JDL Wants to Name Street for Hero of Holocaust

The Jewish Defense League is lobbying to have a Los Angeles street renamed in honor of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish envoy who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi death camps and vanished after falling into Soviet hands toward the end of World War II.

“By this gesture, everybody will know the name of Wallenberg,” said Irv Rubin, national director of the group, whose Los Angeles office is in the San Fernando Valley.

But the league, a maverick organization whose demonstrations against anti-Semitism have often erupted into fights, is in for an uphill struggle because city officials are reluctant to rename the street, Fairfax Avenue, one of the city’s north-south arteries.

‘Pick Another Street’

Several merchants along Fairfax Avenue, a center of the city’s Jewish community, also said the proposal would only cause confusion.

“It’s good to remember Wallenberg because he was a really great person, but on the other hand I’m not happy about changing from Fairfax Sports Cars to Wallenberg Sports Cars,” said Steve Hajdu, proprietor of two car lots near Fairfax Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard.

“Fairfax is Fairfax,” said Al Canter, manager of Canter’s Fairfax Restaurant, Delicatessen and Bakery. “It’s a nice gesture. I wish they could have picked another street, that’s all.”

Support Questioned

“My gut reaction is that the people of this neighborhood wouldn’t support such a change,” said Dave Tuttle, executive director of Vitalize Fairfax, a nonprofit organization that is about to launch a project to spruce up storefronts and plant palm trees along the avenue.

“This is something the JDL came up with and is using as a way to further publicize their activities, but there is hardly a swelling of opinion at the grass roots,” Tuttle said.

Rubin said he is “not 100% opposed to alternatives” to the Fairfax Avenue proposal.

But an obstacle to any such tribute to Wallenberg may come from county guidelines for street names, which rule out honoring living persons. The Soviets reported in 1957 that Wallenberg had died in 1947, but some people believe he is alive. They have mounted an effort to win his release, based on reports of sightings in prison camps and mental hospitals as recently as 1965. If he is alive, Wallenberg would be 73.

Even if the renaming proposal falls through, the idea of honoring Wallenberg or Holocaust victims may come to fruition elsewhere, said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, whose district includes the Fairfax area.

“It would be appropriate to do something,” Yaroslavsky said, “but whether Fairfax is it, or some other street or intersection, is another question. The community will have a lot of input.”

Rubin, who will not say where in the Valley the JDL has its headquarters--although it has a Reseda phone number--said the organization has gathered nearly 500 signatures supporting the name change. He said he plans to submit them to City Council in coming weeks.

On Its Own

The league did not coordinate its effort with the Jewish Federation Council, an umbrella organization representing nearly 500 groups in the city, according to Steven F. Windmueller, the federation’s community relations director. He said the organization favors honoring Wallenberg but it has yet to decide on a good place to do it.

“I’ve been led to believe the chance of Fairfax Avenue being changed is most unlikely,” Windmueller said. “As a result, it will require some effort to find a site that’s acceptable to people living in the neighborhood, to the city and to the Jewish community.”

Wallenberg, a Lutheran, went to Hungary after being recruited by Swedish Jews to aid the efforts of the American War Refugee Board in Hungary, where a pro-Nazi regime was cooperating with the Nazi extermination program.

Saved Thousands

Using Swedish documents, he saved about 20,000 Jews by extending to them the protection of his government. He is also credited with persuading a German officer not to carry out a plan to wipe out 70,000 people in the Budapest ghetto.

Wallenberg was arrested when the Soviet army entered the Hungarian capital in 1945.

The Jewish Defense League was founded in 1968 by Rabbi Meir Kahane, now a member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Kahane has been condemned by his Knesset colleagues as a racist because of his anti-Arab statements.