In January 1961, George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party, announced that he was coming to Boston to picket the premiere of Otto Preminger's "Exodus."
I was then editor of the Jewish Times, a small weekly that tried (unsuccessfully) to compete with the Jewish Advocate. As soon as I got the news, I prepared a short article for my front page saying only that Rockwell was going to picket the movie theater that weekend. That was a Tuesday.
When I started to make up the paper, the publisher, James Kahn, looked over my shoulder, saw the Rockwell item, and said, "Get that out of my paper. I'm not going to give that scum any publicity." My paper went to the printer without the item. (The Jewish Advocate did not have a word about Rockwell, either.)
Later that week, there was a meeting of the Jewish Community Relations Board and, although Rockwell was not on the agenda, one spaker after another agreed that the Jewish community should give Rockwell the silent treatment. But Israel Arbeiter, president of the Association of Bergen-Belsen Survivors, stood up and made an impassioned speech opposing this policy and said, "This time, we must fight the Nazis." He was supported only by the president of the Bonds for Israel Organization, whose name I can no longer remember.
That evening, Jerry Williams, a talk-show host on station WMEX, urged everyone to meet in front of the theater to "welcome" Rockwell to Boston. He had not got the official word from the Kehillah.
On the day of the premiere, Tremont Street was filled with people. Arbeiter showed up in his striped KZ uniform. The city councilor from Roxbury's Ward 14, Julius Ansell, had got out the word in his ward and his people were there, too, with Julie directing them to take their places in front of the movie theater. Soon, the side streets were also blocked from curb to curb.
I had my camera, and took pictures of the well-behaved crowd. Suddenly, Rockwell emerged from a building across the street from the theater -- in full Nazi regalia -- and was immediately escorted by Boston police into the very theater he had come to picket. The police said it was for his own protection.
On Monday, I rushed to have my photos developed and started writing a story for my paper. Kahn would allow only a picture of the marquee, "EXODUS." No people, not
even Ansell or Arbeiter.
He also cut my story to ribbons, so that in the end it appeared to say that the people of Boston (and most of the protesters were probably not Jewish) had had a party on Tremont Street.
When I got home, I wrote a piece for the Reconstructionist, "The Kehilla and the Nazi." I wrote a copy of it for the Tel Aviv daily, Herut, and air-mailed it.
When Kahn saw the Reconstructionist a couple of months later, he called me aside to say: "Don't you ever write another article mentioning this newspaper." I told Kahn it was not going to happen and gave him a month's notice, saying I was going to work on the Celina, Ohio, Daily Standard, a newspaper where news was not thrown into the garbage.
P.S. My not beloved step-father, a psychiatrist, aided the West German consulate in assessing the mental health of Holocaust survivors. One day, he told me indignantly how Israel Arbeiter had tried to get money out of the Kraut treasury to which he was not entitled. I exploded. "Not entitled? Was he in Bergen-Belsen for a vacation?"
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Stephen G. Esrati,of Dayton, OH, is the author of "The Tenth Prayer: A Novel of Israel" and “Comrades, Avenge Us".
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