The following article appeared in the July/August 1998 issue of B'nai B'rith International Jewish Monthly, a publication of B'nai B'rith International. I am posting it here with permission from the author and publisher.

This is the cover story; the cover headline is "Scientology seeking Jewish help over Germany". The three cover photos show a October 1997 march of Scientologists in Berlin, down a wide highway with forest on either side.

Wooing the Jews

Its "Never Again" campaing has stopped. But the Church of Scientology still wants Jewish support in Germany.

by Toby Axelrod

When German Chancellor Helmut Kohl visited Australia in July 1997, he was greeted by jeering Scientologists in Nazi-style uniforms with swastika armbands. They confronted him with placards reading "Hands Off Our Religion" and "Is Germany Really A Free Country?"

The protest was part of Scientology's fight for recognition as a religion in Germany, a status that would bring significant tax benefits. Not only does Germany refuse that request, but also the government actually sees Scientology as a danger that must be curbed.

In response, the Church of Scientology in Germany has, for years, linked itself with the treatment of the Jews under Hitler, claiming the shared experience of persecution. Scientologists say members have lost jobs, and children have been removed from schools because of their faith. The German government says the charges are at best exaggerated and at worst false.

Germany recently got a boost from United Nations special investigator Abdelfattah Amor who, in April, rejected the church's charge of persecution in Germany, and called the comparison between modern Germany and Nazi Germany "so shocking as to be meaningless and puerile."

Though church President Rev. Heber Jentzsch says Scientology's comparison of its treatment in Germany to that of the German Jews under the Nazis has officially stopped because of objections from Jewish leaders, the theme still threads through Scientology publicity.

The comparison with Nazi Germany has irked not only mainstream Jewish organizations but also high officials of both the U.S. and German governments as well, who call it an insult to all Holocaust victims.

The Scientology campaign against Germany really took off after the United States granted the organization tax-exempt status as a religion in October 1993. The Internal Revenue Service's decision followed two decades of litigation by Scientology. In contrast, Germany has refused to call Scientology a religion, instead, labeling it a business with anti-democratic leanings built on the dependency of adherents. To prevent Germany from falling into fascist hands again such groups must be carefully watched, says the government.

"In Germany, everyone can believe what they want, even if it is nonsense," says Anne Rühle, who heads Berlin's Senate [city council] department on sects and psychogroups. But when a group leads to "psychological or financial dependency and to the inability to act autonomously," it is in conflict with protected freedoms. "Scientology fits that description."

So Germany conducts surveillance, tries to bar Scientologists from government jobs and the major political parties, and warns the public to beware. In response, the Scientologists accuse Germany of showing the very tendencies toward fascism the government claims to fear.

Scientology's anti-Germany campaign appears to have backfired. Intensifying in 1994 with full-page newspaper ads using images from the Holocaust and continuing into late 1996 with a letter to Kohl from Hollywood celebrities in the International Herald Tribune, Scientology made more enemies than friends.

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League  of B'nai B'rith, called the ads a "trivialization of the Holocaust." U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright termed the comparison "historically inaccurate and totally distasteful," and even former State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns, whose agency has criticized Germany's treatment of Scientologists, called the assertions "outrageous."

Chancellor Kohl simply said, "Those who signed [the Hollywood letter] don't have a clue about Germany and don't want to have a clue." And Ignatz Bubis, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, recently called the whole campaign "a scandal."

Yet the "scandal" may have had some success. As a German from Hesse recently complained, "Americans don't know where Frankfurt is, but they do know that Scientologists here are persecuted." In November 1997, days after a German Scientologist won asylum in the United States on grounds of religious persecution, Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel launched a counter-campaign aimed at explaining Germany's position to U.S. citizens. A German government pamphlet cites a 1995 German federal case in which the words of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard were used as evidence: "Make money, make more money—make other people produce so as to make money." The court said Scientology uses "inhuman and totalitarian practices to make the individual psychologically and financially dependent."

To protect his state, Bavarian Interior Minister Günther Beckstein already in 1996 had added Scientology to the list of what he called "totalitarian, cynical organizations," including some neo-Nazi parties, its members barred from civil service jobs like teaching and police work.

In March 1997, Federal Labor Minister Norbert Blüm had decreed that Church of Scientology-owned businesses be marked with an "S" in ministry computers, so job seekers are not placed with such firms. In response, Jentzsch recalled the Nazis' stamping of Jewish passports, saying, "All that differentiates Norbert Blüm from his Nazi predecessors are eight letters of the alphabet—those that come between J and S."

In June 1997, Bonn began a year of surveillance of Scientology organizations in Germany and invoked its most controversial laws, "for the protection of the Constitution." The laws allow for mail interception, phone taps, and use of undercover agents to establish whether the organization is a fascist threat. The surveillance has been extended past its June 1998 deadline.

"Who the hell are they to point their finger at us?" rebuffs Jentzsch. He calls "the screaming rhetoric of Beckstein sheer, utter, unadulterated madness."

