The Journal News from White Plains, New York • Page 5

The Nation Rockland Journal-News Tuesday, April 20, 1993 A5 Supreme Court ends civil claims of USS Stark survivors GOP senators offer compromise on jobs measure I It I iIDm 1 Vr rejecting a challenge to a Los Angeles ban on nudity at public beaches. The Stark, a guided-missile frigate, was patrolling in the Per-" sian Gulf during the Iraq-Iran war'? when attacked by Iraqi aircraft May 17, 1987. An F-l Mirage fighter fired r. two Exocet missiles at the Stark in -i what Iraq's government later called a case of mistaken identity. Iraq apologized for the attack and paid more than $27 million in compensation for claims stem-v ming from the 37 deaths.

money was distributed to the dead sailors' beneficiaries. A formal Navy investigation concluded that the damage to the Stark was caused primarily by failures of its captain and watch team. The Navy concluded that rf the Stark's weapons systems were capable of defending against such an attack. The lawsuit at issue was filed in 1990 against General Dynamics I Corp. and 10 other defense con-, tractors.

U.S. District Judge Samuel B. Kent in Galveston, Texas, threw1 The Associated Press WASHINGTON The Supreme Court refused to revive a lawsuit yesterday over the Iraqi air attack against an American ship in which 37 sailors were killed and dozens more injured six years ago. The court let stand rulings that barred surviving USS Stark crewmen and the families of killed sailors from suing defense contractors over allegedly defective equipment aboard the ship. Lower courts had dismissed the lawsuit after ruling that such litigation likely would damage national security by divulging military secrets.

In other matters yesterday, the court: Turned away a challenge to Michigan's program of setting aside 15 percent of all highway-building contracts for companies owned by minorities or women, attacked as unlawful discrimination against companies owned by white men. Agreed to decide whether Utah authorities may prosecute Indians for crimes committed on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in Utah. Refused to recognize a constitutional right to sunbathe naked, Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON In the first sign of compromise from Senate Republicans in their long-running test of wills with President Clinton over his $16 billion economic stimulus package, moderate GOP Sen. Mark 0. Hatfield, yesterday proposed a scaled-down version of between $8 billion and $9 billion.

it was unclear whether Hatfield's alternative provided a way out of the legislative stalemate that has effectively blocked progress on Clinton's overall economic plan. Hatfield's proposal also falls far short of Clinton's compromise offer on Friday to reduce the stimulus spending package by $4 billion to $12.2 billion. At the same time, other Republicans sent mixed signals yesterday on wheth-er'hey would support the Hatfield alternative. The maneuvering came as the White House and Senate Republicans headed for a final showdown this week over the stimulus package, billed by the administration asa way to boost the economy by creating new jobs. I Clinton, in a speech to the Building and Construction Trades Union, launched one of his harshest attacks yet against the GOP leadership, charging that the Republicans who say they oppose the stimulus bill because it would increase the federal deficit are the same politicians who allowed the deficit to soar to record heights under two successive Republican Presidents.

"This is the crowd that had the government for 12 years. They took the deficit from $1 trillion to $4 trillion," chided Clinton. "Have they no shame? How can they say this? Sometimes, I think the secret of success in this town is being able to say the most amazing things with a straight face." "I have compromised, I have held out my hand," added Clinton. "I think it's time for somebody to reach back across the divide of party politics and put the American people first." Still, the administration's chances of getting the entire package passed seemed to dwindle even further yesterday, when Congress returned from its Easter recess. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, and Minority Leader Robert Dole, agreed to resolve the stimu- The Associated Press BILL DEBATE: Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, left, talks to Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole about President Clinton's jobs bill.

lus issue this week in effect losses in the face of the Republi- saying they would do so regardless can filibuster and move on to of the outcome. other issues although another That signaled that the Demo- vote to end the filibuster was crats may be ready to cut their scheduled for tomorrow morning. Jewish rescuers of Holocaust victims are forgotten heroes Yes, even a ram ca a saie8 i i t. 1j Our sale is quite special. It's a homeowner loan sale.

