Hardship in East Europe Said to Fuel Anti-Semitism

The president of the World Jewish Congress said Monday that economic hardship in Eastern Europe is causing a rise in anti-Semitism.

At a news conference in West Berlin, where the group is holding its first meeting on German soil, President Edgar M. Bronfman said the countries of Eastern Europe are trying to introduce democratic change at a time of economic difficulties and that Jews once again face being singled out for attack.

Referring to anti-Semitic tendencies in such countries as the Soviet Union and East Germany, Bronfman cited attempts to revive “the age-old scapegoat, the Jew,” during economic hard times.

“We don’t like it,” Bronfman told the news conference at the West Berlin Jewish community building. “The only way to fight it is to expose it.”

He said he has received personal assurances from Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze that law enforcement officials will take action against those responsible for anti-Semitic activities.

In the Soviet Union, ultra-right members of the Russian nationalist Pamyat organization have threatened Jews. In East Germany, groups of young skinheads have expressed pro-Nazi sentiments.

Lionel Kopelowitz, head of the European Jewish Congress, said he has also seen signs of anti-Semitism in Romania.

During the Romanian election campaign, the right-wing National Peasants Party has denounced Prime Minister Petre Roman because he is a Jew, and some party members have links to the pro-Nazi Iron Guard of World War II.

The World Jewish Congress was formed in 1936 in Geneva to mobilize Jews and democratic forces to stop Nazi persecution.

The group’s three-day meeting is to end today with a ceremony dedicating a Holocaust memorial at the villa in Berlin’s Wannsee district where Nazi leaders met in January, 1942, to plot their so-called Final Solution to kill Jews worldwide. The ceremony coincides with the anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany.

In a speech to the group Monday, a U.S. Justice Department official said Washington has rejected Austrian President Kurt Waldheim’s repeated requests for a lifting of the ban that keeps him out of the country because of Nazi ties.

Neal M. Sher, head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, said that Waldheim “had engaged in Nazi-sponsored persecution.”

The U.S. government in April, 1987, put Waldheim, an officer in the German army during World War II, on a “watch list” of people denied entry into the country. The ban followed allegations Waldheim was involved in Nazi atrocities. Waldheim has denied wrongdoing.

“It is also well known that Waldheim has tried hard and often to be a removed from the list,” Sher said. “But all such approaches to our government have been rebuffed. He will remain persona non grata. “