The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 72, No. 160, Ed. 1 Thursday, May 5, 1994 Page: 4 of 20
twenty pages : ill. ; page 21 x 13 in. Digitized from 35 mm. microfilm.View a full description of this newspaper.
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Our congratulations to the companies and individuals who have donated
to Baytown-area Project Graduation programs. Project Graduation offers
drug- and alcohol-free entertainment for seniors on the evening of their
graduation.
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FEEDBACK: To comment on this page, call Kurt Gaston, 422-8302, ext. 8016.
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The Baytown Sun is published Monday through Saturday at
1301 Memorial Drive in Baytown,
Kurt Gaston
Gary Dobbs
Editor and Publisher
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Bruce Guynn
Assistant Managing Editor
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Set an example
South African elections remind us:
Don’t take your freedom for granted
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hat if we ran out of ballots Saturday when Baytown residents
go to the polls to elect a mayor, city council members and Lee
College regents?
It happened in South Africa last week.
The majority of South Africans were given their first chance to chart
the course of their country, and responded in numbers which over-
whelmed the system. It was not uncommon for voters to stand in line
all day for the chance to cast a ballot.
We’re not suggesting that city and community college elections in
Baytown carry die same gravity as the first open election in a former-
: :ly-segregated society, but it would be refreshing if the example of
South Africa inspired those of us in Baytown to go to the polls in
record numbers.
* We Americans like to hold our country up as an example to the
: * world. Our freedoms won the Cold War and made Eastern Europe free.
Now South Africa has seen the light.
But we take our most cherished freedom—the right to vote for our
leaders — for granted.
Local elections are a chance to make a difference in our own com-
* ; munity. Our mayor and city council can have a much larger impact on
* our day-to-day lives than anyone in Austin or Washington.
Lee College regents are the custodians of a seat of higher education
- which touches more of our citizens than any other.
: : * In the end, perhaps its more important that we vote not because we
have been inspired by the example of those in other countries, but
2 because we realize to vote is in our best interest.
t The polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday.
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The fight on racism isn’t helped by off-target accusations
Nob
reader of The Baytown Sun, using
the “Letters to the Editor” column
of this paper, accused the writer of
“Police neat” of racism.
She made this accusation based on a
false assumption and I resent it.
She claimed that I — the reporter in
question—identify “Hispanic or black
perpetrators and victims on a regular basis
in the police report, but rarely, if ever, if a
white perpetrator or victim identified as ing all of us... black, white, Hispanic or
such, thereby perpetuating the notion that whatever. In such instances, a suspect’s
race is simply part of description informa-
tion. .. the same as height, weight, hair and
eye color.
The information is included so people
who may have noticed such a person at the
crime scene might come forward with
information to help solve the crime, or
someone who knows someone who acted
suspiciously at the time of a crime may say ready targets. The Baytown Sun s Police
to themselves, “Gee that sounds like so- Beat isnot one of them.
Such information can help solve a crime and-so—and he was flashing around a lot Jane Howard is a staff writerfor The
and put a criminal behind bars, thus help- of money right after that bank robbery.” Baytown Sun.
A
To me, a criminal is a criminal. A sus-
pect is a suspect. Race doesn’t matter a
whit once the bad guy is caught. A cap-
tured suspect is described only by name,
age and address, occasionally by occupa-
tion if it is deemed pertinent. Never by
race. Never
I have printed that same type of infor-
mation about many white suspects. I can
provide dates and copies of the paper as
examples.
• I know of no stories which would sub-
stantiate the reader’s claim that The Sun s
police reporting is racist.
The fight against racism is not helped
by such accusations.
Save the scathing remarks for those who
deserve them—there are many examples
of racism around us which would make
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Rundell
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criminal acts are committed only by His-
panics or blacks.”
I don’t know where the reader got this
notion but it did not come from any evi-
dence in the Police Beat.
The only time I (or the people who
occasionally substitute for me on crime
coverage) mention anyone’s race is when
describing a suspect who is at large and
the information is pertinent.
i Texas viewpoints
Will the state’s large lottery revenues keep
coming indefinitely? Don’t bet the ranch on it
: Fort Worth Star-Telegram on lottery:
For Frida
GO
The Holocaust is more than just another history lesson
EL
Breakfast
toast sticks a:
Lunch: chi
tetrazzini, w
beans, seas
fresh orange
roll and milk
bout nine years ago, I traveled to
Israel to visit relatives. My entire
extended family, save an uncle and
his family and my parents and sisters, still
reside in that country.
I remember one of those slow afternoons
during the hot summer. I was staying at my
mother’s parents’ house, and found myself
rummaging through some of their momen-
tos to pass the time. I found a shoe box, one
of many they kept, which contained odd •
artifacts of their past lives in eastern Europe
— strange stamps, currency from countries
no longer in existence and a couple of but-
tons shaped like the Star of David.
The buttons were just lying in this box—
no special place was reserved for them,
there was no display, and no special rever-
ence afforded them.
