June 19



USA:

French Railroad Holocaust Suit Reinstated


A federal appeals court in Manhattan has reinstated a three-year-old
lawsuit by Holocaust survivors and their heirs against the French National
Railroad for delivering more than 75,000 Jews and others to Nazi death
camps in World War II.

The court ruled that Judge David G. Trager of Federal District Court in
Brooklyn erred in 2001 in dismissing the action because the railroad was
an entity of a foreign state immune from American litigation under a 1976
Congressional act. But the ground for dismissal was not that clear-cut,
the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled on Friday,
sending the case back to the lower court.

The issue, the appellate judges said, was whether the State Department in
the 1940's would have authorized such litigation, as the executive
department was called upon to do before the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act
of 1976.

Lawyers who brought the case called the ruling a triumph and said it could
open long-secret archives. The suit alleges that the railroad billed the
German and French governments per person per kilometer for transporting
the victims.

"It's a big victory for us," said Harriet Tamen of Hurt Levine &
Papadakis, which filed the case in Brooklyn in September 2000.

Andreas F. Lowenfeld, a professor at the New York University School of Law
who argued the railroad's appeal, scoffed at the prospect of determining
the intent of the State Department in the 1940's. He said the railroad may
appeal.

(source: New York Times)





GREECE:


Washington File


19 June 2003
Transcript: 60th Anniversary of Holocaust of Greek Jews
(Amb. Miller's remarks in Thessaloniki on behalf of Elie Wiesel)
(1660)

U.S. Ambassador to Greece Thomas J. Miller joined senior Greek
officials, representatives of the Jewish community of Greece and
others June 16 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust of
the Greek Jews.

The event -- co-sponsored by the City of Thessaloniki, the Jewish
Community of Thessaloniki, the Greek Ministries of Foreign Affairs,
Culture and Press, and the U.S. Embassy -- included the opening of the
exhibit "The Holocaust of the Greek Jews: The Persecutors and the
Rescuers."

Nobel Laureate for Peace Elie Wiesel had traveled to Greece to address
the gathering but had to cancel at the last minute for health reasons.
Ambassador Miller therefore addressed the audience of 500 plus on
Professor Wiesel's behalf as well as his own.

He read four "brief great passages" from the speech Wiesel gave in
1986 when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.

"I will tell Elie Wiesel when I see him tomorrow morning how tonight
you honored the memory of the 50,000 Jews of Thessaloniki who perished
during the Holocaust, of all the victims of the Holocaust, and of all
those who face persecution even today," Miller told the gathering.

Following are the ambassador's remarks on behalf of himself and Elie
Wiesel:

(begin transcript)

Remarks by Ambassador Thomas J. Miller
Opening of the Exhibit
"The Holocaust of the Greek Jews: The Persecutors and the Rescuers"

Royal Theater, Thessaloniki
Monday, June 16, 2003

Thank you for your remarks Mr. President.

Mr. Minister, Mr. Mayor, President Saltiel, Members of the Jewish
Community, honored guests,

Elie Wiesel very much wanted to be with you tonight. Elie is an old
friend of mine and we have been talking about this trip for many
weeks. Unfortunately, when he arrived here from Spain on Sunday, he
was quite ill. We took him to the hospital, he was admitted to
intensive care, and the good news is that he will recover. If any of
you know Elie -- I know some of you know him -- you would know that
when I visited with him today at the hospital he had two things on his
mind. One was his great regret about not being here, even though the
doctors told him that in his condition it was out of the question.
Two, he insisted on keeping this an open question to the last minute.

For those of you who know Elie, he is a man of great emotion, a man of
great feeling, and because this event is taking place in memory of the
Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, he tried to convey to me the
emotions and feelings he would have conveyed, were he with you here
today.

