By Howard Packowitz

BLOOMINGTON – A filmmaker, telling the story of a neo-Nazi group’s threat in the 1970s to march in the heavily-Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie, urged a Bloomington-Normal audience Thursday night to speak out against hatred and injustice.

Eli Adler made the documentary, “Surviving Skokie,” exploring how Holocaust survivors were impacted by the threatened march. At the time, Holocaust survivors, including Adler’s father, accounted for roughly 10 percent of Skokie’s population.

“The Holocaust survivors in Skokie, this was their first encounter with Nazis in more than 30 years, so their nightmares came back,” said Adler.

“They just didn’t want to deal with it. The rest of the community supported (survivors), and it gained international attention.”

The Chicago-based neo-Nazis, who called off their march in Skokie, were led by Frank Collin, a follower of Bloomington-born and American Nazi founder George Lincoln Rockwell.

Adler presented his film and addressed the gathering at Bloomington’s Moses Montefiore Temple, as community members commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day.

This year’s event took on a special meaning following deadly shootings targeting Jews at synagogues in Pittsburgh and near San Diego.

“The film opens with a quote from Elie Wiesel, and I think that’s probably the message that I’d like to put out there. Elie Wiesel said, ‘There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest it.'”

Adler said people can’t “stand idly by” when refugees are persecuted coming out of places like Syria and Mexico, or when there’s genocide in places like Rwanda.

Howard Packowitz can be reached at [email protected]