DATE: Monday, May 19, 1997                  TAG: 9705170003

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B8   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   49 lines

ZYKLON B AND A CROSS BURNING BULLETIN: HATRED KILLS

Last Monday, the Virginia Department of Vehicles recalled a license plate, issued to a Hampton resident, reading ``ZYKLON B.'' Also on Monday, 60 men and women, black and white, clasped hands in a prayer-circle demonstration against an April cross burning in New Kent County at which figures wearing the white robes that are a Ku Klux Klan uniform were present.

The North Carolina/Virginia office of the Anti-Defamation League asked the Department of Motor Vehicles to recall the ZYKLON B auto tag.

Most likely, most who saw the license plate were perplexed. That's why remembering the Holocaust, during which Adolf Hitler's Third Reich killed 6 million Jews because they were Jews, is essential. Zyklon B was a cyanide gas manufactured for use in Nazi death-camp gas chambers.

A half-century following the end of World War II, Zyklon B is for many an obscure historical footnote. The DMV committee that is supposed to screen out offensive vanity-plate applications obviously had not heard of it.

But survivors of the Holocaust know about Zyklon B. Anyone well-acquainted with the history of Europe during the Nazi era knows. And Ryan Neal Maziarka, 21, who drove the vehicle with the ZYKLON B tag (which he says someone stole) knows about the gas.

Maziarka contends Zyklon B could not have been used in the death camps because the Holocaust never happened. Arguing with anyone who professes such nonsense is useless. Maziarka was convicted in 1995 of painting racist graffiti on New Bethel Cathedral, a Hampton church with an African-American congregation. He was sentenced to five years in prison, with three years suspended.

While attending Phoebus High School, Maziarka wore a T-shirt decorated by a swastika, which he described as a Viking symbol for good luck. Yes, the swastika has been around for centuries. But the Nazis steeped it in blood. Eleven or 12 million human beings perished in Nazi death camps, such as Auschwitz and Dachau.

One Holocaust lesson writ large is that hatred - from whatever source - endangers all humankind. Especially when haters' power is unchecked. But, in an era of terrorism, even comparatively powerless haters can unleash firepower and explosives to make their point.

The 60 New Kent demonstrators standing before the county administration building Monday understand that those who threaten some of us threaten all of us. In standing against the cross burners, the demonstrators stood up for the rest of us. They asked the county board of supervisors to condemn the cross burning, which the board is disposed to do.

Let there be a chorus of condemnation.

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