
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 25, 1990                   TAG: 9004250089
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: MARGIE FISHER RICHMOND BUREAU
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

WILDER CALLS FOR WEEK OF REMEMBERING

Meeting Tuesday with Israel Ambassador Moshe Arad and leaders of Virginia's Jewish community, Gov. Douglas Wilder formally declared April 22-29 as "Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust" and said the commemoration should "send signal messages all around our country that we will not tolerate bigotry or racial or religious discrimination of any kind."

Wilder said it is important for all Americans to remember that the Nazi Holocaust "was not only a dehumanization of the Jewish people but of the human race. We won't permit that to take place ever again."

Wilder used the occasion to announce that he will revive, by executive order, the Virginia-Israel Commission and will seek legislation at the 1991 General Assembly to make it a permanent entity of state government.

The commission, which is not now in existence, was created by former Gov. Gerald Baliles to promote cultural, educational and trade alliances between the state and Israel. It helped organize a trade mission that Baliles made to the Middle East during his term - a trip that drew criticism from Arab-American leaders in Virginia.

Nonetheless, Wilder indicated he may go on a similar trade mission. Wilder traveled to Israel previously, as lieutenant governor.

Arad said the commission "provides the proper atmosphere and the proper background for encouraging the strengthening of economic relations between the two countries."

Among those attending a signing ceremony Tuesday was Holocaust survivor Robert Clary, an entertainer best known for his role as Louis LeBeau on the television series "Hogan's Heroes."

The 64-year-old Clary, a native of Paris, was 16 when the Nazis invaded France. Along with other members of his family, he was imprisoned in concentration camps for almost three years. Clary, who was liberated from Buchenwald in 1943 by the American Army, was the only member of his family to survive.

The ceremony in the governor's conference room also drew several Richmonders, including Jay M. Ipson and his father, Israel Ipson, Holocaust survivors whose stories are told in a video commissioned by the Jewish Federal of Richmond and which had its premiere Sunday night.

Wilder was given a copy of the video and said, "I intend to look at it this evening."

The Ipsons, along with others in their family, escaped from a concentration camp in 1943. Jay Ipson, now 54, said he lived for nine months "without ever seeing daylight" in a hole "about a third of the size of the governor's conference room" which his father dug out of a storage pit for potatoes.

In the process of digging to make the hole bigger, the ground caved in and the father was nearly buried alive. The Ipsons said the father was saved by a farmer's puppy who realized the predictament and ran off to pester a passerby to come to the rescue.

by CNB