A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [138]
In Diksmuide, activists from these political movements could make contacts with disreputable neo-Nazis and even skinheads, as well as the new crop of intellectuals that had emerged to say that the Holocaust was a lie that the Jews had foisted on history. In 1978 a group called the Institute for Historical Review was founded in California, offering $50,000 to anyone who could prove that at least one Jew had been gassed in Auschwitz, $25,000 for evidence that Anne Frank's diary wasn't a fake, and $25,000 for a bar of soap made from Jews. They later backed down, saying that this was just a publicity stunt. They also advertised the European Revisionist Tour, which was to visit Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, and Auschwitz, then wind up in Diksmuide for the IJzerbedevaart.
The IJzerbedevaart was a place where the men of thought could recruit the men of action.
24
In Antwerp
IF ASSIMILATION REMAINED A DIFFICULT ISSUE AMONG JEWS in Paris, in Antwerp it was simply a dirty word. But of course, in Antwerp there were always other things to argue about. The official Community had split into two organizations. One described itself as Orthodox. The other insisted it was more Orthodox. The Hasidim did not join either but remained about a dozen small cults centered around their own rabbis and their own small synagogues, often just a room in a building. All of these groups enjoyed good relations with each other. They would occasionally pray at each other's synagogues. They would go to each other's celebrations. Only an expert in Jewish affairs would have been capable of discerning the difference between the two principal “communities.” But whenever a communique from Antwerp Jewry was needed, they would be certain to disagree on the wording.
Wandering through the Jewish neighborhood at sundown, the mutter of minchah, short prayers of the afternoon service, could be heard from buildings and houses on most blocks. Each synagogue had its own atmosphere, often determined by the personality of the religious leader. The Van Den Nestlei, rebuilt in 1954 to replace the ruins, served as the center for one community. It was large and modern, with its white pillars supporting a balcony, modernist stained glass, and a renowned silken-voiced cantor. The other community had restored its old synagogue, farther down along the turreted stoneworks of the train tracks. Past that was a block of ordinary Flemish stone buildings where no prayer was heard, but in one of these houses, down a long, dark tenement corridor, was a room on the right with a high enough ceiling for a small balcony. There a small group of Jews of German origin quietly prayed. This was the Eisenmann Shul, the one the Nazis had never found. The explanation always given was that the Nazis had missed it because these Jews were so quiet when they prayed. While every other synagogue was filled with gossip and chatting, at the Eisenmann Shul there was still a strictly kept rule of silence. It was the kind of German Jewish thing that Irene Runge so disliked.
A Jew looking for a Friday-night service in another European city might go to a Jewish neighborhood, sight a man with a hat or yarmulke, and follow him. It would be more complicated in Antwerp because the streets were full of hatted men, and they headed in twenty different directions, clutching their hats and darting through the train line's dark underpasses of ornate ironwork and tattered posters. Christians stroll to church. Jews always seem to be rushing to synagogue,