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AUSTRIA:

Demonstrating the wide reach of Holocaust restitution efforts, the World
Jewish Congress said on Wednesday that Austria's libraries had 186,000
books that the Nazis had stolen from Holocaust victims.

"The documents made clear that the books are almost entirely of Jewish
origin, that is having been seized from Jewish victims in Austria and The
Netherlands," Elan Steinberg, executive director, WJC, told Reuters.

He was referring to documents found in Austria's archives that show that
on Nov. 18, 1951 the government appropriated the books the Nazis had
taken from Jewish institutions, libraries, schools and individuals, and
divided them among educational and cultural institutions.

The stolen works cover a wide range of subjects, from religion to sports.

Austria's new coalition government has promised to swiftly compensate
Nazi-era slave laborers. Once those claims have been settled, the
Austrian government says it may compensate Jews whose property was stolen
by the Nazis after they overran the country in March 1938. Some
historians put the value of stolen assets at $18 billion.

"The point we're making here is the comprehensive nature of Holocaust
loot in Vienna," Steinberg said.

Austria, which identified the books as "unable to return to their
owners," gave some 128,000 to the national library and the university
library, Steinberg said. The volumes also were sent to the parliament's
library, the chancellor's library and the Albertine Museum in Vienna.

"We are now seeking to determine which if any of the books that were
redistributed or appropriated in the 1950s have been returned (to their
owners)," Steinberg said.

Adding that by law the Austrian government was barred from inheriting the
plundered books, Steinberg said the works should be gathered together,
and efforts made to find their owners. "The fundamental principle is that
they should be returned to the Jewish people."

(source: Reuters)






USA/MINNESOTA:

About 500 people rallied at St. Cloud State University on Wednesday
against a recent 24-page insert in the campus newspaper that called the
Holocaust a hoax.
``The Revisionist'' was published as a paid insert last Thursday in the
University Chronicle.

Jill Madsen, president of the Jewish Student Association, said the campus
cannot be silent against such publications and mistruths.

Dozens of speakers at the nearly two-hour rally, sponsored by the Center
for Holocaust and Genocide Education, expressed support of Jewish members
of the campus community and outrage at the publication of the insert.

The newspaper's faculty adviser, Michael Vadnie, said the newspaper was
not told the full nature of the insert. He said the situation evolved
into a ``teaching moment'' for the newspaper staff and university
students on First Amendment and Holocaust issues.

The ad was placed by California writer Bradley R. Smith, who frequently
tries to run similar ads in student newspapers around the country
claiming the Holocaust didn't happen.

His ad has run in a number of student newspapers, while many other
student papers have rejected it.

(source: Associated Press)






SWITZERLAND:

The Swiss bank regulator yesterday approved the publication of names on
26,000 Holocaust-era accounts in a final push to find the heirs of victims.

The Swiss Federal Banking Commission said it was following the
recommendation of the international panel headed by former Federal
Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

"By publishing the accounts, justice will be done to victims of the
Holocaust who during the war held their assets in Swiss banks," said Kurt
Hauri, president of the commission.

Hauri said the decision clears the way for rapid implementation of the
$1.25 billion settlement reached two years ago between banks and Jewish
organizations and Holocaust claimants in New York under U.S. District
Judge Edward Korman.

The New York-based World Jewish Congress reacted cautiously, saying the
judge must still decide if the action complies with Volcker's panel.

The panel recommendations came last December after more than two years of
combing through all the records it could find on 4.1 million accounts in
254 Swiss banks in operation during World War II while the Nazis
controlled neighboring Germany.

The panel compared the names on the accounts with the names of Holocaust
victims from lists in Israel and the United States and said it had found
54,000 accounts never before disclosed that might have a link. For public
release, it narrowed the figure down to the 26,000 most likely.

The Swiss ruling clears the way for the publication of names on all
26,000 accounts, and most banks have said they will go along. But private
banks that control about 600 accounts have said they may take advantage
of a provision that would let them opt out because they don't want to
damage client confidence in banking secrecy.

