Rabbi Shmuley Boteach released a letter Wednesday in which Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) offered his support to rename a section of a park in memory of a Holocaust denying anti-Semite who was also known for his racist diatribes.
Boteach, who is running to unseat Pascrell, accused the Democratic Congressman of having misled voters into thinking Pascrell did not know his “great friend” was an anti-Semite.
In a letter dated September 26, 2012, to James Anzaldi and the Council Members of the City of Clifton, Pascrell offered his support for the renaming of a section of Richardson Scales Park in memory of Chester Grabowski, who published the Polish-American newspaper The Post Eagle and was a Holocaust denier.
Grabowski also made anti-Semitic and racist comments throughout his publishing career.
In the letter, Pascrell said he “whole heartedly” supported the effort to rename a part of the park and that he “knew Chester for many years and he was a great friend.”
“This putrid letter demonstrates that Pascrell was not telling the truth,” Boteach said.
“Pascrell knowingly misled the media and the public at our recent debate when he said he did not know about Chester Grabowksi’s anti-Semitism,” the Republican candidate charged. He continued, “we now have the full text of a recent letter written by Pascrell proving that he knew Grabowski for decades and considered him a close friend.”
Boteach declared Grabowski “has been widely known for his vicious racism,” and “his hateful comments against Jews and outright denial of the holocaust have been widely documented, as well as his decision to run for Congress in 1990 under the Populist Party that had supported former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke during his presidential run in 1988.”
Boteach recounted, “Grabowski’s Congressional bid came at the same time that Pascrell was Mayor of Paterson, the largest city in the county” and so it would be “impossible not to have known about his very public anti-Semitism and racism.”
Grabowski, in his newspaper The Post Eagle, often referred to Jews as “vermin,” “animals,” and “Christ killers” and, according to Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz, in his book Chutzpa, Grabowski once wrote:
The Day of Reckoning is coming, and then these animals will be answerable for their crimes against Poland and her people. Unfortunately, the just and righteous Jew will also suffer for the lies and distortions of their brethren….There are animals within the Jewish Community, here in the USA who deliberately etched numbers on their wrists to benefit from the Reparation Funds.
Grabowski also once told The Record “that the Jewish death toll was closer to 2 million rather than the estimated 6 million” during the Holocaust, and he once ran an ad in the newspaper from the Ku Klux Klan that wished “All Polonia a Merry White Christmas.”
Former New Jersey NAACP Political Director Walter Fields has said Grabowski has “had a profound and profane ‘talent’ for reaching new depths of racism.” Fields said Grabowski once sent him a letter which read: “Again, here is wishing you a horrible 1995. Perhaps Aids, Sickle Cell Anemia, Cancer or other terminal illness will fell you this coming Year. One, can only hope. Here’s hoping! Your Pal, Chet.”
“Pascrell has had numerous innumerable opportunities to familiarize himself with the hateful beliefs of Chester Grabowksi, and for him to say that he was unaware of them is completely incredulous,” Boteach said. “Everyone knew of his hate-mongering and anti-Semitism, yet Pascrell insults the intelligence of the district’s citizens by claiming he was not aware. Not only is that not true, but it is contemptuous of his constituents.”
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