(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Ben Stern, a Holocaust survivor galvanized by the threat of Nazis marching in Skokie nearly 50 years ago, has died.
He lived long enough to see the return of Nazi supporters marching in U.S. streets. Stern was 102 when he died in February.
The New York Times reports he moved from Northbrook to Berkeley, Calif., where he said at a rally in 2017 that he saw people of his past — family and friends who didn’t make it — as protesters stood together against racism and Nazism.
It was in Skokie where the Polish Jew, who had survived the Warsaw ghetto and nine concentration camps, became an activist.
Angered by the idea that he and others should ignore Nazi marchers in 1977, Stern mounted a failed campaign that argued hate speech should not be protected, which went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Nazi demonstrators canceled their Skokie march, though, due in part to the prospect of a large counter-demonstration that Stern helped organize. Stern revisited the moment in his documentary “Near Normal Man.”
Instead, the rally took place in Chicago, where it was reported that a few dozen Nazi demonstrators gathered for about 10 minutes and faced an estimated 5,000 counter-demonstrators.
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