columbine - tragedy and recovery

Klebold came from Jewish background

By Kevin Simpson and Jason Blevins

Denver Post Staff Writers

April 24 - Friends say 17-year-old Dylan Klebold was more follower than leader, less fascinated by German culture than 18-year-old Eric Harris, his partner in Tuesday's suicidal rampage at Columbine High School.

But one Klebold relative said Friday that neo-Nazi overtones surrounding the massacre - committed, by coincidence or design, on Hitler's birthday - must have been additionally devastating for the boy's mother, Susan Klebold, who was raised in the Jewish faith.

"It must've been very difficult for her, for any average American parent - but particularly for someone brought up Jewish,'' said Skip Yassenoff, a cousin of the former Susan Yassenoff who attended the same confirmation class at Temple Israel in Columbus, Ohio. Klebold's mother, now 50, is the granddaughter of Leo Yassenoff, the late, prominent philanthropist in Columbus' Jewish community. Yassenoff went into the commercial construction business with little financial backing, made his fortune and left his mark on the area by erecting buildings that include a Jewish Community Center that now bears his name, a Jewish student center at Ohio State University and a local synagogue.

Skip Yassenoff said he has had only sporadic contact with his cousin in recent years. He knew that Susan's husband, Tom, was not Jewish but did not know how they raised their children. The Klebolds briefly attended St. Philip Lutheran Church in Littleton about five years ago.

"Most mainstream parents, whether they're Jewish or not, I think would be appalled by neo-Nazi actions by their grown-up children,'' said Yassenoff, who has two teenage kids of his own. "I think sometimes you don't know why your kids are the way they are, especially when they get to the age Dylan was. I think a lot has to do with the kids they hang around with.''

Lisa Simon, a spokeswoman for the Klebolds family's lawyer, said Dylan's parents were not ready to talk about their son.

"There's a lot of facts to come and obviously with the investigation going on they can't talk right now,'' said Simon. "They've got to concentrate on their loss and dealing with the enormity of this whole thing. I think they want to take it one day at a time.''

The lawyer for Harris' parents did not return calls.

The two teenagers killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded almost two dozen other students before turning their guns on themselves Tuesday. A precise motive for the worst school shooting in U.S. history remains unknown. But many students say the two outcasts were lashing back at student athletes and others who Harris and Klebold felt persecuted them.

Some Columbine students said Klebold and Harris, who were enrolled in an early morning bowling class, would give the Nazi salute and shout "Heil Hitler!'' whenever they rolled a good ball.

But other students who knew them said Klebold did not share Harris' fascination for the German language, culture and history.

"I don't think he was that racist,'' said Chad Laughlin, a senior who ran a fantasy baseball league in which Klebold participated. "I think Eric was more racist.''

"Eric was the stronger personality,'' added Dan Holsey, another senior. "Eric kind of let his feelings be known, his hatreds or dislikes. He never acted them out, but let it be known to me and some friends. If Dylan had any hatred, he never told me or anyone I knew.''

"I'd seen Eric wear shirts with German sayings, but I never saw Dylan wear them. He just wore a Boston Red Sox hat.''

Harris' Internet site, which contained violent rants and bombmaking tips, recently was taken down off the World Wide Web by host America Online - but it had attracted national attention six months earlier.

Researchers for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, an Internet watchdog group that flags hateful Web sites, discovered Harris' Trench Coat Mafia site while tracking anarchist and bomb-making sites, said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the center.

The site did not warrant a call to police, Cooper said, but the center did continue to monitor it.

"There were no explicit threats against an individual or organization,'' he said.

But after hearing of the shootings on Tuesday, the center's researchers scrambled to download several files posted on the Web site. Cooper said AOL and the FBI have confirmed that the files, which included "first-person, friendly advice on bomb-making,'' came from Harris' computer - though it remains unknown whether Harris personally wrote the bomb-making recipes.

Some of the files detailed precise measurements for gunpowder in pipe bombs, which the writer called "the easiest and deadliest ways to kill a group of people.''

One paragraph tells of the need to lay down newspaper before playing with gunpowder "because accidents do happen and if you have a big black stain on your carpet, mom and dad might ask some questions.''

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Also found were directions for creating napalm. One section of the files grabbed from the site before it was shut down by AOL included different types of shrapnel that could be used in pipe bombs. The writer pondered the deadliness of taping nails to the outside of the pipe.

Homemade bombs found inside Columbine included CO2 cartridges with nails taped to them, authorities said.

"You might try asking the survivors if they got a good look at the bomb before it went off and then the remains,'' read the notes from the Web site.

Cooper said the information on the site provides a glimpse into the mind of a socially maligned teenager and hinted at the subculture of hate online.

"These kids may not be necessarily celebrating Hitler,'' said Cooper, "but a lot of these sites are closely linked to hate music and traditional hate sites. It doesn't take very much effort to end up surfing some of the more than 1,500 hate sites out there. For people who are ready to cross the line, it's literally a click away to learn how to be a terrorist.''