Just about every Jew understands the sig-
nificance of these tokens, these simple six-
pointed stars. My grandparents and millions
of other European Jews were forced by the
Nazis to wear them for about six years, from
1939 until 1945. To be caught without these
stars meant immediate death. There was no
trial, and certainly no appeal. A Nazi offi-
cer, or one of his cohorts—a Pole, Latvian,
_ __ Lithuanian, Czech, or some other conquered
", person just trying to survive—would draw
jfejijhfr a revolver and shoot them where they stood.
The executions were usually conducted in
C***1 public to set an example, but there was no
fanfare, no speeches or explanations. Rela-
A
fly in the face of the current wave of histori-
cal revision intended to raise doubts about
the Holocaust and to demonize Jews. We are
accustomed to persecution, whether it comes
from a gun-wielding Nazi or a supposed
civil rights leader who strengthens his own
political position by accusing Jews of using
the Holocaust to play on the sympathies of
the world. The similarity of the anti-semitic
rhetoric of Hitler and Farrakhan is revolting
when one considers they live 50 years apart
in history and would have been mortal ene-
mies had they lived in the same era.
: Money continues to roll in from the Texas lottery, raising spirits, hopes and
revenue for the state treasury.
Cash flow is always welcome, especially the kind that seems both effortless
and painless, but Texans who value prudence in public finance should resist
: the tempting vapors of euphoria. Gambling by definition is a chancy affair,
; but the alluring promise of quick, easy money has spawned a rush all along
'. the Gulf Coast to capture eager customers for the new casinos.
Texas is also debating whether to allow casino gambling here, thus compet-
ing with the attractions of neighboring states. As the competition for gam-
blers’ dollars intensifies, within the state and beyond its borders, the stability
in the lottery revenue stream will become increasingly uncertain.
That lack of stability and predictability was the primary reason for the wise
decision not to link lottery revenues directly to public school financing,
which requires those essential elements and remains in serious need of funda-
mental reform.
We were glad to see $ 101 million — 60 percent more than the monthly
average of $61.2 million — deposited into the general revenue fund for
March. It would be nice to plan on such returns indefinitely, but don’t bet the
ranch on it.
Breakfast:
toast, French i
monroll.
Lunch: chic
tetrazzini, ov
beans, seaso
whipped potat
First in a series
As a Jew, I am accustomed to learning
were fortunate, I guess, in being assigned to
a forced labor camp. The work was grueling a*,ou^ ances^ors _ persecution and to
and the conditions were subhuman. My defending the veracity of hue historical
grandmother worked with thousands of accounts about that persecution The
other Jewish women, usually sewing Nazi Passover Sedar details the Jews’ slavery in
uniforms for 18 hours a day. My grandfather fgypt The Tale of Ester during the Purim
still suffers pain in his legs from working in festlval dePlcts ** attemPts of a Babylonian
a rock quarry without shoes. They endured uuruster to use the Jews as scapegoats and
their share of beatings and witnessed many murder them for his own political advantage.
The pogroms in Russia occurred as a result
of economic dissatisfaction. The czars there
But at least rrry grandparents were togeth- Prov’ded the country folk with the supplies
er, in a camp with barbed wire fences segre- * ^°^^ees of murder
gating men from women. Their relatives—
mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts,
uncles and cousins—were separated and
strewn among similar camps throughout And just as Jews celebrating Passover say
Europe. None, except for a random sister or were redeemed from slavery with their
ancestors in Egypt, we also consider our-
and whole wh
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murderous executions—always with the
expectation that they were next
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—as a means
of drawing criticism away from the political
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ate
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cousin, survived.
The rest were murdered in places like
Burgen-Belzen, Treblinka, Auschwitz and
Buchenwald. Some were lined up in rows
10 deep and 100 yards wide and mowed
down by machine guns, others were gassed,
and many more were cremated, burned
Holocaust. Had we been there, we too would
have been murdered. We can never forget
that.
-T"'. • grieve—just move along, back to work.
Sharing these stories, we tell ourselves,
keeps the Holocaust from ever happening
alive. The Nazis were thorough and undis- again. As difficult as they are to hear, many
criminating in their murder. They would kill Iews g° to lectures and meetings to listen to
men, women and children alike—the same survivors tell their tale. We all leave a little
wry we kill roaches in our kitchens.
Most Jews like me never knew their
extended families. But we all know the sto-
ries, at least our personal tales. The stories
Old
onto these tokens, why they couldn’t throw
them away. I also understand why my grand-
parents don’t display them. Too much pain.
Too many barbaric memories and nights
filled with horrible dreams.
Not
issue,
weaker and a little stronger.
All of us vowing, “Never again.”
Amit Z Baruch is a staff writerfor The
Baytown Sun.
Paid Political i
were
in
when the Nazi blitzkrieg rolled in. They
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Dobbs, Gary. The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 72, No. 160, Ed. 1 Thursday, May 5, 1994, newspaper, May 5, 1994; Baytown, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1158221/m1/4/: accessed June 20, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Sterling Municipal Library.