May 1



GERMANY/USA (FLORIDA):

German insurers publish list of Holocaust victims with policies


As a small child, Erika Brodsky watched her young father grab his
briefcase each morning and rush off to work for the insurance company
Allianz in Vienna.

Then the Nazis came. Her family, including her parents, grandparents and
dozens of cousins, aunts and uncles, were shipped to concentration camps
where they ultimately died. Her father was killed in Auschwitz.

Now she wants payback.

Brodsky, now of Delray Beach, is among the hundreds of thousands of
survivors and heirs who suspect, or have written proof, that their
relatives held insurance policies that were not paid by German companies.

This week, after years of delay, at least two large German insurance
companies are making public the names of more than 363,000 victims of the
Holocaust who were covered by life insurance policies but whose records
were previously sealed -- bringing the total of known claimants to about
439,000.

As a result, for the first time, relatives of the victims, many now living
in New York, Florida and California, will have evidence of life insurance
coverage and be able to file claims for benefits that could be worth tens
of millions of dollars.

Brodsky's father is not yet named on the list, but she's convinced he had
a policy, and she has fought for years to get access to company records
for proof.

"It sounded like it would be preposterous to think someone works for an
insurance company in an upper position and not have any insurance," she
said. "I owe something to my parents. They're killing us a second time.
It's evil."

Internet database

Relatives of the victims can see if their family member had a life
insurance policy of any kind, which includes education, dowry, endowment
or pension/annuity policies, during 1920-1945, by typing in their name on
an Internet site --www.icheic.org. Though the site has been operational
since 2000, the names of 363,232 insured have been added to the list over
the past two days.

The overwhelming majority of claimants purchased their insurance in
Germany. But an additional 75,000 names already on the list come from
throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, particularly Lithuania, France, Poland,
Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Greece.

The International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims in
Washington, D.C., warns that the lists are still incomplete and relatives
who think they have a claim should file anyway. The final addition of
names is expected by June 30. Families will have until the end of
September to file claims.

The commission also warns that just because a relative is actually on the
list, family members may not be able to collect because the claim might
have already been settled through other post-war reparation programs or
because the contract lapsed for reasons unconnected to the Holocaust.

"I think that this is the most important agreement on the publication of
lists that has ever been reached," said Dale Franklin, insurance
commission claims spokesman. "It will benefit people all over the world
with this access to information that was previously unavailable."

The agreement is important to the Jewish community because "there was a
large Jewish population in Germany that was affluent and we know policies
that have gone unpaid. And more important, on a political note,
historically speaking the companies have tried to withhold this
information or keep it secret," Franklin said. "Under this agreement, they
are demonstrating they want to bring closure to the issue. It's a
testament of good will on all sides."

Rositta Kenigsberg, executive vice president of the Holocaust
Documentation and Education Center in North Miami, said she's not as
optimistic. She said the process is still cumbersome for ailing survivors.

Survivors dying

"Once the name is public, you still have to prove you were related, you
have to find birth certificates," she said. "This is not an easy thing.
You can't just say you are related to Tom Brown. Survivors are very
frustrated at this point. It's just the beginning," she said. "I'm not
jumping up and down yet. I'd like to know how long this will take and how
agonizing this will be."

She said she's frustrated because many survivors who could have benefited
in South Florida have died over the past few years, while international
commissions were fighting with the German insurance companies to release
the information.

"They are the heirs and they are entitled to their family's possessions,"
she said. "They are not looking for anybody to give them handouts. This
belongs to them."

Miami-based attorney Sam Dubbin agrees the process is difficult. He
represents a handful of clients in South Florida seeking insurance
payments who have been turned down. He said in some cases clients have
receipts of insurance payments by their relatives and were still told it
wasn't enough.

"It's yet another in a succession of agreements and milestones that have
been presented with great fanfare only to result in great disappointment
for survivors and heirs," Dubbin said. "I don't want people to get their
hopes up."

European insurers that sold billions of dollars worth of coverage as World
War II approached and routinely refused to pay claims after the war have
fought the publication of policyholders' names.

Critics say the insurers want to continue to avoid paying claims and to
avoid documenting the magnitude of claims.

