Canadian Jewish Congress Scores Lufthansa for Tours That Include Passion Play

The Canadian Jewish Congress has protested to Lufthansa, the German airline, over advertising for air tours which include the Passion Play this year at Oberammergau. In a telegram to the airlines office in Cologne, Monroe Abbey, CJC president, said that the organization was “deeply distressed and resentful” over the airline’s promotion in Canada of the tour. The telegram noted that the play, staged every ten years, “has been condemned as an anti-Semitic libel by Christians and Jews in Germany and throughout the world.” The telegram said that the CJC national executive had scheduled a meeting on March 1 to discuss the matter and to plan “protest action throughout Canada.” The CJC said it was unable to understand “why Lufthansa continues to sponsor tours in connection with this manifestly anti-Semitic production which is in defiance of the spirit of reconciliation and ecumenism manifest in the Federal German Republic.”