Religious and government leaders gathered Friday to denounce plans by a neo-Nazi group to stage a burning of Jewish books and other texts today in the Minneapolis area.
The Twin Cities-based National Socialist Movement announced the book burning on its Web site, proclaiming it intended to destroy the Talmud and other “anti-White” books.
The Jewish Community Relations Council learned of the group’s plans through its regular monitoring of hate groups, council officials said.
Attorney General Lori Swanson said only a concerted effort by those who support diversity would quell the efforts of neo-Nazis and similar groups. She wanted to participate in that, she said.
“I think it’s important for public officials to stand up and say, in our Minnesota, we don’t tolerate hatred and bigotry,”(In other words we support diversity, unless it comes to diversity of opinion) she said.
Swanson was joined at the gathering by Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders in the library of the Barry Family Campus at the Sabes Jewish Community Center in St. Louis Park(I live in this city. Many people refer to it as St. Jewish park)
Alan Silver, president of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said the choice of today for the book burning was no accident, because it is the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz. The United Nations has declared it International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The National Socialist Movement’s Web site does not specify a location or time for the book burning and a subsequent concert, featuring the band Total War.
The group’s leader, reached by phone at his Hutchinson home, said he would not give out the information.
“It’s a private event,” Jeffrey Schoen said.
Schoen also declined to say how many people belonged to the organization, which has organized rallies during the past year in Madison, Wis.; Orlando, Fla.; and Austin, Texas.
“Basically, we’re burning degenerate books, so anything that’s hateful toward the white race, anything that has to do with homosexuality or anything against our party policy,” Schoen said. “We stand up for white people. We’re the voice of white America.”
Among its Twin Cities activities, the group took credit two years ago for distributing anti-Hmong fliers in Minneapolis after a Hmong-American man killed six white hunters in Wisconsin.
Holocaust survivor Margot DeWilde, 85, of Plymouth, told the gathering that, despite what she endured during the war — including the death of her husband in Auschwitz — she harbored no resentment toward the Nazis and their followers.
“I cannot hate,” DeWilde said. “I’ve always felt that hate falls back on the person that hates … We all have to live together.”
Asked by a reporter whether protesting the book burning could actually give the neo-Nazis more legitimacy, Steve Hunegs of the Jewish Community Relations Council said that’s a risk that must be taken.
“It’s a teaching moment,” said Hunegs, the organization’s executive director. “Even the threat of taking this holy book of Judaism, this interpretation of the Torah, and casting it into flames … is enough to merit a response. I’m not sure you can ever desist in the fact of such hatred.”
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Burn them all!