Life in Skokie is more than realization of the American Dream for Ilse Weinberg.
``Living here is like being in heaven,`` said the 57-year-old post-World War II Jewish immigrant who fled persecution in Nazi Germany. Her husband, Irving, is a survivor of the concentration camps, which Mrs. Weinberg escaped only because one of her parents wasn`t Jewish.
After the Allied liberation, the Weinbergs came to Chicago from Germany in 1946 and moved to Skokie from Hyde Park 10 years later.
But peaceful living in the tranquil suburb was temporarily shattered for the Weinbergs when an organization of neo-Nazis threatened a march and demonstration in 1977 in the heavily Jewish suburb.
``All the horrible memories came back,`` Mrs. Weinberg said. ``I got to the point that I felt I would do anything to stop the Nazis, whatever the consequences to me.``
Turbulence over the threatened march lasted 1 1/2 years while a court battle ensued. The Nazis eventually called off the march despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a village ordinance outlawing the march violated the Nazis` First Amendment rights.
But the incident had a profound effect on Skokie`s Jewish community, which was in the national spotlight through the duration of the threat.
Major results of the Nazi threat were a unification of Skokie`s Jews and organized efforts to prevent similar occurrences through education on the Holocaust (the murder of about 6 million European Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II).
``All the community banded together in resistance,`` said Solomon Goldstein, a Holocaust survivor and leader in the Skokie Jewish community.
``We achieved more than victory. People who had never heard about the Holocaust learned what the Holocaust was.``
Skokie`s Jewish community was supported in its opposition to the march by the village`s Christian community and village officials. ``Skokie became a symbol of resistance against Nazism,`` added Frank Isaacs, a Skokie resident and executive director of the Zionist Organization of Chicago.
Plans are underway by a Skokie organization of Holocaust survivors to erect a monument to the Holocaust victims on village property. Construction of the monument is expected to begin this spring. The monument, a statue of a Jewish family, will be on a park-like site on Oakton Street between the village hall and public library.
The Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, another organization of Holocaust survivors, plans to open a Museum and Resource Center in June in a building at 4255 Main St. The museum is to contain a library, memorabilia of the Holocaust and of the social and cultural life of European Jews before the war and taped accounts of survivors and soldiers who liberated the Jews.
Even though the Skokie Jewish community hadn`t asserted itself before the Nazi incident, Jews have been active in community and local political affairs since they began migrating to the suburb in the early 1950s.
``They (Jews) are very community minded,`` said Mayor Albert J. Smith.
``They have supported every worthwhile project in the community and have played a key role in bringing those things to pass.``
Currently, three of the six village board members are Jewish.
Jews seeking a single-family home in the suburbs moved to Skokie mostly from Chicago. Many came from concentrated Jewish neighborhoods on the North and Northwest Sides and the South Side. They picked Skokie because it is close to the city and had a reputation for good public schools.
Although Skokie`s Jewish population hasn`t been documented, estimates are that it ranges from 30 to 60 percent of the village`s population of about 60,000. An estimated 7,000 Skokie Jews are Holocaust survivors, according to Isaacs.
Besides the Holocaust survivors, Skokie`s early Jewish settlers were primarily young people who weren`t strongly committed religiously, said Rabbi Donald Well, president of the Hebrew Theological College, which moved to Skokie from Chicago in 1957.
``The younger families were attracted to suburbia,`` he said. ``Then synagogues sprouted up, and more Orthodox people followed. Skokie`s 10 to 15 synagogues now represent all segments of the Jewish religion.``
Religious diversity even extends to a Christian organization called Jews for Jesus. The controversial evangelical group, housed in a Skokie storefront since 1976, holds weekly Bible study classes attended by 40 to 60 people, said Jhan Mokowitz, director. The Jews for Jesus movement, begun in the early 1970s in San Francisco, has been denounced nationwide as heretical by Jewish theologians.
The migration of Jews to Skokie has been accompanied by a movement of Jewish schools and social service agencies to the suburb.
``Of great significance are the three day schools that have moved to Skokie from Chicago in the last 15 years,`` said Rabbi Oscar Fasman, president emeritus of the Hebrew Theological College.