Show Me the Money - 1997-01-25
Show Me the Money January 25, 1997,
Two weeks ago, 34 show-business heavies, ranging from Goldie Hawn, Dustin Hoffman and Oliver Stone to studio heads, signed a $56,000 full-page ad in The International Herald Tribune scolding Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany for his Government's "shameful pattern of organized persecution" of the Church of Scientology. Drawing parallels between today's Germany and Nazi Germany, the "open letter" ominously added: "In the 1930's, it was the Jews. Today it is the Scientologists."
In a word -- Oy! This proclamation has provoked outrage not only from German officialdom but from Jewish leaders like Ignatz Bubis, president of Germany's Central Council of Jews, who called it "insulting to the memory of the $(Holocaust's$) victims." Back home, Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League also protested Hollywood's missive as "ludicrous" and "an affront" to the six million dead. "Even after 'Schindler's List,' they're totally ignorant," says Mr. Foxman of the ad's participants.