The banking commission said it also was following the recommendation to
create a central database of 46,000 accounts. About 8,000 accounts
considered short of detail will be left off the database, but a special
body set up to handle claims will have access to their details.

(source: Cleveland Plain Dealer)



*********************



Swiss banking regulators agreed on Thursday to waive banking secrecy and
let banks publish the names on 26,000 accounts judged most likely to
belong to Holocaust victims.

But the Federal Banking Commission (SFBC) stopped short of embracing
another recommendation from an independent panel that hunted Holocaust
victims' assets in Swiss banks for three years.

The watchdog authorized banks to set up a central data base of 46,000
accounts with a possible Holocaust link, well short of the 4.1 million
accounts proposed by the search panel that was set up by banks and Jewish
groups.

Swiss banks have already published thousands of names on wartime-era
dormant accounts to help find their rightful owners.

The SFBC said in a statement that its president, Kurt Hauri, saw the way
now clear for the big two Swiss banks' $1.25 billion settlement of
allegations that they hoarded the unclaimed assets of Holocaust victims
to proceed.

UBS AG and Credit Suisse Group proposed the payment in 1998 to settle
U.S. class-action lawsuits against them. The U.S. judge handling the case
has been waiting to see how Swiss regulators dealt with the issue before
signing off on the deal.

"Dr Hauri said that with this landmark decision the path was now open for
a rapid implementation of the New York Settlement Agreement and including
the payment of the settlement amount to the claimant Holocaust victims
and that he expected that the proper decisions would be taken soon," the
commission said.

"Prior to this, it will not be possible to implement the decisions of the
SFBC," it added.

The watchdog said the body set up in Switzerland to handle Holocaust-era
claims would have access to the data base.

LARGE DATA BASE "NEITHER NECESSARY NOR MEANINGFUL"

It played down its decision to narrow the data base from the scope
proposed in December by the Volcker Commission, named for its chairman,
former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

Creating a central data base for all the 4.1 million accounts in Swiss
banks during World War Two was "neither necessary nor meaningful," the
commission said.

It noted the Volcker panel itself "had -- after a very thorough
investigation -- no reason to believe that these accounts were in any way
related to victims of the Holocaust."

Limiting the data base in no way affects claims of Holocaust victims or
their heirs, Hauri added.

The Swiss Bankers Association hailed the ruling, which it said
essentially implemented the Volcker panel recommendations.

"It is now up to the...U.S. courts to ensure, by resolving the claims
procedure as well as by approving the big banks' class-action settlement,
that payment to the rightful owners takes place promptly," Chief
Executive Niklaus Blattner said.

In its report released late last year, the Volcker Commission said it had
found nearly 54,000 accounts probably or perhaps linked to Holocaust
victims who stashed wartime wealth in neutral Switzerland to escape the
Nazis.

It has since reduced that number to 46,000.

It said it had found no evidence to back up allegations that banks had
conspired to steal Jews' money, but criticized some banks for their
callous treatment of victims, misleading statements and sloppy
record-keeping, especially years ago.

(source: Reuters)





LATVIA:

It's as if World War II never ended, in the mind at least.

The Baltic state of Latvia is mired in multiple controversies over who
fought on the right side in the monumental conflict, a debate that is
hurting the country's efforts to anchor itself in the West through
membership in NATO and the European Union.

Latvia, like other East European states, was occupied at different times by
both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Latvians fought alongside the armies
of both.

When Moscow ruled the Baltics, ''Red Riflemen'' who battled the Nazis on the
side of the Soviets were the official heroes. They helped free Latvia from
Hitler. They were honored with Hero of the Soviet Union decorations; their
tales were repeated in newspapers and books and celebrated on patriotic
holidays. ''Legionnaires'' - draftees and volunteers for the Nazis - were
pariahs.

Now, the historical table has turned, bitterly.

