHTY GOD, WE GATHER HERE AS YOUR CHILDREN IN THIS
COMMUNITY TO AFFIRM OUR LOVE FOR YOU AND FOR EACH OTHER.
Leader:
Lord God of Abraham and Sarah, call us to move into a fuller relationship
with our neighbors and with you.
�PEOPLE: Show us how to be faithful, and obedient to your will.
Leader:
God of Moses and Aaron and Miriam, lead us, your people, on our journey to
full freedom.
PEOPLE: Keep us aware of your presence with us, by night and by day.
Leader:
O God of the judges, of Deborah and Gideon, judge us and call us back when
we wander from your way.
PEOPLE: Give us of your strength, that we may stand firm against oppression and evil.
Leader:
God of the prophets, of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Amos, speak your word to us,
that we may hear your message for this day.
People:
Keep us ever ready to speak the truth, to call for justice, and to serve you.
Leader:
We pray to you, God of Judas Maccabeus and of Judith, and of all brave souls
who dare, in the name of the Lord.
People:
Make us brave and able to strengthen others in faithfulness to you.
Leader:
Hear our prayers, God of John in the wilderness, calling the way — and of
Jesus and of Mary and Martha.
People:
May we come to know you in our hearts, and thereby draw closer to you and
to each other.
Leader:
O God of Paul, and Priscilla and Aquila, put your love into our hearts, that we
may grown in your image.
People:
Give us faith and hope and love, a gift from you to share with our brothers
and sisters, all your children.
Leader:
God of Albert Sweitzer, and Anne Frank and Martin Buber, give us insight and
willingness to learn.
People:
May we never forget the sacredness of every human life.
Leader:
God of Martin Luther, and Sister Kenny, of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pope John
and Martin Luther King, give us vision, that we may seek the truth and dare to
dream in your name.
People:
Expand our limited view and lift us to new levels of understanding.
ALL:
FOR WE ARE YOUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS, BROUGHT TOGETHER IN
THIS COMMUNITY OF FAITH. JEW, PROTESTANT, CATHOLIC, WE
WORSHIP YOU, O GREAT GOD, FOR WE ARE ALL YOUR CHILDREN.
AMEN.
�XI
The morning of April 16 had begun at our church with our usual Sunday morning
worship, which today both affirmed our oneness under God, and prepared us for the
afternoon’s worship service. It emphasized the promise of God to all humanity found in the
Noah story in Genesis. The bulletin carried a drawing of the symbol that would appear on
the afternoon’s bulletin. It showed a rainbow arching over a cross and a Star of David side
by side sharing the same earth, symbolizing our oneness under God. My sermon, “The
Shared Covenant,” spoke about the faithfulness of God and reminded us that, as children of
God, we are all part of God’s covenant with humanity. The sermon ended with these words:
Today the survivors, the friends and the families of those who were
lost, are still haunted by questions they cannot answer: Why did it
happen? How did I escape? Why didn’t somebody do something?
Where was God?
We live in a community where, right now, there is much pain. We
can understand human suffering and commiserate with each other and
comfort and help. But I don’t know how much you and I can
understand inhuman suffering, or how much we can hope to share
things that are unsharable, to listen to and hear the unspeakable. But
I think we must try, and in every way we can we must be willing to
expose ourselves to ugliness we do not want to experience, if it can
make us sensitive enough to reach out to neighbors in real need. The
God of us all can work in us in such a way that by God’s grace we
can be used as instruments of healing.
I’m afraid the eyes of the world are on Skokie. I hope what they see,
beyond the Nazi threats and the fear of violence, is Christians and
Jews who know how to live together as children of God.
At the close of the service, I led the congregation in the same responsive reading I’d
written to use later that afternoon in the outdoor worship at 3:00.
Many of our members were among the reported three thousand at that afternoon
service. Later, the August issue of A. D., a national magazine for United Church of Christ
and the United Presbyterian denominations, carried full coverage of the afternoon worship.
It included interviews with Village officials, survivors, and with me and Tom O’Connor, the
U. C. C. pastor who had designed the Christian-Jewish symbol we used on the printed
program, and used for years afterwards. Scattered through the article are our pictures. I’m
quoted as saying:
People who were there from my church were proud of our
participation. As a pastor I have the duty to give my people
times for celebration and sacrifice — to encourage us to hurt
�a little.. . . Last year we did a Nazi holocaust study. Our
session wrote a letter to presbytery in support of Jews,
especially our neighbors in Skokie. The presbytery endorsed
and sent it to every church.
