Dear Rhonda;
I was deeply saddened but not shocked by your article about the Hitler figurine. The generation of perpetrators, bystanders, victims and liberators is inexorably leaving the stage of history. Those who seek to recast history to fit their bigoted world view have already been hard at work, from Germany and Austria to Iran and yes, even the US.
I do hope you will contact the German Ambassador to ask if authorities will incestigate if anti-Nazi laws are violated by such products.
As for the magen david in the Church? Tragically, European Jewish history is replete with such tales of Churban, including and especially Spain and the former Soviet Bloc where the outer shells of historic synaogues of buildings used as warehouses, churches, evn barns dotted the landscape. It is a painful but necessary reminder of what or ancestors went through and why a Jewish homeland is the only guarantee of a Jewish future.
All the best
Rabbi Abe Cooper
Associate Dean of the Simon Weisenthal Center