As for the "Never Again" campaign, Jentzsch says it was stopped more than a year ago, and he called the Australian demonstration an aberration. "We made a mistake early on by making this comparison. It was offensive to the Jewish people." He says some rabbis agreed to back him on the discrimination issue, but that they also told him, "'You have to understand how we feel with anything that deals with something so horrific as the Holocaust.'"

So the campaign stopped, but that doesn't mean the Church of Scientology has stopped trying to win the support of Jews.

Jentzsch names as one sympathizer Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism  in Washington, D.C.. According to Jentzsch, Rabbi Saperstein told him that "if anyone understands human rights and discrimination, the Jewish people do. We are on your side."

Rabbi Saperstein responds that, "While I never made this specific comment attributed to me, nonetheless I am always sympathetic when people are subject to discrimination or persecution, religious or otherwise." Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League says Jentzsch has tried to win his support. "But," says Foxman, "they are not going to succeed here.

"They have asked for meetings with us now that they are doing the 'right thing.' But the campaign continues, [though] it is no longer as offensive and as shrill and as aggravating as it was."

Jentzsch declined to name other Jewish supporters, saying they "are afraid of entering the fray and I understand." But, "frankly, I have had a top Jewish scholar say to me, 'This is the beginning of an attempt to destroy rights, and that is a danger signal. Pray God,' he said, 'it would never turn into the Holocaust.'"

A rabbi who can be counted as sympathetic to the Scientologists' German situation is Rabbi Kenneth Fradkin, the spiritual advisor of the Baldwin Jewish Center in Long Island, New York. Rabbi Fradkin recently signed a letter critical of Germany—a letter composed and circulated by supporters and members of the Church of Scientology, although the connection was not made clear to recipients.

The material went out last March from a Washington-based group, Freedom for Religions in Germany, whose phone number is the same as that of the church's D.C. public affairs office.

"I am proud that my name was used to help combat prejudice and to promote religious freedom for all people," says Rabbi Fradkin, adding that he was informed of the connection with Scientology when he was asked to sign by Matt Bratschi, Freedom for Religions in Germany coordinator. "Jews, more than any other people, know what it is like to be persecuted. I could not stand by and do nothing," Fradkin says, explaining his reasons for signing.

According to Bratschi, Freedom for Religions in Germany was founded last year by the Church of Scientology. Among its activities: sponsoring a symposium at University Synagogue in Los Angeles in June 1997 on "Ethnic Cleansing in Germany ." "We discussed not only what is happening to people who are Scientologists, but other groups who seem to be the targets of discrimination in Germany," says Rabbi Allen Freehling, who hosted the symposium and continues to receive briefings from Scientology's human rights specialist Leisa Goodman. "While I am not necessarily an advocate of the Scientology cause, per se," says the rabbi, "my approach to this is to be concerned about any violations to human rights."

Yet Herbert Rosedale, president of the American Family Foundation, believes that mainstream Jewish community support is "based on ignorance or uncritical acceptance of propaganda." The AFF, a New York-based not-for-profit organization, educates the public about destructive cults—and labels Scientology one. "Who will [the rabbis] run their next defense for—Aum [Shinrikyo], the group that cast poison gas into the Tokyo subways?" After that deadly 1995 attack, says Rosedale, a group of American "cult apologists" was sent to Japan by Aum and other unnamed funders. They called Japan's investigation of Aum "just another instance of religious persecution," says Rosedale. One of these "apologists" was later a featured speaker on the persecution of Scientology at the University Synagogue conference last year.

Yet another activity of Freedom for Religions in Germany is to push a resolution in the U.S. Congress condemning religious persecution in Germany.

The resolution, whose prime sponsors are Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Donald Payne (D-N.J.), cites State Department human rights reports findings that Germany discriminates against minority religions including Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Charismatic Christians, and Scientologists. It urges Germany to protect freedom of religion and asks the U.S. president to "assert the concern of" the U.S. government. The nonbinding measure merely offers a sense of Congress and has nothing to do with the farther-reaching Freedom From Religious Persecution Act still under debate.

Freedom for Religions in Germany circulated the letter that Rabbi Fradkin co-signed, accusing Germany of holding a fact-finding meeting in Washington with "a collaborator of the well-known anti-Semitic organization, the Liberty Lobby[,] Arnaldo Lerma , [who] has posted anti-Semitic material on the Internet." (Conversely, it also has been reported that Thomas Marcellus, a Holocaust denier and former director of the historical revisionist Institute for Historical Review, is a prominent Scientologist.)

The letter was on the stationery of Ya'aqov Halevi-Haramgaal, a professor of Judaic studies in Hollywood. In various Scientology material, Haramgaal is identified as a "freedom fighter" for Israel and an Israeli journalist. Leisa Goodman of Scientology's California office says Haramgaal is a Scientologist and teaches Judaic studies on a freelance basis.

The charges in Haramgaal's letter were swiftly denied as "false" and "preposterous" in a press release from the Washington offices of Germany's Friedrich-Ebert Foundation. Executive Director Dieter Dettke said the meeting had been about "The church of Scientology and its former members. [Its] purpose was to help shed light for the members of the Enquete [Inquiry] Commission  [PDF, 1.7MB, 448 pgs.] of the German Parliament on the mysterious deaths of at least eight members of the Church of Scientology in Clearwater, Florida." He said Lerma had subscribed to the Liberty Lobby's Spotlight publication while working on the presidential campaign of Ross Perot.

