Gov. Tells of Need to ‘Promote Tolerance’

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose father fought on the side of the Nazis in the Second World War, bent down in his black yarmulke and laid a wreath atop a stone slab covering the ashes of Holocaust victims, as part of a somber tribute Sunday to a hilltop complex devoted to the memory of 6 million slain Jews.

Schwarzenegger’s visit to the darkened Hall of Remembrance at the Yad Vashem center capped an emotional day during which the Austria-born governor repudiated the parts of his heritage that gave rise to war crimes and suffering.

“I was born in Austria, a country that is beautiful and I love it,” Schwarzenegger told an audience of about 800 people at a separate dedication Sunday for a planned museum of tolerance. “But a place where intolerance and ignorance led to atrocities and heartache. Because of that, I want to do whatever I can to promote tolerance around the world.”

In meetings with political leaders and visits to touchstones of Israeli culture, the governor sought to cement a public perception that he is an unwavering friend of the Jews. Schwarzenegger visited Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Sunday morning, using a joint public appearance in the minister’s headquarters to praise the Israeli national basketball team’s victory the night before in the European League basketball championship.

Schwarzenegger later helped dedicate the tolerance museum. He then toured Yad Vashem and ended the night at a banquet in the King David Hotel, where he spoke of having donated for several years a portion of his multimillion-dollar movie earnings to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group headquartered in Los Angeles that is building the museum.

“No other nation in the Middle East is declaring so clearly and so visibly that the future can be a place of tolerance and mutual respect,” the governor said in an eight-minute speech at the ceremony for the Wiesenthal museum.

The governor’s commitment to tolerance emerged as one of the searing questions of the recall campaign. Charges surfaced that Schwarzenegger in the 1970s had praised Hitler’s speaking skills and frequently played Nazi marching tunes. Schwarzenegger countered that he loathed Hitler.

By making Israel his first foreign stop as governor, he sought to defuse lingering concerns about his loyalties, according to political analysts and historians.

Watching Schwarzenegger at the museum dedication, Nathan Schipper, a 37-year-old Los Angeles resident who was visiting the country, said: “The fact that he’s here shows that he’s making an effort to be a friend of the Jewish people. And the sins of the fathers are not visited upon the sons. He’s doing this. He’s a friend of the Jewish people. And I think this is a sign of it.”

Not everyone was impressed. Two hecklers interrupted Schwarzenegger as he began his speech at the museum dedication. One was punched by people in the crowd, and both were pushed by security guards. But as guards hovered, the hecklers were allowed to stay and listen.

Though he commands attention wherever he goes, Schwarzenegger’s visit has not dominated the news here. It’s a busy time. On Sunday, exit polls showed that Sharon’s Likud Party had rejected his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. A mother and her four children were shot to death in their car by terrorists in Gaza. At Schwarzenegger’s events, several politicians denounced the killings.

Mixing with foreign leaders, Schwarzenegger is relying on an improvisational style. Aides said he was not likely to take a position on thorny Israeli political matters. Yet the governor did just that in his appearance with Sharon. Schwarzenegger said he had no advice to give the prime minister on the withdrawal plan.

Then he endorsed it.

He said, “I hope the election will turn out the way the basketball turned out yesterday with a great victory.” Peppered with criticism from the Arab world that he was spending too much time listening to Israeli concerns, Schwarzenegger’s office abruptly announced that he would lunch with Jordan’s King Abdullah II today.

“As you know, you will always find criticism, no matter what you do,” Schwarzenegger said at the Sharon event. He then noted that he was setting aside time to meet with a “friend,” King Abdullah.

Speaking in Hebrew, Sharon said he believed the trip would improve relations between Israel and California. And he welcomed Schwarzenegger to Jerusalem -- “the eternal capital for the Jewish people for 3,000 years.”

Part of the meeting with Sharon took place in the Cabinet room -- at a long table with place cards for assorted aides. Among those with a reserved seat was Paul Wachter, the governor’s personal financial advisor who flew in with him.

The idea for the 2 1/2-day Israel trip took shape more than a year ago, before Schwarzenegger had entered the recall campaign. Schwarzenegger had been helping raise money for the Wiesenthal museum. He is a longtime donor to the center, and the founder -- Rabbi Marvin Hier -- asked him to come to the groundbreaking.

The two have been friends for 20 years. At the banquet Sunday, each offered a light take on the origin of Schwarzenegger’s stock movie phrases. Hier said the lines are rooted in Jewish scripture; Schwarzenegger said the inspiration was Hier.

“Remember 20 years ago? I said what can I do for you?” Schwarzenegger recalled. “And you said, ‘I need a big donation.’ I said, ‘OK, I’ll give you $100,000.’ You said, ‘That’s all?’ I said, ‘That’s all.’ You said, ‘I’ll be back.’ ”

Schwarzenegger said he had dedicated a portion of his movie earnings to the center.

“And in those days I still made below $10-million salary in the movies,” he told guests at the banquet. “So I said, ‘Why don’t we make an arrangement that a certain percentage of my income from movies” would go to the center. “And this is exactly what we did ever since then.”

Schwarzenegger invited the center to look into his father’s background. Gustav Schwarzenegger joined the Nazi “brownshirts” on May 1, 1939, about six months after the storm troopers helped set off Kristallnacht -- the night of broken glass -- according to Austrian state archives reviewed by The Times.

That was when Jewish interests were attacked in Germany and Austria and thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps.

The center concluded that the governor’s father had not committed any war crimes.

Schwarzenegger described himself as part of a new generation that wants to atone for ancestors’ misdeeds.

“I think to myself, if only those who were crammed into the dark boxcars and crowded bunks could have glimpsed what we’re doing here today,” he said at the museum ceremony. “If only those in the camps could know that we have them in our hearts a half-century later and that our hearts are not hardened -- that they’re still opened.” The $200-million museum, scheduled for completion in 2007, is a symbol of Israel’s “optimistic future,” Schwarzenegger said.

“Today the world should know that we’re not building a bunker,” he said. “We’re building something that breathes with life, just as God breathed life into us.” Various interests have sought to derail the project. Yad Vashem had quietly lobbied to scuttle the museum, seeing it as competition. The center has promised to avoid mention of the Holocaust in deference to Yad Vashem.

Muslim religious authorities in Jerusalem have also raised objections. They contend that an undetermined number of Muslim graves will be disturbed as a result. A number of centuries-old Muslim graves, some marked and some unmarked, are scattered throughout the park in central Jerusalem that sits near the planned museum.

Muslim officials say they are almost certain that more graves lie beneath the building site itself, which is covered by a parking lot and garage built about 20 years ago, and a seedy square housing a peddlers’ market.

Schwarzenegger did not mention the protests. He expressed complete confidence in Hier to carry out the project. Indeed, Hier stood with him as he laid the wreath at Yad Vashem. The floor was inscribed with the names of Nazi death camps. By custom, the person who sets the wreath down doesn’t speak. So the governor quietly carried the wreath to the stone slab. He laid it down, then stood up slowly, hands clasped in front of him. He looked at the wreath for a few extra beats -- ashes buried below -- then left.

*

Special correspondent Maher Abdulkhater in Jerusalem contributed to this article.