Countywide : Halt Horrors in Bosnia, U.S. Urged

Murira Sokolovich’s tears most eloquently reflected the message of a conference called by Orange County Jewish and Muslim organizations Thursday to express horror over the state of affairs in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

For 10 days Sokolovich has not been able to telephone her 93-year-old mother in strife-torn Sarajavo. The last time they spoke, her mother said she had no water or food and pleaded for help.

Sokolovich’s two sons were among those at the press conference who urged the United States and United Nations to use their influence to determine the nature and extent of the alleged atrocities in the former Yugoslavia and to stop them.

The Jewish Federation of Orange County was co-host to the press conference, held at federation headquarters in Tustin, with the Islamic Society of Orange County. Speakers included Jewish Federation Vice President Jerry Werksman, Islamic Society Director Muzammili Siddiqi and George Grosse of the Academy of Judaic, Christian and Islamic Studies.

Jewish Federation President William Shane said the event was meant “to focus attention on the horrors of the reported death camps in what was Yugoslavia and to ask that both the United States and the United Nations make an even more concentrated effort to determine the facts and to remedy the situation by whatever means necessary.”

Shane added, “The Islamic group was there because, as reported, so many of the people who are being persecuted are Moslems, and the Jews were there both as a show of support and as a reminder of what took place 50 years ago.”

Chelle Friedman, director of the federation’s community relations council, said today’s events trigger painful memories of the Holocaust. “For many in the Jewish community it is like reading the newspapers of the 1940s,” she said.

Concern about what is going on in Bosnia has formed a new groundswell of understanding between Orange County’s approximately 90,000 Jews and 30,000 Muslims. Said Friedman: “I think this has opened new roads of conversation and dialogue between our two communities.”

Friedman said the Jewish Federation of Orange County today will distribute a statement she described as an “action alert” to all of the county’s synagogues, asking Jews to write and call the President, the U.S. State Department and the secretary-general of the United Nations, urging that the United Nations take action in Bosnia to re-establish peace.