Flap Over Flag Unfurls

With its faux rustic buildings and molded cobblestone walkways, Huntington Beach’s Old World Village is meant to evoke the quaintness of a Bavarian town, but darker aspects of German history just keep coming up.

From the past presence of Nazi sympathizers to its controversial German developer, this shopping and housing complex near the San Diego Freeway has had more than a mall’s fair share of controversy.

In the latest incident, a Jewish store owner and her family have accused fellow merchants of anti-Semitism. Michele Weiss hoisted the Israeli flag three weeks ago at the mall entrance to celebrate the Jewish high holy days, she said. The village board of directors took it down, saying Weiss didn’t get permission before flying the flag.

Weiss, who runs Michele’s Corner, a crafts shop, said she did ask permission to put up the flag but that she got no answer from the board.

Weiss said her family has endured slights and slurs since they moved to the Village in 1986. The flag incident is the last straw.

“When my family moved here, our friends said, ‘What are you doing in a German village?’ ” said Weiss, 32, who lives in the village with her parents in an apartment above a nearby vacant store they hope to rent to a tenant. “I joked that somebody has to keep an eye on them, so it might as well be us.”

But it isn’t a joke anymore, she said.

Village officials and other shop owners aren’t laughing either. They deny the accusation of anti-Semitism and that Weiss sought permission to put up the flag. They said they have clashed with her on several business matters, including her outside table displays, which, they contend, violate association standards.

“I wouldn’t personally have a problem with them putting up the flag, but they need to do things by the regulations,” said Bern Bischof, a board member whose father built Old World Village 23 years ago. “I don’t understand why an issue is even being made of this.”

But the flag has become an issue in the context of the place’s controversial past.

In a 1986 court battle between developer Josef Bischof and other shop owners, one merchant accused the German-born Bischof of harassing her by singing Nazi songs late into the night in front of her window. The dispute was actually over whether Bischof, whose family also owns a restaurant in the mall, was underestimating the square-footage of his property to pay less in assessment fees. A judge ruled against Bischof, and he was ordered to pay $2.4 million.

Three years later, the Village was again in the news after an anti-Semitic group rented a hall from the elder Bischof to hold their annual meeting. The Institute for Historical Review, which claims the Holocaust never happened, was turned down at three local hotels before landing at Old World Village. It touched off protests by other shop owners, including the Weisses, who hung a Israeli flag on their balcony in protest. It was the same flag Weiss flew last month.

And in 1992, dozens of Nazi sympathizers met at the Bischofs’ Old World German Restaurant to celebrate Hitler’s April 20 birthday.

“What could we do? Throw them out?” asked Cyndie Bischof, Josef Bischof’s 24-year-old daughter and a manager at the restaurant. “We would get a lawsuit for discrimination.”

She said her family and the waitresses were caught off guard in the 1992 incident, when the patrons displayed Nazi paraphernalia and began saluting Hitler.

“Now, we make sure to ask what the reservation is for [if it is on April 20],” she said. “But this is a free country, and they have a right to their opinions.”

The Bischofs said they don’t welcome Nazis to their restaurant or subscribe to their views about the Holocaust, but they resent being told who they can, and cannot, cater to.

“There were a lot of Jewish people who didn’t go to concentration camps,” said Dolores Bischof, the 67-year-old family matriarch. “Why do they always have to talk about the Holocaust?”

She said she was born in the United States to a German mother and an English father, and that her family lived in Germany during World War II.

Dolores and Cyndie Bischof said Josef Bischof has been vilified for being outspoken. Three years ago, he triggered another controversy when he suggested that Santa Barbara County supervisors should receive the “Auschwitz treatment” for restricting development on land he owned in the area.

“He is so frustrated,” said Cyndie Bischof, explaining why her father didn’t want to be interviewed over the latest incident. “It is always the same thing; it is always the same issue.”

Other merchants, too, said they are tired of being in the spotlight, and that the village’s intermittent reputation as a Nazi haven has been overblown by news media accounts of isolated incidents.

“We are all struggling to make a living here and don’t need the controversy,” said Catherine Brisson, a 22-year-resident who owns a French pottery store.

Sandy Fiske, owner of the Nutrition Parlor, agreed. “It is a neighborhood problem that has been blown way out of proportion.”

Weiss, standing among the handcrafted quilts and candles in her shop, can’t shake the feeling she has been the target of prejudice over the years. As an example, she said fellow merchants shopping in her store ask for “Jewish prices.”

Yet when a dispute arose between her mother, Patricia Weiss, and a neighbor, she acknowledged that her mother told the German woman: “Don’t act like such a Nazi.”

Weiss said she didn’t intend to defy anyone with her flag, simply display her pride in her heritage when she raised the Star of David banner Sept. 24 in anticipation of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year.

There are three poles about 10 feet high at the entrance of Old World Village. Two of them can hold two flags each, and an assortment of international flags are rotated routinely on them. Weiss placed hers in an empty slot above an Irish flag, she said.

Village board members took it down three days later. Weiss threatened to call the police and report her flag stolen. Amid the quarrel, the board held an emergency meeting on Oct. 6. There, they decided to take all the flags down except the one on the center pole, the American flag.