I went on in the interview to encourage local congregations everywhere to worship
together as the children of God.
It had been a full and emotion-packed weekend, and the beginning that night of the
television series, Holocaust, kept the momentum going. Many of us made use of the study
guides that NBC had made available to congregations, and my husband and I watched with
full compassion each of the four episodes.
In that Friday’s column in The Chicago Sun-Times, Mike Royko was his usual
cynical self, pooh-poohing the television production as a “soap opera” or a “bad John Wayne
movie.” He claimed that, although, “in 9½ hours Holocaust could have told so
much...Instead, it was timid and wasted time.” To his mind, it wasn’t gruesome enough.
Incensed, I wrote him that very day, beginning by saying (but not really meaning it!)
that I was “sure you were sincere in your column on Holocaust and didn’t write what you did
merely to produce lots of letters.” Of course, that’s what he had done; that’s what his
columns usually were for, and I enjoyed his wit. Often I’ve laughed at his extreme stances
and anticipated all the angry mail he would get from people who were foolish enough to take
him seriously. Now here I was, obviously taking him seriously, or I wouldn’t have been so
upset by his callous dismissal of what to me was more compelling evidence of mass
injustice.
Admittedly, I had been for many months steeped in this subject and adamant about
principles involved. Armed with indignation, I made the argument in my letter that,
although many of us in Skokie were well informed, much of the population was not. I cited
a recent news story of a judge who was dismayed to find that, in questioning potential jurors
for the trial of members of a Nazi group, none of the twenty-three middle-aged persons
examined could remember anything about Hitler and the atrocities. Continuing, I wrote:
You are obviously hardened to cruelties and obscenities
because of your dealing with day-to-day violence in Chicago.
Among my own church people (who were well informed . . .)
there were many who wanted to watch the series and tried to,
but kept having to turn off the set because the horror was too
great. Did you really want TV to show the clubbing of
babies? Don’t you think the evil that was shown made an
impact on those who had known nothing beforehand, and
don’t you think those who knew much more could look at
what was on TV and know full well there were even worse
things? Contrary to current movies, the human mind doesn’t
have to be shown everything!
�How could the Warsaw uprising look unlike a “shoot-out”?
[his complaint] It was a shoot-out, and to do that episode full
justice would have taken up all the ten hours and more.
I went on to remind Royko that any recent documentary on television that focused on
individuals was inevitably called a soap opera, even The Wives of Henry VIII and I, Claudius
on Masterpiece Theater. I testified that all week I’d been hearing from many sources how
effective Holocaust was in speaking to people who lived through it, to people who
remembered it all, and to people to whom it was news. I concluded by acknowledging that
yes, it was a commercial venture, and that in fact, I thought the biggest obscenities were the
“inane commercials” that interrupted. He may have responded to such letters pro and con,
but I don’t have such a column if there was one.
I had a similar exchange with Roy Larson, the religion editor for The Chicago SunTimes, who expressed in his column a disappointment with the quality of the production. He
gave NBC an “A” for public relations and for getting clergy involved in stirring up
enthusiasm for watching Holocaust. But he gave the writers, producers and directors a “C”
for art and history. He did acknowledge that those who had known nothing about Hitler’s
atrocities could learn something from the program, but he had other concerns
To be sure, some of the religious enthusiasts were outdone in
their praise of the program by respectable secular critics who
willingly suspended their disbelief and checked their
sophistication.
Apparently overcome by the notion that the series was a
laudable enterprise for a network to undertake, they joined in
a benevolent conspiracy to build a huge audience.
My letter expressed agreement with his criticism of the artistic quality of the work,
but I cited his implication that the history shown was false. I reported on my study from
numerous resources, and said that what I saw on the screen fitted the facts as I had found
them. Having written that, I concluded with;
I like your work and never miss your column. I have respect
for you and your writing skill. Perhaps that’s why I am
disappointed by what I see as an incomplete treatment of an
important subject.
He responded with a hand-written note, thanking me and admitting his column
wasn’t all he wished it had been.
