Eugene Vertlieb's Dangerous Poem -- Freedom of expression

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Date Posted: 18:03:20 06/29/00 Thu
Author: Ed Reavis and Bill Sammon
Subject: Eugene Vertlieb's Dangerous Poem

Stars and Stripes. May 7, 1996, page 5

TIPTOEING THROUGH ANTI-SEMITISM
Instructor's poem sets off hot dispute at security school

By ED REAVIS and BILL SAMMON Staff writers

GARMISCH, Germany ﷓ "Evil incarnate" is the way Alvin H. Bernstein describes anti﷓Semitism.
Yet as the director of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Bernstein renewed the contract of an instructor who, by Bernstein's own account, published an anti﷓Semitic poem in an ultra nationalist Russian newspaper.(1)

The school also employs another instructor who is being sued by a colleague ﷓ a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp ﷓ for allegedly denying the Holocaust. Bernstein says he is "not indifferent to" anti﷓Semitism, a charge that has haunted the Marshall Center for years. Although he recently wrote that "a long and arduous healing process has taken place" at the school, the controversy over anti﷓Semitism lingers.

For one thing, the continued presence of Eugene Vertlieb ﷓ the professor who wrote the allegedly anti﷓Semitic
poem ﷓ on the faculty creates "an untenable state of affairs" for Jewish students, whose knowledge of the poem is enough to keep them from enrolling in Vertlieb's classes, Bernstein said.

Nonetheless, Bernstein recently renewed Vertlieb's contract, fully aware that it was "the wrong thing to do," he added. Vertlieb declined to comment for this story.

"He's claiming it's not anti﷓Semitic, but it looks pretty anti﷓Semitic to me," said Bernstein, who explained that the poem contained oblique references against Jews. "What interested me the most was where he published it. He published it in a ... publication which had known ties to the far right and the (Russian ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky crowd.)�

When Bernstein learned of the poem, which was published in 1992, he said he summoned Vertlieb to his office and told him: "I'm not going to tolerate any kind of discrimination, anti﷓Semitism or, anti﷓anything. Clean out your office, go off the casern. I'm going to order an investigation on this."

Vertlieb was suspended with pay for two weeks while Bernstein had the poem translated into English. After reading the translation, Vertlieb said it was inaccurate, according to Bernstein.
"I said to him, 'Well, what I'll do is, I'll get several translations and then you can walk me through which is right and which is wrong,' " Bernstein recalled. "But he said to me,"Well, I don't know if I can do that. My English isn't so good.' You know what his degree is in from North Carolina? It's in English.".

Bernstein called this "the height of disingenuousness."

Meanwhile, a Marshall Center investigator found no evidence that Vertlieb had discriminated against Jews in the workplace. The investigator interviewed students who reported that Vertlieb never said anything anti﷓Semitic in class.
"I made the following point to the guy who was doing the investigation: If a guy is writing anti﷓Semitic poetry and he's publishing it out there, he doesn't have to go in and say it in the classroom," Bernstein said. "If I'm a Jewish student and I know this guy is publishing anti﷓Semitic poetry ... that's enough to keep me ﷓from taking his course. And that's an untenable state of affairs."

So Bernstein summoned Military Intelligence investigators from Augsburg. He showed them the poem and told them of Vertlieb�s troubled employment history.

"He had lost several positions because he had threatened his supervisors," said Bernstein, who added that the U.S. government was about to fire Vertlieb in the late 1980s but renewed him instead. "And the question occurred to me: Well, why does he keep getting hired?"

Bernstein said he asked the Military Intelligence investigators if he could get rid of Vertlieb.
"What they said was: 'Can 't do it. And the reason we can't do it is this guy's an American citizen,' " Bernstein said. " 'You're not supposed to spy on Americans. Unless we had overwhelming proof, this would constitute counterintelligence operations against a U.S. citizen.' "

Bernstein said he realized that if he did not renew Vertlieb's contract, Vertlieb would sue the school and probably prevail.
"He would be extremely disgruntled and remain on the faculty forever, and I wouldn't get ﷓him out of here," Bernstein said. "And I literally wrestled with that one. I sat there and I said: This is the wrong thing to do. We should not, on principle, renew people who ought not to be renewed ...
"I think about this all the time," said Bernstein, who nonetheless renewed Vertlieb's contract.

Vertlieb currently is being sued for anti﷓Semitism by professor Michael Checinski, a colleague at the Marshall Center's Institute for Eurasian Studies. Checinski charges that Vertlieb distributed the poem during a Marshall Center student trip to Moscow in 1992.

But the main target of Checinski's suit, which was filed in the German court system in February 1995, is another professor at the institute, Franz Peterson.

"Peterson, an educated man with a diploma, came to me ﷓ to me, who has here the numbers from Auschwitz," said Checinski, motioning to his tattooed left wrist, "to tell me. the Holocaust never happened."