Elie Wiesel will be 75 years old in September, and as David Saltiel
said, he had been sent to Auschwitz when he was 16. He has spent those
years between 16 and almost 75 reminding us of the Holocaust and the
tremendous damage and catastrophe that it is. And on this 60th
anniversary of the Holocaust here in Thessaloniki, I want you to know
that he is with you in spirit to remember the more than 50,000 Jews of
Thessaloniki who were deported to death camps.

Sixteen and a half years ago Elie Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize. Many years before that, he had become the conscience of
America, indeed the conscience of the world. To many of us he has been
our moral compass.

When I was visiting with Elie this morning and he had an oxygen mask
over his face and was all hooked up to all kinds of tubes giving him
the necessary medicine, I noticed that on his left arm was his number
from Auschwitz. It reminded me of a conversation I had with Elie many
years ago. I remember him telling me something that I kept in my mind
forever, and it guided me and many of my colleagues: "Don't ever
forget history, but don't be a captive of it."

As David Saltiel so eloquently has already mentioned, Elie shared his
block, his dwelling -- I can't call it a house -- at Auschwitz with a
number of Jews of Thessaloniki. As he wrote in the introduction to the
book From the White Tower to the Gates of Auschwitz that Lakovos
Hantali wrote: Although he could not understand the Ladino many of
your relatives and ancestors spoke, he remembers the Jews of
Thessaloniki as brave and good-hearted people, and recalls that others
marveled at your solidarity and heroism in the face of death.

Also in the same introduction, Elie touched on the challenges of
remembering and the moral difficulties of surviving. He passed through
the Kingdom of Night to enlighten us with his message of shared
humanity, of compassion and the defense of human rights which has
characterized his life.

If you allow me, I would like to share with you four brief great
passages from the speech he gave in 1986 when he accepted the Nobel
Peace Prize that convey as well as anything I have ever heard the
sense of responsibility that Elie Wiesel has felt for humanity and the
moral compass that he has been to all of us.

The first passage says and I quote:

"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
Silence encourages the tormenter, never the tormented. Sometimes we
must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is
in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.
Whenever and wherever men and women are persecuted because of their
race, religion or political views, that place must -- at that moment
-- become the center of the universe."

The second passage I would like to share with you, I would like you to
remember that it was said over 16 years ago -- and just think for a
second how relevant it is today:

"Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere. That
applies also to Palestinians to whose plight I am sensitive but whose
methods I deplore when they lead to violence. Violence is not the
answer. Terrorism is the most dangerous of answers. They are
frustrated, that is understandable, something must be done. The
refugees and their misery. The children and their fear. The uprooted
and their hopelessness. Something must be done about their situation.
Both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people have lost too many
sons and daughters and have shed too much blood. This must stop, and
all attempts to stop it must be encouraged."

Think about that for a second. This was said 16 years ago and it is
relevant today.

The third passage that Elie read in his acceptance speech said:

"As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom can not be true.
As long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish
and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they
are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices
are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends
on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs."

The last quote that I would like to share with you reminds me very
much of something that Elie and I talked about this morning. He said:

"We know that every moment is a moment of grace, an hour of offering;
not to share them would mean to betray them. Our lives no longer
belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately."

When we were talking with Elie yesterday about the possibility that he
could not make it up here, I told him a story about how I had been
fortunate enough to be part of the delegation that came here in
October of 1997 to be present when the Holocaust Memorial was
established in Thessaloniki. I also told him about the intent by the
government to establish a national day of remembrance, I believe on
January 18. Even though Elie had an oxygen mask on and was looking
pale when I told him of these stories, I could see a smile come across
his face.

Frankly, even though lots of medicine was pumped into him through all
the connected tubes, the best medicine he was getting was when I was
telling him of the support of the Community here. I promise you all
that first thing tomorrow morning when I visit Elie I will tell him of
the speeches, I will tell him of the many people who were here, I will
tell him of the warm words about him, about his life, and I will tell
him of the warmth that I have received in this room tonight.

