MEMORIES OF NAZIS PAST

Speaking of Lena Epstein, some members of the local Jewish community are waging a Facebook campaign to protest a $1,000 per person ($2,700 per couple) fundraiser for her being held in late June at Franklin Hills Country Club, where wealthy Jews hang out. Several notable affluent Jews are among the hosts/co-chairs, including former Michigan Republican Party chair Bobby Schostak, insurance moguls Alan Jay Kaufman and Mert Segal, and real estate barons Harold Beznos, Warren Rose and Matt Lester. Michael Simon, who grew up in Birmingham, wrote on Facebook, “It’s a sad day for the Detroit Jewish community, and for Franklin Hills CC, an institution I love. Franklin Hills was founded in 1927 because Jews were not permitted to be members elsewhere...My deep connection to this place is why I’m so heartbroken to see FHCC’s leaders affiliate themselves publicly with the racist campaign being run by Lena Epstein to tear children from the arms of their parents...building concentration camps at our borders, and separating children from their parents – practices eerily similar to those employed during the Holocaust, the horrors of which member FHCC members’ ancestors fled. Lena isn’t merely silent...she is running on how strongly she agrees with Trump, including airing a TV ad supporting this practice.” Simon does not criticize FHCC members, or fellow Jews, for voting Republican, just for choosing Epstein, who he calls a “neo-fascist” “who has thrived by building a coalition of vicious anti-Semites, racists and xenophobes.”