Almost a decade after the restoration of Latvia's independence, Soviet
partisans are being investigated for war crimes. Meanwhile, veterans of
Nazi-formed units are claiming the status of freedom fighters in the long
struggle to end Soviet rule and not that of collaborators of mass murderers
who viciously persecuted Latvian Jews under the Third Reich's mandate.

Controversy overflowed this month when a Riga court found a partisan guilty
of war crimes in the 1944 deaths of six villagers, including a pregnant
woman. The partisan, Vasili Kononov, was convicted on testimony from
relatives of the dead and a woman who said she overheard a damning
conversation among the guerrillas on their way to the village.

Soon after the verdict, Legionnaires held their annual March 16 parade to
commemorate their war dead. The march went quietly, except for dueling
patriotic songs and heated arguments between marchers and a small group of
mostly Russian bystanders. Ethnic Russians make up about 30 percent of
Latvia's population of 2.4 million.

For the Latvian government, the issue has spun into a web of self-image and
foreign-relations problems. Latvia wants to join the West through the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. But the West is
uncomfortable with the rehabilitation of men who fought with the Nazis.
Russia bristled at the Kononov verdict, regarding it as a defamation of a
hero of the ''Great Patriotic War.'' Jewish groups angrily challenged Latvia
to pursue Holocaust perpetrators with the gusto it seemingly reserves for
Soviet agents.

In recent weeks, reporters who streamed to Riga, the picturesque capital,
were greeted warily by Latvian officials. ''I assume you're here to look
into our new energy policy,'' Armands Gutmanis, the undersecretary of state,
remarked sarcastically to a visitor the other day.

Mr. Gutmanis said the Kononov case was simply an issue of war crimes,
without ideological coloring. He made clear, however, that many Latvians
feel Soviet crimes are being underplayed by Western countries. Thousands of
Latvians were deported to Siberia before and after World War II, and the
government is actively pursuing the cases of Soviet officials who organized
the deportations.

He insisted that Latvia was eager to take on cases against Nazi war
criminals. ''We have no trouble dealing with the Holocaust,'' Mr. Gutmanis
said. ''What worried Latvians is that our friends pay little attention to
Soviet crimes.''

Nazis and their collaborators massacred about 50,000 Latvian Jews, along
with thousands of others brought to the country from other German-occupied
lands.

Ausma Rubene, a prosecutor, said that Latvia's Soviet rulers had prosecuted
scores of alleged Nazi war criminals, so that pickings for further cases
were slim.

For partisans - and for the Russian government - the prosecution of Mr.
Kononov smacks of revenge.
Aleksandrs Ogurcovs, Mr. Kononov's lawyer, said the case was based largely
on hearsay. He argued that war crimes traditionally were the preserve of the
just victors, that if treated otherwise, Allied pilots who flew over Dresden
and Hiroshima would be subject to prosecution for having bombed and killed
tens of thousands of civilians.

''Fighting fascism cannot be called a war crime,'' he said.

President-elect Vladimir Putin said in a pre-election speech that Russia
''shall protect all soldiers of the Great Patriotic War no matter where they
live.'' He did not say how.

The issue is most alive among individual participants in the war itself.

Vilis Samsons, an elderly historian, headed units of partisans during the
war. He was a mine-layer, and his exploits of destroying 130 Nazi trains
were well-known to Latvian schoolchildren in Soviet times. He was Mr.
Kononov's commander and fears that historical revisionists are out to get
him.

''Our object was to fight the Germans,'' he said. ''We knew of their
crimes.'' Mr. Samsons called the civilian deaths in the Kononov case
''accidents of war'' committed during an attack on a Nazi-armed village
militia.

At the opposite pole stands Nikolajs Romanovsky. Like Mr. Samsons, he was a
mine-layer, except his targets were Soviet tanks. He joined the Legion in
reaction to prewar Soviet deportations, survived heavy fighting and was
imprisoned after the war. ''Crimes against humanity have to be prosecuted
whether it's the Nazi side or the other,'' he said

(source: International Herald Tribune)