�XII
While all this was going on, as already mentioned, the forty-five-day stay which was
keeping the Nazis out was reversed. Then, on April 11 Collin applied to demonstrate on
June 25, 1978. Skokie officials had gotten this word on Saturday, April 15, the day before
our open-air worship, and just as Holocaust Remembrance Week was about to begin. Once
again the battle was on.
First, there were rumors that Collin intended to come on April 20, Hitler’s birthday.
This only added to the tension, but gave more reason for our worship on the 16th. When
April 20 passed with no incident, we waited for June 25. By now we were used to holding
our breath.
On May 22 the Court of Appeals upheld the ruling to allow the Nazis to come,
Skokie appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court, but was denied a hearing.
As June 25 neared, tensions mounted, not only in town, but in far-away places. We
heard of counter-demonstrations planned all over the country and beyond, and increasingly
we heard of communities that were sending delegations to Skokie. We braced ourselves, not
only for all that we had anticipated might happen if survivors were invaded by the Nazis, but
now with all that could go wrong if mobs of well-intentioned outsiders invaded too. Rev.
Tom O’Connor may not have been the only family man in town who sent his wife and
children away to get them out of it.
Then the word came. Frank Collin and his Nazis now had full authorization to
appear, not only in Skokie, but also in Chicago. The latter is what he had been working for
all along. As soon as he got that blanket permission, Collin announced his intention to
appear, not in Skokie, but in Marquette Park instead.
Later Village attorney Harvey Schwartz said he believed Collin didn’t come because
he was afraid. He’s quoted as saying, “I think he felt that he would be killed. And I think he
would have been killed.”
Frank Collin rallied his followers first on June 22 in Chicago, amid six thousand
angry counter-demonstrators who jeered and threw objects at Collin who was, of course,
protected by the police. These scenes only confirmed what we had feared would take place
in Skokie.
In the meantime, on the 28th Chicago Sun-Times columnist, Sydney Harris reviewed
all that had happened, commenting on First Amendment rights and what he then felt was the
crux of Skokie’s position. He wrote:
�Every argument I have heard against permitting the Nazis to
march is based on the assumption that they are a threat to our
democracy and our society, or would be, if we allowed them
to flourish.
I wrote him a letter expressing surprise that he had heard no other arguments.
If you had been living in Skokie you would have. I have
learned things in the past months I might never have
otherwise understood if I were not a resident here, and if I
were not a local minister who has been in on much of the
discussion and planning.
I acknowledged that, yes, we must protect First Amendments rights for all, but closed
by saying
There are still some on the outside who say, “Just let them
come and ignore them.” I want them and others to understand
something of what our Jewish neighbors have been suffering
through all these months.
And that, of course, is my reason for writing this paper.
On July 9, Collin and his gang did what they started out to do. They went to the
south side to Marquette Park with their hatred of blacks, and according to newspaper reports,
police had to break up several impending fights.
Once we heard for sure that they weren’t coming, as Warren put it, “Skokie breathed
a huge sigh of relief.” I don’t know where he was on that Saturday, June 24, but I was at
home, and when I tried to reach my colleagues by phone, I found that most of them had left
town. I think they were waiting to know for sure that nothing was going to happen, and,
after so much tension for so long, they needed to get away.
I was at home, and all day that Saturday, I kept getting phone calls from people who
were en route with busloads of counter-demonstrators. They had heard rumors and called for
more information. Then I got a call from Rev. Richard Schleup, associate pastor at Trinity
Lutheran Church. He and I may well have been the only clergy left in town! We fielded
calls all day, trying to convince people, “They’re not coming. Go home!”
“But I’ve got a bus full of people here!”
“There’s nothing for them to do in Skokie. Turn around and go back!”
The next day, Sunday, June 25, I spoke in our worship service:
“We rejoice today that we are not facing what we thought we would
�be facing this afternoon. The march is called off and we are grateful.
I am sure some would just as soon not mention it again, but I cannot
let this day go by without a brief thought.
“A few of the local clergy met this morning for prayer at the Temple
across the street. We were glad to pray in thanksgiving together, but
all of us have thoughts that we are all still trying to deal with. Skokie
has received a reprieve, but it’s at the expense of the people in
Marquette Park. We cannot kid ourselves that the matter is now
closed, nor can we have no concern for them.”
It really was over. But the effects lived on.
