By Donald H. Harrison

As new facts emerge about the nazi past of the father of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles compares the California gubernatorial candidate¹s situation to those experienced by former U.S. President John F. Kennedy and the biblical patriarch Abraham.

Hier recalled that when Kennedy first ran for Congress, many Jews were wary of him because his father, Joseph Kennedy, a former U.S. ambassador to Britain, had opposed U.S. entry into World War II. Kennedy pleaded with Jewish audiences to remember that it was he, not his father, who was running, Hier said.

The rabbi also said that Terah, the father of Abraham, "also was something of a rascal," yet "none of us would say that Abraham shouldn't have been the father of the Jewish faith."

The unsealing of old nazi documents in Austria has prompted the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles to begin a new probe into the past of Gustav Schwarzenegger, the actor's father.

Hier, founder of the center, said the unsealed documents added to the little bit of knowledge the center had uncovered in 1990 about Gustav's nazi party activities, in that they revealed that he had been a member of the S.A. or "brownshirts" who used physical intimidation and violence to promote nazi policies.

Interviewed on Monday, Aug. 25, Hier said agents for the Wiesenthal Center planned to scour all the new available documents within the next 10 days in order to develop a more comprehensive picture of the activities of the senior Schwarzenegger, now deceased. He said the findings first would be given to Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has been a major financial backer of the Wiesenthal Center, and then to news media in advance of the Oct. 7 election.

While acknowledging there is a public interest in these documents, Hier said that whatever they show should not be held against Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was born two years after the end of World War II.

"I am sure he is ashamed of him," Rabbi Hier commented. "What son would be proud of a man who wanted to get into the nazi party even before the Anschluss? There is nothing to be proud of that he was a member of an S.A."