"Former members of the Church of Scientology must have the right to speak out," says Dettke.

In contrast to the Friedrich-Ebert release, the material from Freedom for Religions in Germany does not acknowledge a connection between the group and the Church of Scientology. Also not mentioned is the fact that Freedom for Religions coordinator Bratschi, target Arnaldo Lerma, and letter-writer Haramgaal all have strong ties to the church.

Bratschi, a longtime Scientologist, has done public relations for the church. Lerma, a former Scientologist, was sued by the organization in 1995 for allegedly posting secret church scriptures on the Internet after they had been entered as an affidavit in a Los Angeles court case. Prof. Haramgaal, according to a 1997 Scientology brief on the Internet, is a member of Scientology's Citizens Commission on Human Rights International , whose mandate is to "investigate and expose psychiatric violations."

Scientology condemns psychiatry and psychology as "the stepchildren of the German dictator Bismarck and later Hitler and the Nazis[,] [which] formed the philosophical basis for the wholesale slaughter of human beings in World Wars I and II." This statement, from a "Scientology Catechism" on the Internet, says electric shock, psychosurgery, and drugs "destroy a person in the name of 'treatment'."

Such claims notwithstanding, a criminal investigation is under way in the 1995 death of a Scientologist in Clearwater, Fla. Lisa McPherson , 36, died 17 days after she reportedly was removed from psychiatric care by Scientologists who said their religion opposes psychiatry.

Scientology, a Los Angeles-based movement, was founded in 1954 by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986. The church says technology can expand the mind and bring happiness. Recruits are offered a free personality test  in encounters on the street or through mailbox stuffings. After the test, courses are suggested, for which participants reportedly pay thousands of dollars. In order to cure people of their problems, Scientology puts members through stages of counseling, teaching, and "auditing," on their way to becoming "clear."

Church doctrine suggests it is possible to be a member of another religion, and at the same time be a Scientologist. Jentzsch says it's "not a common thing, but we don't say you have to completely leave your [earlier] faith."

Numbers of Jewish Scientologists are hard to come by. But according to an article in the Detroit Jewish News in 1995, Scientology claims that 3.5 percent of its members come from Jewish homes.

Though the church claims 8 million members worldwide, critics have contended there are only 50,000. Church officials estimate 30,000 members in Germany alone. Claims by the church that it is "internationally recognized as a religion" are false, says the 1997 German government pamphlet. Other countries that do not recognize Scientology as a religious faith include Belgium, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, and Spain.

Clearly, Germany doesn't take Scientology lightly. Germany's front line of defense, however, is not restrictive laws but education, says Anne Rühle, one of Scientology's toughest foes on that battlefield. To the Scientologists, "I am a 'suppressive person,'" jokes Rühle. Her work—to "inform and explain" to German youth the dangers of cults—brings her into schools and puts her in contact with, among others, current and former Scientologists. Of the 3.8 million people in Berlin, there are only about 200 active Scientologists, she asserts.

On the grassroots level, many Germans fear Scientology for two reasons, says Rühle: "Since the re-unification of East and West Germany, life is hard, and there is a trend toward belief in the power of magic and hypnosis. People fear any contact with Scientologists because they think they can be immediately taken in.

"The other reason is because it is a totalitarian organization. There is a huge fear in Germany that totalitarianism could gain a foothold again.

"We are against Scientology, but we are not against the people who are Scientologists. But Germans have a hard time being easygoing about it."

Repeated attempts to schedule interviews with Berlin members of Scientology were unsuccessful. But a Jewish Berliner who took the introductory Scientology test was willing to talk, though he asked not to be identified.

"They tried to undermine my self-confidence and then said [helping me would be] no problem, if you give us money. They tried to make me sign a contract," says the man, 36, whose grandparents survived World War II in hiding. "When I told [the test-giver] that I feel totally good and that he is the one with the problem, he became angry and aggressive."

The test-taker said all the courses offered or recommended by Scientology seemed to cost about $30,000. Contrary to what his Scientology screening test purportedly showed, he noted that he recently passed a three-hour psychological stress test given by Siemens, the giant technology corporation, to potential employees.

When Scientologists like those in Australia say Germany is repeating history, "they put their finger in a wound that is not closed, not only for Jews but also for Germany," says Rühle. "They knew it would be useful. It is an argument to bring America behind them."

Still, Scientology has made no headway in its fight for acceptance as a religion in Germany. "We are new in this world," says Jentsch . "Anybody that is new is looked on with a certain amount of—'What are you? What is this?' I would like to think we can work together," he says of Scientologists and the Jews, who have been around much longer. "Maybe," he says, "it is a question of whether we are going to be driven together."

Toby Axelrod, former reporter with the New York Jewish Week, is a Fulbright journalism scholar in Berlin, Germany.