XIII
Mayor Smith later received a plaque for community service from some worthy
organization which I don’t remember. But he refused to accept it unless we members of the
clergy also received the same award. (I put my plaque in a drawer out of sight, because I
didn’t think it really belonged to me. When we moved I must have left it behind. At any
rate, I remember none of the information on it.) But the religious leaders in town had
become something of a support group and sounding board for the Mayor, and by this action
he was trying to convey how vital the clergy had been in the whole 1977-1978 saga. Later
he called on us on other occasions to be a healing and mediating force, such as during a
teachers’ strike late one summer, and our presence continued to be valued in the community.
An interesting sidelight. In November of 1978, Danny Kaye was in town filming
Skokie, a television movie about this whole incident. Kaye was cast in a serious role as a
concentration camp survivor, and a Jewish father who with his family is conflicted about his
feelings around the prospect of Nazis in Skokie. I have a rough draft of a letter I sent him
while he was on location describing that time and trying to convey the role the interfaith
clergy had played. I was disappointed in the finished production on two counts. There was
only one scene in the entire film that showed any participation by religious leaders. And,
though the group obviously consisted of rabbis, priests and ministers, they were all men.
In an interview in The Christian Science Monitor for November 13, 1981, Danny
Kaye looked back on the filming of that movie, and talked about a scene in which he rises in
a town meeting to express his horror at the prospect of seeing Nazis in Skokie. In his words:
“The first day we shot the first scene in a synagogue in
Skokie. I thought there were a group of typical Hollywood
�extras, but then I made my speech about ‘If the Nazis march
here . . .’ and I turned around and saw tears running down the
extra’s cheeks. I thought that for extras they were
inordinately moved . . . until I discovered that every one of
those extras was a survivor of the Holocaust. Every one had a
number tattooed on his arm.”
XIV
From the day of the outdoor worship and the Thanksgiving service that year, I
seemed to have acquired a group of women from the Catholic community and the Jewish
community who kept up with my local involvement in town, and frequently said supportive
things to me. Perhaps they saw me in a role where in their own religious traditions there
were only men. From then on, they frequently talked with me after the Thanksgiving
services and commended whatever I had done. One year my only responsibility was to bring
in the huge Bible and place it on the lectern. Afterwards they were annoyed: “They didn’t let
you say anything!”
Years later, some of those same women were no doubt present that day when the
clergy gathered at the memorial sculpture, now contaminated with Nazi obscenities. As I
stood at the microphone that morning, thanking my Jewish neighbors for everything they had
taught me all those years ago, I concluded with: “We want to assure you that once again we
stand with you, now in this latest trial, as we stood with you ten years ago.”
As I spoke I felt a hand on my right shoulder, and someone from behind me took my
left hand and held it. As I stepped back into place, I found two Jewish women standing with
me.
AFTERWORD
A
In the fall of 1994, when I was about to retire after almost twenty years in active
�ministry in Skokie, I was asked to be the preacher for the community Thanksgiving service.
I used two texts:
Psalm 133:
How very good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters
live together in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the
beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the
collar of his robes.
It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of
Zion. For there the LORD ordained his blessing, life
forevermore.
and Matthew 12:46-50:
While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his
brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him.
Someone told him, “Look, your mother and your brothers are
standing outside, wanting to speak to you." But to the one
who had told him this, Jesus replied, "Who is my mother, and
who are my brothers?" And pointing to his disciples, he said,
"Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the
will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and
mother."
In my sermon I reviewed some of our life together, reminding them of the Passing of
the Peace at that service back in April 1978, and ended with:
I believe God has ordained a blessing on us in this
community, and tonight I thank all of you for the blessing you
have been in my life. I urge you to be sure the good aspects
of living in this village never die off. As Rabbi Weiner used
to remind us, “God is still with us, and God still has work for
us to do.”
When the years ahead bring more change — and they will —
even when serious troubles arise — as no doubt they will —
remember who you are, a child of God, and remember that we
are all together the family of God. “Whoever does the will of
[our] Father in heaven is [our] brother and sister and
mother.”
Continue to support one another and to stand together, for
“How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live
together in unity!” Thanks be to God!
�Brothers and sisters, tonight I close by wishing you: “The
peace of God be with you. Please turn to those around you
and exchange words of peace.” Amen.
B
Some years after I had moved away from Skokie and settled into another community,
I was back on a visit and had a long conversation with Rabbi Marc Berkson, the successor to
Rabbi Weiner at Temple Judea Mizpah.
