A ‘love letter’ from the Dark Side – Neo-Nazis and Holocaust Denial

“Jerry Klinger is a despicable peddler of hate. He is one of those Jews who has made it his life’s mission to tell grizzly fairy tales of the Holocaust Hoax and dehumanizing tales of Germans.”

Most of the “Love Letters” from the Dark Side I have received are centered on my efforts to preserve the memory of the tragic Leo Frank lynching in Georgia, August 17, 1915.  Frank had been lynched by an enraged White Mob in Marietta, Georgia after his death sentence had been overridden by Georgia Governor Frank Slaton.  Slaton was extremely uncomfortable with the trial, the evidence and the anti-Semitically charged environment that convicted Frank on circumstantial evidence, at best, of the assault and murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan. Leo Frank had been the President of the Atlanta Chapter of B’nai B’rith in 1912.

The recently organized Knights of Mary Phagan took justice into their own hands.  Frank was kidnapped from the State prison in Milledgeville, brought to Marietta and lynched.

As head of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation (JASHP), when I learned the spot of the Frank lynching horror, the very tree he was hung from, was to be converted into an offramp for the new highway, action was needed. History and memory would be lost.  There already was a cottage industry of anti-Semites asserting the absolute guilt of Leo Frank, the Jew.

Under Georgia law, if a Georgia Historical Society roadside marker was in place at a historic site and the site was to be redeveloped, the marker had to be “appropriately” replaced after redevelopment.  In other words, JASHP funded a Georgia Historical marker at the lynching site telling the story, preserving the memory.

The site was redeveloped and last year the marker was, in a significant ceremony, replaced near the lynching site. The State of Georgia designated the site as the “Leo Frank Memorial.”

JASHP funded and placed at the same location the first national anti-lynching Memorial in the United States. It recognized over 570 Georgians who were victims of lynch law.  Nationally, documentation exists for over 5,500 men and women, of whom 2/3 were Black Americans, between 1870 -1940 were lynching victims. Lynching is a form of societal terrorism.

Early October of this year, I was approached, as President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, to look into the Paul Eilert burial in Ft. Douglas, Utah outside of Salt Lake City.  A Jewish university professor was incensed by the blatant symbology of hatred that was permitted in a U.S. Military Cemetery.

I wrote a story about what I had learned, “The Swastika in a U.S. Military Cemetery.”

Paul Eilert, the man buried at the site, died in Salt Lake City from Cancer in 1944.  He was a German POW.  His gravestone is the most unusual of all German POW burials in the U.S. His is comparatively large, prominent, and the only one to have the Knight’s Cross (Iron Cross) carved into the stone as a point of great honor.  The Swastika is clearly evident on his stone in the middle of the Knight’s Cross.

Research, which is still ongoing, indicates that Paul Eilert is a mystery.  There is no record of a Paul Eilert ever having been awarded the Knight’s Cross.  Research, so far, has failed to turn up any reason for his award or even if the name Paul Eilert was, in fact, his real name.  The story of Paul Eilert is a mystery.

Demanding memory is the third rail to anti-Semites, Neo-Nazis, and Holocaust Deniers.  Broaching the subject of the Swastika in the cemetery was enough to bring them up from their Dark Places.

Few Jews have heard about Leo Frank, and even fewer Jews are interested in the meaning of his memory.  Jews speak often about Holocaust memory, but fewer and fewer young Jews go to Yom HaShoah programs.  Some Jews are even outraged when their children are taught about the Holocaust in Hebrew school. The Rabbis have refused to create even a single Halachically mandated Holocaust prayer.

November 7, The Buchenwald Scientific Review Commission along with the Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial leadership in Germany will be voting on JASHP’s proposed American Liberators’ Memorial.  JASHP is funding the Memorial.

April 2020 is the 75^th anniversary of the Camp’s liberation by American forces, the 3^rd army under General Patton.  There has never been a memorial honoring the American liberators.  The proposal has touched the third rail in Buchenwald.

American Ambassador Richard Grenell, a Trump appointee, is strongly supporting the Memorial effort.  The Veterans of Foreign Wars, (U.S.) and others are strongly supporting the Memorial effort.  No major Jewish organization has signed on to the Memorial effort. The Communists have come out attacking JASHP and the Memorial effort.

What seemed obvious and right, and was brought forward by a Jewish organization, can not even be guessed at as to the outcome of the vote.

When hatred exists, Jews must not be silent. Too many Jews are.