Customer Reviews

When the Nazis Came Skokie (Landmark Law Cases & American Society)

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WtNCtS is a short but well-packaged narrative of the events surrounding this rather famous (but little understood) situation. It moves along nicely, resisting the temptations to become either overly legalistic or a personal soapbox. A good general work for anyone with a legal interest in the First Amendment or a historical interest in the incident.

Recommended.

In 1977 and 1978, a few dozen American Nazis, led by half-Jewish Frank Collin (born Frank Cohn) sought to demonstrate in front of a suburban city hall for half an hour or so. Their efforts to do so mushroomed into a set of court cases and a national debate on the limits of free speech. This little book gives a blow-by-blow account of this story.

The most interesting parts of this story were the parts I didn't know. I knew that Nazis had tried to march in Skokie (a heavily Jewish suburb of Chicago)- but I didn't know that most of the excitement arose by chance.

To start with, Collin did not initially target Skokie. Instead, he sent letters to numerous suburbs asking for permission; every suburb but Skokie threw away the letters without response, while Skokie's park district bothered to reply (with a letter suggesting that the Nazis post an uncomfortably large bond). The Nazis then complained about the bond's constitutionality - proof that no good deed goes unpunished!

The city could have then allowed the march to occur with as little publicity as possible. Instead, it allowed the march and informed local rabbis, with the understanding that the rabbis would inform their congregation to ignore the Nazis. Instead, local Jews became outraged, causing city politicians to flip-flop and try to ban the Nazis from demonstrating, causing a national debate on whether Nazis could march through a suburb full of Holocaust survivors. (In fact, the Nazis did not seek to "march through" Skokie but merely to demonstrate in front of City Hall, relying on free media to carry their message).

Eventually, the courts decided that the Nazis could march. But the Nazis decided not to march, perhaps because of fear of violent counterdemonstrators, or perhaps because they had gotten more publicity out of the matter than they could have gotten from a demonstration.