We were good friends. During those years when we were colleagues, he and I had
worked together in many ways. Whenever one of us was the preacher for the Thanksgiving
service, we always consulted the other about what would be and would not be appropriate.
We taught a brief Bible class together for his congregation and mine that left the participants
eager for more. A few years later we taught another one, this time with one of the local
Catholic priests.
I lamented with Marc about how different it was where I now lived, in a university
town that had a great mix of races and religions, but that seemed not to know how to do
worship together across those lines. The first “interfaith” Thanksgiving service I attended in
my new home turned out to be more Christian than anything else, and I was embarrassed by
it.
Marc and I talked about how fortunate it was to have what we’d had in Skokie, and
what he and his family still appreciated. On a sudden inspiration he enlisted me to speak at a
Friday evening service on my return visit. He wanted me to remind his congregation of the
blessings they enjoyed.
Some months later I did that, and in my talk, “The Way We Were,” I recounted
pieces of our history together, and mentioned several experiences recorded here in these
pages. I concluded by saying:
There’s something very precious in this Village of Skokie,
and I hope you know that. Here I believe we find among our
various faith communities a mutual respect and trust. It’s not
100 percent perfect — we all know that — but it’s certainly
better than in many places around the country, of which my
town is just one example. Now I’m hoping that, from what I
learned here, I can subtly make a difference in that
community. But it will never be quite the same as this. I’m
sure I will continue to miss “the way we were” when I lived
here.
�But you still live here, and this is the way you are. Value it.
Don’t let it grow stale or slip through your fingers. Keep on
building this good community. This is “Holy Ground,” where
all God’s children can grow strong.
And may all that we do, wherever we are, give praise to God!
At the end of the service, I stood with Marc and greeted the members as they left.
They spoke appreciatively about what I’d said, and we shared some other memories. I can
still see one elderly man whom I greeted. He took my hand and gave me a long, steady look,
and almost whispered, “I was there. I remember it all”
So do I. Thanks be to God!
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Attempted Nazi March in Skokie, 1977 and 1978, Digital Collection
Description
An account of the resource
<p>During the late 1970s, a small group of neo-Nazis based in Chicago attempted to hold a rally in the Village of Skokie, Illinois, a community that was known to have a large Jewish population. Local officials resisted the group’s efforts through by passing a series of ordinances aimed at preventing demonstrations or parades by hate groups. The ordinances were ultimately overturned following a series of state and federal lawsuits because they infringed on the group’s First Amendment rights and the neo-Nazis were issued a permit to demonstrate in Skokie. However, instead of facing the growing number of organized counter-demonstrators, the group held rallies in Federal Plaza and in Marquette Park in Chicago. <br /><br />Visit <a title="Attempted Nazi March in Skokie" href="https://skokiehistory.omeka.net/exhibits/show/attempted-nazi-march/timeline">Skokie Public Library's online exhibit</a> to see the events as they unfolded. The library's digital collection, seen here, includes newspaper articles, editorials, recordings from the Skokie Village Board of Trustees meetings, a memoir written by a local clergywoman, and two documentary films.</p>
<p>For further information, you can find more resources in the library. If you have questions or comments send us an <a title="email Skokie Public Library" href="mailto:tellus@skokielibrary.info">email </a>or call us at 847-673-3733.</p>
Relation
A related resource
<h3><a title="Attempted Nazi March in Skokie" href="https://skokiehistory.omeka.net/exhibits/show/attempted-nazi-march/timeline">Attempted Nazi March in Skokie online exhibit</a></h3>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Skokie History
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Skokie Public Library
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Skokie and the Nazi Threat: A Coming Together of Religious Communities in a Time of Crisis
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Koehnline, Phyllis G.
Description
An account of the resource
Reverend Phyllis G. Koehnline's reflections and first-hand account of events surrounding attempted demonstration in Skokie by members of the National Socialist Party of America (Nazis) in the late 1970s.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2000
Subject
The topic of the resource
Demonstrations -- Illinois -- Skokie
National Socialist Party of America
Koehnline, Phyllis G.
Rights Holder
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©Phyllis Koehnline
Rights
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In Copyright http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Identifier
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Koehnline_Memoir.pdf
Language
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eng
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1970s (1970-1979)
Contributor
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Skokie Public Library, Non-Fiction
memoirs