As a condition of permitting the names to be published, the companies
insisted that their names be kept confidential, but insurance commission
officials said that Germany's two largest life insurers, Allianz and
Victoria zu Berlin, were among those disclosing names.

The German companies are making the names available as a result of a $5.1
billion agreement in 2000 between the United States and Germany on a range
of Holocaust issues. After two more years of negotiations, the German
companies agreed in fall to disclose the names and to provide $100 million
to pay claims and $175 million for payments to Jewish charities.

(source: Sun-Sentinel)





SOUTH CAROLINA:

Hundreds march to remember Holocaust


About 425 people quietly walked down the middle of Calhoun Street on
Wednesday evening, holding yellow candles and signs.

It was the biggest crowd in recent memory for the annual Holocaust
Remembrance March, sponsored by the Charleston Jewish Federation.

Numbers may have been up because of efforts by the Christian-Jewish
Council of Greater Charleston to involve more Christians this year.

Several priests in white collars walked with the crowd, which also
included men with yarmulkes and a man and woman each draped in an Israeli
flag.

Several downtown churches were scheduled to ring their bells during the
march, and at least one congregation along the route lit a fire to show
its support.

The march started at 6:30 p.m. from the Holocaust remembrance sculpture in
Marion Square.

A speaker suggested everyone walk in silence and think about the tens of
thousands of Jews who died on a forced march from Ausch-witz, the most
notorious Nazi death camp.

A Knights of Columbus honor guard led the way, followed by American and
Israeli flags held aloft.

A squadron of city police cleared the way and held back traffic.

Police Chief Reuben Greenberg, wearing his navy blue uniform, walked with
the crowd. He was accompanied by officers on foot, horses, motorcycles,
bicycles, cruisers, a van, a bus, SWAT vehicles and a helicopter overhead.

As the marchers walked quietly down Calhoun Street, they passed a small
fire burning outside Bethel United Methodist Church at Calhoun and Pitt
streets. Ralph and Mimi Cannon, standing near the logs burning in a small
metal bucket, said it was to support the marchers.

Throngs of College of Charleston students standing and sitting on the
sidewalks watched somberly as the procession passed them.

The marchers quietly hoped this next generation was getting the message:
The Holocaust must not be forgotten.

"If we don't remember, history will raise its ugly head and repeat
itself," Sam Engel, chairman of the remembrance committee, said at a
service after the march.

The service was held at Brith Sholom Beth Israel Orthodox synagogue.

"It is our obligation to remember," Reform Rabbi Anthony Holz said in his
invocation.

We must not forget the Holocaust, he said, "so we may never be blind to
the evil of which humans are capable ... to prevent such a destruction
from ever happening again, to Jews or to any human beings."

Hundreds of names were projected onto a screen. They were local family
members lost in the Holocaust.

Julie Kohner, whose mother survived several concentration camps, was the
keynote speaker. Her mother, Hanna Kohner, died in 1990 after writing a
book, "Hanna and Walter: A Love Story."

It tells how she and her husband were separated by the Nazi invasion and
how he tracked her down after the war.

"I am my parents' voice to the generations to come," said Julie Kohner,
who lives in Los Angeles.

"My mother's memory lives on, and the atrocities of the Holocaust will
never be forgotten."

(source: Charleston Post and Courier)




USA:

Coleman introduces bill to help Holocaust survivors collect on insurance


Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., introduced a bill Thursday to help Holocaust
survivors and heirs collect on insurance policies bought during the Nazi
era.

The legislation would allow states to demand that insurers provide
information on Holocaust-era policies. It would also give people a right
to sue foreign insurance companies in federal courts for denying benefits.

"For decades insurers have concealed information necessary to evaluate
whether or not they took advantage of victims of the Holocaust and their
heirs," Coleman said at a Capitol Hill news conference.

Several states, including Minnesota, have laws that require insurers to
submit records on Holocaust-era accounts. The legality of such measures is
being challenged in a case before the Supreme Court, involving a
California law.

(source: Minneapolis Star Tribune)





PENNSYLVANIA:

Holocaust victims remembered in 24-hour vigil


A day of mourning was set for Tuesday in order to commemorate those who
lost their lives in the Holocaust over 50 years ago.

Beginning on Monday night at 9 p.m., volunteers read the names Holocaust
victims for 24 straight hours.

