Kesher Talk

Jews in Arnold Schwarzenegger's Austrian hometown said Monday that allegations the movie star-turned-California gubernatorial candidate ever professed admiration for Adolf Hitler are ludicrous. "It's just election propaganda," said Feridoun Djavid, a leading member of Graz's Jewish community.

Others gathering in the community center between Yom Kippur prayer services told The Associated Press they are convinced that Schwarzenegger's opposition to anti-Semitism has always been firm and genuine.

Schwarzenegger, the front-runner in Tuesday's California recall election, struggled last week to counter allegations he once expressed admiration for Hitler's rise to power from humble beginnings.

Schwarzenegger, a Republican who became a U.S. citizen in 1984, has said he did not remember making the remarks during the 1975 filming of "Pumping Iron," the bodybuilding documentary that launched his film career. He also called the Nazi leader a "disgusting villain."

Over the years, Schwarzenegger has given generously to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Holocaust memorial group, and he even paid to have it investigate his father's past.

Last year, the center determined that his father, Gustav, was a volunteer member of Hitler's notorious brown-shirted Nazi storm troopers.

The president of the Jewish community in Graz -- the southern Austrian city where Schwarzenegger began his bodybuilding career as a teen -- said community members find the allegation of Schwarzenegger's admiration for Hitler ridiculous.

"No one took it seriously," Gerald Sonnenschein said while leading a reporter through the building that houses a modern, glass-domed synagogue on the banks of the Mur River.

"I know that he has always been pro-Jewish. He personally wrote me to congratulate me on becoming president" three years ago. "And he said he would visit the synagogue on his next visit to Graz."

Sonnenschein also said Schwarzenegger asked the community to send him a book it published about the Jewish history of Graz, located just a few miles from Schwarzenegger's boyhood home in the village of Thal.

On Saturday, Schwarzenegger's former trainer, Kurt Marnul, said the former bodybuilder was "filled with rage against the Nazi regime" and participated at least twice in organized disruptions of neo-Nazi gatherings in Graz during the 1960s.

Many from this area view Schwarzenegger as a humanitarian. They cite not only his support for the Simon Wiesenthal Center but also his work promoting the Special Olympics and his donations to a church in his home village.

"He is a very decent person," said 79-year-old Berthold Kaufmann, adding that allegations of anti-Semitism were nothing but "slander."

"And that is the general opinion here."

posted by William @ 10/07/2003 02:04:01 PM