Ben Stern survived the Holocaust and in the late 1970s vigorously opposed efforts by neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, a heavily Jewish Chicago suburb.
Holocaust survivor Ben Stern speaks to a crowd during a rally against hate in Berkeley, California, on Aug. 27, 2017.
Born Bendet Sztern in Warsaw, Stern moved with his family to Mogielnica, Poland, where he attended school. When the 1939 German invasion of Poland plunged the European continent into what would become World War II, Stern went to a ghetto in Mogielnica and then, the following year, to the Warsaw Ghetto, where his father perished.
In 1977, when the Sterns were living in Skokie, a Chicago-based group of neo-Nazis known as the National Socialist Party of America applied to hold a rally in the suburb, which was home to a large number of Holocaust survivors. The group’s racist demonstrations in protest of racially changing neighborhoods in Chicago had met resistance, with the city fighting back by demanding a steep insurance fee.
Ira Glasser, the national director of the ACLU from 1978 until 2001, was the head of the New York Civil Liberties Union in 1977 and was not involved in the national ACLU’s support of the neo-Nazis in the Skokie matter. However, Glasser wholeheartedly agreed with the national ACLU’s decision to support the neo-Nazis’ right to march.
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