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Our rates are lower than they've ever Homeowner Loan Specialist The Washington Post WASHINGTON In the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum opening here this week, a long white wall displays the names of about 10,000 heroes, rescuers of Jews during the Second World War. None of them is Jewish. That is not because there were no Jewish rescuers. Francoise Bram, of Chevy Chase, whose parents died in Auschwitz, knows two of them well: Moussa and Odette Abadi, who saved Bram, he- sister and 525 other children in France.

Two of their assistants died, and Odette was caught, tortured and sent to a concentration camp, which she survived. The Catholic bishop who helped them was honored last year; the Abadis, wbo planned and ran the network, arl largely unknown. Abadis have always shunned publicity. "We were not heroes," Moussa Abadi protested softly in a telephone interview from the couple's apartment in Paris. "We would have been ashamed of ourselves if we had not done it." iBut others, particularly those they saved, say it's time they and the many other Jewish rescuers were honored formally, as Christian and other non-Jewish rescuers have been.

"They saved all our lives, and no one knows the story," said Bram, who was given false papers and hidden in Catholic schools during the war. Jewish rescuers are "totally Rocklanders may be new By Steve Lieberman Staff Writer Hyde shudders at the thought of the Bosnian-Muslims being "ethnically cleansed" and caged behind barbed-wired camps by some Serbs in the former Yugoslavia. Like other survivors of Nazi Germany's Holocaust during World War II, 'the Ramapo resident remembers the 6 million Jews murdered for simply being Jews. "I find the idea of ethnic cleansing so highly offensive," Hyde said. "I the insanity of the 'Final Solution' and I wonder what we did learn from the Holocaust history.

I see the world has learned very little." Nyack NAACP President Frances Pratt also sees a parallel between the killing of civilians in camps and in towns and Adolf Hitler's attempted genocide of the Jews during World War II. "Somewhere people have again just lost their sense of humanity," Pratt said. "This is so real. We have become too complacent and too self-centered and have lost our ability to care." civil wars are a vivid re-mihder of the Holocaust, just 55 years later, Hyde said. The world including the United States looked the other way then when Jews were singled out and may be doing the same thing now.

'Arnold Rist, an Army veteran Rockland Journal-News bairn Today's question What are your personal reflections on the Holocaust? Call: 578-2435, Line open until 7 p.m. today. You must leave name, number and home community left out of the history books," said Samuel Oliner, a Holocaust survivor and university professor who is now writing a book on the subject. "They ought to be there, to dispel the myth of Jewish passivity." He estimates there were "half a million to a million" Jewish rescuers, "but it's hard to be accurate about numbers. Many rescuers, and those they saved, eventually perished." Why is there no monument to Jews who saved Jews? "It's a very poignant question," said Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and memorialist.

"I think we should do something. It's absolutely necessary to recognize them for the heroes they are." say holocaust who helped liberate the German concentration camps with the Army 20th Armored Division, sees the situation as the world ignoring its history. He has been an educator for 36 years. "I think of what's happening in Bosnia and the poor kids there, the mothers," Rist said. "These are people who have done nothing but to live and they're being shelled, shot, and bombed.

What's changed?" Sulia Rubin, a Polish Jewish partisan who fought the Nazis, remem-bers that the Yugoslavian government under the Nazis especially under an independent Croatian state sided with the Nazis during World War II. Sixty thousand of Yugoslavia's estimated 76,000 Jews were killed. Rubin said her hero was Josip Broz later known as Marshall Tito a Serb who led a partisan group that helped overthrow the Nazi-run government. Tito served as Yugoslavia's Communist Party leader from 1945 to 1980. When discussing the tragedy in the former Yugoslavia, Hyde, a longtime East Ramapo school board official, notes some people say Jews talk too much about the Holocaust.

"We really have not talked enough about it," she said. "We cannot afford not to continue. We have to try to at least have our young people learn a lesson from the tragedy of the Holocaust." lets you borrow up to $50,000. For larger amounts or a line hN. credit, ask about our other homeowner loans.

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