"We do the name reading because we want to make it individual in order to
remember each and every one of them," said College freshman Jenna
Statfeld, a member of the planning committee. "They were people just like
you and me."

Penn Hillel's Holocaust Education Committee -- the group that organized
this event -- had a number of other things planned for the memorial as
well.

The group is collecting as many pennies as they can, and they hope to
acquire a million in order to show people what that number actually looks
like.

Statfeld explained that if people could see a million pennies and try to
imagine that 11 times over, they could begin to understand the incredible
amount of lives lost in the Holocaust.

The penny collecting will continue until the organization reaches its
goal, and then the money will be donated to a Holocaust education program.

Many of the people who read the names of victims -- largely provided by
Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum -- were actually volunteers from the
Penn community who were not even directly affiliated with the Holocaust
Education Committee, and they were encouraged to bring the names of family
members who had lost their lives in the Holocaust to the reading.

Before the name reading began late Monday night, singer and educator Jerry
Silverman gave a presentation on the genre of Holocaust music. Afterwards,
a candle-lighting ceremony followed to commemorate everyone who perished
in the Holocaust.

"I think it's really important for people to know and remember -- you see
people come over, and you know how affected they are by everything,"
Statfeld said.

The Red Cross was also involved with the program. The organization has
helped reunite people who were separated from their families during the
Holocaust. Now, with blood tests and information more readily available,
the Red Cross said that it is easier to find people today than it was 10
years ago.

(source: The Daily Pennsylvanian)




CALIFORNIA:

Holocaust vigil invokes grief and hopefulness


As part of Holocaust Remembrance Week, several dozen Stanford students and
community members met last night in White Plaza to hold a candlelight
vigil for tolerance. Participants lit candles, expressed personal thoughts
and shared a few moments of reflection.

"It wasn't an ethnic group doing this to other ethnic groups, it was
humans doing it to other humans,: said Palo Alto resident Gordon Reade
about the Holocaust. "As a human, I feel the need to accept responsibility
for what happened . . . and also to forgive myself."

Reades comments characterized a small but intimate gathering that
emphasized togetherness.

"No event affects just one group," said the week's organizer, sophomore
Sophie Roberts. "Holocaust Remembrance Week is not just for Jews."

Said vigil organizer Jonathan Elkin, a freshman, "It can be an opportunity
for all communities to think about the injustices that are still going on.
Hopefully our shared grief in all of our groups experiences will help us
work together for justice in all our communities today."

Another vigil organizer, freshman Adam Schwartz, spoke along similar
lines.

"It doesn't matter today if youre Jewish or not . . . because were all
victims of the Holocaust," he said. "The smallest of small things we can
do is be together and say we won't let this happen again."

Although the event was small and serious, it was also characterized by
hopefulness.

"Seeing everyone here tonight gives me hope that our future will be
beautiful," Roberts said.

(source: The Stanford Daily)





MASSACHUSETTS:

A Jewish soldier documents the Holocaust


Ellsworth "Al" Rosen gave them chocolate, water, pieces of clothing.

The then 21-year old U.S. infantryman didn't know what else to do. He was
stunned. People at home didn't believe they existed. But here was proof,
jammed into the cars of a disabled train- living and dead European Jews
who had been forced into a concentration camp by the Nazis.

"They were like walking skeletons," said Rosen, who stumbled across the
train in southern Germany during the final days of World War II. "We shot
off the locks and opened the doors. One-third of the people were already
dead. They were locked in the cars and had nothing to eat or drink for six
days.

"I was one of the few men in my outfit who could speak any Yiddish," said
Rosen, a longtime Brookline resident originally from Connecticut. "I
remember one of them said, 'You are a Jewish soldier?,' which for them was
very unusual."

Rosen and his company were not given orders to liberate the prisoners, so
after comforting them as much as possible, they left. A few days later
Rosen saw where the train originated: Dachau, one of the main Nazi
concentration camps, where 32,000 people died during the Holocaust. Rosen,
who was in the 36th Infantry Division, saw Dachau only days after the 45th
Infantry Division liberated it.

"I saw people who were too sick to stand," said Rosen. "I remember one guy
found a wheel barrel and he was pushing around two of his fellow
prisoners."

