Skokie Spared

Now it is Chicago's turn

"Curiouser and curiouser," Alice might have said. In Chicago last week, a black federal judge, heeding the arguments of a Jewish lawyer, ruled that American Nazi Frank Collin and a handful of brown-shirted followers could hold a rally in Chicago's Marquette Park.

Collin has been seeking permission to demonstrate in the allwhite, working-class neighborhood for more than a year. After being thwarted by the city's requirement of a $60,000 bond to pay for any damage, the self-styled Fuehrer shockingly decided to march instead in Skokie, a heavily Jewish suburb of 66,200 people, including several thousand survivors of Hitler's death camps. Skokie immediately invoked a series of ordinances to stop him, which were all overturned by state and federal courts.

But leaders of the militant Jewish Defense League promised that about 3,500 members would block the march, by force if necessary. Collin and his 90 or so friends had little stomach for that confrontation. Instead, they obtained a ruling from Federal Judge George Leighton that Chicago could not require the bond and had to issue them a permit for a rally on July 9 in Marquette Park, near their headquarters. Said half-Jewish Collin (his Jewish father spent several months in Dachau): "My overall goal was always Marquette Park, where I can speak to my own white people rather than a mob of howling creatures in the streets of Skokie." Collin may find no peace on his home ground either: Black and Jewish leaders have promised to stage counterdemonstrations in Marquette Park on the same day.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.