Checinski has published a book detailing the horrors of Auschwitz.
"I had a very loud argument with Peterson in the institute library, which was overheard by several people in the institute," Cliecinskl said. 'That was in 1992. He claimed that maybe several hundred thousand Jews were killed, but that was war ﷓ the other Jews emigrated. He also said Jews used the blood of young Christians to make their unleavened bread.
"I waited and hoped for an﷓ apology from Peterson, who knows that I lost all of my relatives in the Holocaust," Checinski said. "But I waited in vain and decided to take my case to court."

In an interview with �The Stars and Stripes� last month, Peterson said he had no idea he had been named in the suit.
"I find this shocking!" Peterson said. "The allegations are false. Every educated person knows there was a Holocaust.

"Checinski is too emotional, about all this, but I understand him. He has lost all his family in the Holocaust. I myself am a defector from the Soviet Union. I didn't think he was so serious about the debate we had six years ago. It was an academic discussion about whether it was five﷓and﷓a﷓half million Jews or more than six million Jews that were murdered.
"I know he wants a public apology," Peterson said. "I ask: What are his charges against me? If I offended you, explain."
Checinski said he has continued to pursue the case through the German court system because the Marshall Center took no action against Vertlieb and Peterson.

"I've told Bernstein you can fire them in one day," Checinski said. "I begged Dr. Bernstein to force them to apologize."
Bernstein said: "Checinski explicitly and specifically said to me that he was going to deal with this on his own ﷓ through the German courts. He did not ask me: to do anything about it."
Besides, Bernstein said, Checinski provided no documentation that would justify firing Vertlieb and Peterson.

"What he (Checinski) said to me was: 'I'm going to bring the Marshall Center down around your ears. I'm going to destroy this place,' " Bernstein said.
Nine months before Checinski filed his suit, Vertlieb invited Vladimir Bondarenko ﷓ editor. of Zavtra, the newspaper that published Vertlieb's poem ﷓ to lecture at the Marshall Center. Bondarenko has been described by the Anti﷓Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith
as a "xenophobic Russian nationalist" and a "virulently anti﷓Semitic, anti﷓American, right﷓wing Russian extremist.�

Nonetheless, Marshall Center management directed its anger at Checinski, who followed Bondarenko's lecture with one of his own. U.S. Army Col. Michael H. Crutcher, w!io was then commandant of the institute, is sued Checinski a "letter of admonishment" for allegedly
espousing anti﷓Russian discrimination in his lecture.

Five days later, after reviewing a tape of Checinski's lecture, Crutcher acknowledged the lecture was not discriminatory. He rescinded the letter of admonishment and asked Checinski to "please accept my personal apology for the misunderstanding in this matter."
Charges of anti﷓Semitism have dogged the Marshall Center since it was founded in 1993. Prior to that, anti-Semitism plagued the U.S. Army Russian Institute (USARI), which eventually was incorporated into the Marshall Center as one of its departments, the Institute for Eurasian Studies. For example, in January 1991, USARI fired teachers Irene and Lev Yudovich, who
promptly sued in U.S. federal court, alleging anti﷓Semitism.

In December 1993, U.S. District Court Judge James C. Cacheris ruled in favor of the Yudoviches and ordered USARI to pay them $500,000. The judge singled out Maj. John D. Carlson, commander USARI, as being overtly discriminatory.

"In many discrimination cases the court has to draw inferences from the ﷓ evidence," . Cacheris ruled. "It is rare that the court has a smoking gun to illustrate discrimination. In this case, Carlson is a smoking platoon of weaponry illustrating the anti﷓Semitic and anti﷓Russian atmosphere. . . . The record in this case reeks with anti-Semitic﷓﷓and anti﷓Russian feelings."

'The Army did not reprimand Carlson, whose own defense lawyers conceded that he had demonstrated anti-Semitic behavior at USARI. Instead, the Army promoted Carlson to lieutenant colonel and transferred him to the Pentagon.

By the time the federal court ruling was issued, Bernstein had been director of the Marshall Center for about four months. Two months later, the ADL charged that an "atmosphere of discrimination" existed at the center. Bernstein responded by inviting the ADL to the Marshall Center. A team of fact﷓finders spent four days at the school in May 1994.

"Although we found no evidence of intentional anti-Semitism on the part of the Institute's military command, we identified several instances of insensitivity toward Jewish faculty, and observed extremely poor working relations among faculty and between faculty and military," stated the report, which was issued in October 1994.

Bernstein says the Marshall Center has made significant progress toward eliminating anti﷓Semitism at the school. But as long ﷓as people such as Vertlieb and Peterson remain on faculty, anti﷓Semitism will never be completely eradicated from the Marshall Center, according to Checinski.

"Bernstein and management (are). not anti﷓Semitic," Checinski said. "I'm talking about staffers at a lower level spreading this poison, and it's being ignored.

. "That is the danger," Checinski said. "Evil, left with impunity, escalates."

(1) Russian newspaper �Zavtra�

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