Dachau was not the only camp Rosen saw. Not long before encountering the
train, his company came upon a smaller camp of gypsies who were locked in
their barracks. Infuriated by what they saw, the U.S. soldiers killed the
SS guards.

"We were shocked," Rosen recalled.

Witnessing the camps left an indelible mark on Rosen who, after retiring
from a career as a philanthropist in 1991, began working on a documentary
about Americans such as himself who witnessed the horrors of the
Holocaust.

The film, "Bearing Witness: American Soldiers and the Holocaust," is
intended to be used in the classroom, so future generations understand how
and why Holocaust took place. To mark Holocaust Remembrance Day or "Yom
Hashoah," which was Tuesday, the Brookline Public Library aired the
21-minute film on Wednesday. Afterwards a panel discussed how the
Holocaust should be taught to future generations.

While Rosen and the Allied forces were grappling with the reality of the
concentration camps in April 1945, Adolf Hitler killed himself. The war in
Europe ended the following month and finished, for good, in Japan in
August. That's when Rosen's quest to inform the world about the Holocaust
began.

"The American policy was very ambivalent toward the camps and towards the
prisoners," Rosen said. "I became a reporter [for the Army in 1945] and
saw some of the pictures of the camps, and the cutlines said thousands of
Estonians, Latvians Pols were imprisoned. They did not say they were
Jewish. There was a deliberate policy to emphasize the nationality, not
the religion."

Rosen returned to the United States the following year and eventually
moved to Brookline, where he spent the bulk of his career as a
professional fundraiser for the Combined Jewish Philanthropies. Yet he
never forgot what he saw near Munich in the spring of 1945.

"I always talked about it because I thought it was important," said Rosen,
while sitting in his Griggs Road home last week.

Yet the world, he said, was slow to catch on.

"People really did not talk about it," Rosen said. "There was a
documentary on television in the 1970s that brought attention to the
Holocaust that was good. That was when it seemed you started to hear more
about it."

It was not until after he retired that he decided to tackle the film.

"I wanted make sure we have documentation of the experiences of people who
saw the camps and have the perspective of the Holocaust of Americans,"
Rosen said.

Rosen, a Library Trustee and former Town Meeting and School Committee
member, made the documentary with Jonathan Barkan, a professional producer
from Communications For Learning in Arlington. After learning that a
traditional hour-long documentary cost too much - $500,000 - Rosen opted
to make a shorter one for an audience of elementary school students, which
is more marketable than one intended to be aired on television, at a price
of $100,000.

Fortunately for Rosen, he had developed over his life a network of people
who both donated money to pay for the film and helped him find former
soldiers, prisoners and doctors to contribute to it.

The images in the film - film footage and photographs of smoldering human
ovens, starving people so weak they could not stand, piles of human shin
bones - are complemented by a narrator who explains the Holocaust in
simple language and first-person accounts of American witnesses to the
Holocaust.

One of the witnesses in the documentary, Szmulek Rosental, was taken from
his home in Poland and sent to Dachau at the age of 9. When the camp was
liberated, Rosenthal was 14. And a solider named Leon Satenstein took his
picture.

The story of the picture taken by Rosenthal, who now lives in Newton and
goes by the name Stephan Ross, and Satenstein, who lives in Brookline, is
just one of several Rosen spent years collecting before putting together
the documentary.

Ross, the founder of the New England Holocaust Memorial, helped dedicate a
monument in Boston on Sunday to the Allied soldiers who freed former
prisoners like him. (See sidebar.)

Rosen said he hopes "Bearing Witness," which is geared towards seventh and
eighth graders and comes with an accompanying study guide, will force
students to ask tough moral questions about war.

"We tried to raise moral issues like 'Is it right to shoot prisoners?,'"
Rosen said, referring to the SS guards he shot shortly after taking them
prisoner. "It's a question of how do you use power."

Rosen believes the film, which has been ordered by schools around the
country, will help teachers who he fears are ill-equipped to teach the
Holocaust.

"Many schools have the Holocaust as part of their curriculum, but they are
part of lessons about genocide and tolerance," Rosen said. "The specific
aspects of the Holocaust are unique in history in terms of its scope and
ruthlessness."

(source: Brookline TAB)