The exact number of survivors who lived in Skokie at the time remains disputed, but current mayor George Van Dusen told ABC News that it had "the largest number of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel," a refrain repeated in much of the reporting about Skokie both at the time and in the years since.
The most widely reported estimate was that there were 7, survivors in Skokie in and , according to the Illinois Holocaust Museum. It was because of the large number of Holocaust survivors that American neo-Nazi Frank Collin reportedly chose Skokie as the location for his march.
Collin was the leader of the National Socialist Party of America and in , he decided that his group was going to use their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly to march in Skokie and make their voices heard.
The thought that Nazis could be goose-stepping down a major street in an American city was something that caught everybody's attention," he added. Kenneth Jacobson is the deputy national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Jacobson said that many saw the threat of a Nazi march as a "psychological assault on the Holocaust survivors.
Goldberger said he saw the case as one that posed a threat to constitutional liberties if it weren't defended. Some board members of the ACLU resigned, Goldberger said, and members from a different legal group "came to our office with ball bats at one point. Taking the case "was not a fun decision, but I really believed and still believe that the First Amendment was core to a democracy," Goldberger explained. A county court originally issued an injunction banning the marchers from wearing Nazi uniforms or swastikas at a demonstration in Skokie, then the state supreme court and appellate court refused to allow an appeal or overturn the injunction.
Finally, the U. Supreme Court weighed in, saying that because First Amendment rights were at stake, the lower courts in Illinois should have implemented strict procedural safeguards, such as an expedited appeal, and had to take another look back at the case. The public attention -- and outcry -- about the case turned it into a famous one in legal circles, said Gene Policinski, the president of the Freedom Forum Institute who also leads its First Amendment Center.
Later, the Illinois courts narrowed the injunction, allowing the use of Nazi uniforms but maintaining the ban against displaying swastikas. Full size version here. The ensuing legal battle lasted over a year, involved three separate court cases, and made national headlines. In the end, Collin won the right to hold a demonstration in Skokie. Many in Skokie and Chicago were concerned for the mental health of Holocaust survivors facing the prospect of men in Nazi uniforms marching through their village.
People across the nation wrote sympathetic letters to Skokie and suggested creative tactics to counter the march. In the spring of , there were rumors that people were planning to get violent or even bring guns to the neo-Nazi march.
The U. He held rallies in both places in the summer of Though the neo-Nazi march was averted in Skokie, the legal battle around it had a lasting impact on the local Jewish community, and prompted the formation of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie.
That same white nationalist famously got punched in the face by a protester, prompting cheers, memes and criticism. So once again, people are asking: Do hate groups have a right to free speech? How should a community respond to hate groups? Ignore them? Counter protests? Fist fights? A June issue of the Twin Cities Reader. We put the question to somebody who might have some say over issuing a public demonstration permit to a hate group: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who showed up for counter-demonstrations against the Chicago neo-Nazis in the s.
So if Emanuel thinks people who disagree with hate groups have a responsibility to confront them, how does he feel about violence towards those groups? In other words, is it OK to punch a Nazi? Instead, they collapsed from within. After , Collin began to fade from the public eye. He lost credibility with fellow neo-Nazis when evidence emerged that his father was Jewish and a survivor of the Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany.
According to historian Jeffrey Kaplan, his former followers tipped the police to a child pornography stash in Rockwell Hall. Collin was ridiculed in the press and served five years in prison.
He later reinvented himself as Frank Joseph, a successful New Age author who explores theories of European influence on the pre-Columbian Americas. His most recent book, Our Dolphin Ancestors , explores the intelligence of dolphins. The question of how to confront hate groups or whether they have free speech rights may be important, but it can also distract from a bigger question: What role did their neighborhood play in allowing them to become a source of fear and consternation in Skokie, and the greater Chicago area, in the late s?
But Emanuel says he joined a counter-protest with his father in Marquette Park in July of , after the neo-Nazis announced they would march there instead of Skokie. Some identify themselves as residents of Marquette Park or nearby neighborhoods. One of the men, a Marquette Park resident identified as Oliver Adams, was interviewed for the documentary Echoes of a Nightmare.
In a shot from another film, a white neighborhood resident is seen stuffing cash into the neo-Nazi donation jar. This support is bizarre when you remember World War II was only around 30 years past, and many people who supported or tolerated Collin would have been veterans or known people who were killed or injured in the fight against Nazi Germany.
If enough people complained or protested, Marquette Park could have evicted the neo-Nazis or at least forced them to be less visible. Why were they allowed to remain for nearly a decade? That was everything they had worked for for their family, and it was portrayed to them [that] it was under attack from black people. The Nazis may have been considered odd or extreme by many residents, but fear of integration was widespread. Without that strain of mainstream white racism, the neighborhood may not have tolerated a building with a swastika over the door or Nazi-uniformed men living inside it.
Without their neighborhood — without a home base where they could organize, live and raise money — Collin and his group of neo-Nazis may never have had a chance to get so much attention, and cause so much distress.
Questioner Alix Anne Shaw. Meteorological terms excluded, Chicago's other nickname is "the City with Clout. The resilient midwestern strain, although perhaps not exactly flourishing, was able to keep a high profile by embroiling itself in controversy for the better part of two decades.
Much of the time, to the chagrin of the Chicago city fathers, the Nazis practiced a literal translation of the town's nickname.
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