A Constructive Method of Fighting Hate : * Meeting Holocaust Survivors Might Be Better Lesson Than Jail for Racist Skinheads

Last month’s remarkable meeting between two Holocaust survivors and members of the Fourth Reich Skinheads, a group of self-described racists, was part of a unique and hopeful effort to force members of hate groups to confront their anger. The arrests of the skinheads last summer shocked the region with such allegations as machine-gun peddling to white supremacists out of a quiet Costa Mesa neighborhood, and planned attacks on African Americans, Jews and houses of worship.

The sessions were part of a counseling program designed by Assistant U.S. Atty. Marc R. Greenberg, who had negotiated guilty pleas with two members charged with carrying out bombings and plotting an attack on the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.

For three days in late December, a group of the skinheads who pleaded guilty and others who were not charged heard from Holocaust survivors, went to a jail, met a federal judge and, in Orange County, talked about diversity with a group of students from the American Jewish Committee’s Hands Across the Campus program at Chapman University.

Greenberg put together a program that he hoped would have a more constructive impact on the young skinheads than merely sending the guilty to jail and leaving the others to draw whatever conclusions they might from the prosecution of their friends. With the help of a committee of volunteers, a program was put together aimed at addressing underlying causes of racism.

Not all were moved by their experience, but some apparently were. Nearly half the group said they would like to return to work again with the counselors. Others said they would do anything to avoid jail. Some remained unrepentant.

The encounters were an effort to confront ignorance. If the young people learned something, or gained insight that might change their ways or keep them out of trouble, well and good. As Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal Center, said, “History is full of examples of people who changed the directions of their lives. It’s worth a shot.”