I join Elie in thanking the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry
of Culture, the Ministry of Press and Information, the City of
Thessaloniki, and the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki for supporting
this very important event. I will tell Elie Wiesel when I see him
tomorrow morning how tonight you honored the memory of the 50,000 Jews
of Thessaloniki who perished during the Holocaust, of all the victims
of the Holocaust, and of all those who face persecution even today. I
have a very strong feeling that what I relate to Elie will be far
better medicine than what is pumping through his veins, that this is
the real medicine that will sustain Elie Wiesel. He asked me to tell
you he will be here; I promise you that.

Mr. Mayor, Mr. President, on behalf of my good friend Elie I thank you
from the bottom of both of our hearts for those fine gifts that you
have given to him. I promise you that they will be in a place of
prominence in his house, and I can also promise you that you will
always be in his heart. Thank you all very much. Thank you.

(end transcript)

(source: Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of
State)





ISRAEL/ROMANIA:

A New Form of Holocaust Denial


The Romanian governments statement [though subsequently recanted - Ed.]
that there was no Holocaust inside Romanian borders between the years
1940-1945 was a shocking and blatant falsehood. It was also the latest
example of a new type of Holocaust-denial.

The fact is that more than 400,000 Jews from Romania were murdered during
the Holocaust. Nearly half of them were machine-gunned to death by the
German Einsatzgruppen squads, assisted by the Romanian army, in 1941. The
remainder were either murdered in Romanian death camps such as Bogdanovka
and Domanevka, or deported to death camps elsewhere, or massacred in local
pogroms.

But Romania is not alone in distorting the facts of the Holocaust.

The journalist Christopher Hitchens has adopted a line found in the
writings Holocaust deniers, claiming it is now undisputed that there were
no gas chambers or extermination camps on German soil, in other words, at
Belsen or Dachau or Buchenwald.

Hitchenss statement glosses over the fact that while Bergen-Belsen,
Dachau, and Buchenwald were not designed to serve as Treblinka-style death
camps, many thousands of Jews (including Anne Frank) were indeed murdered
in Belsen, and at least tens of thousands were murdered in Dachau and
Buchenwald, via slave labor, savage medical experiments, untreated
diseases, and phenol injections. Hitchenss statement also ignores the fact
that there were gas chambers in some camps within Germany, such as
Ravensbruck and Sachsenhausen, near Berlin.

In a similar vein, Arab spokesmen routinely claim that the Palestinian
Arabs played no role in the Holocaust. This assertion surfaced among the
Israeli Arabs who recently visited Auschwitz. Author-journalist Yossi
Klein Halevi, who took part in the visit, reported in the New Republic
that as they entered the Auschwitz grounds, one of the Arab participants
remarked, Arabs had nothing to do with this. The Palestinians are also
victims of this place.

Halevi writes that he thought to himself, What about Arab pressure on the
British to turn back refugee boats? Or the Mufti, the Palestinian leader
who spent the war years as a Nazi propagandist in Berlin?

The Mufti, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who was the undisputed religious and
political leader of the Palestinian Arabs, was not alone in Berlin. He
brought with him to Hitlers Germany an entourage that included many of his
senior aides, who returned to leadership roles in the Palestinian Arab
community after the war.

In addition to making fiery anti-Jewish radio broadcasts from Berlin to
the Arab world, the Mufti organized Arab sabotage squads that were
parachuted into the Mideast to attack Allied facilities (and nearly
succeeded in carrying out the Muftis scheme to dump large quantities of
German chemical poison into the Tel Aviv water system). He also persuaded
the Nazis to reject a prisoner exchange that would have freed 4,000 Jewish
children; the children were then shipped to Auschwitz.

The Mufti also helped develop an Arab Legion of the German Army, mobilized
Soviet Muslims to fight alongside the Nazis, and recruited Bosnian Muslims
for an all-Muslim unit of the SS called the Handschar division, which
committed so many atrocities that thirty-eight of its officers were later
tried as war criminals. In July 1945, Husseini himself was indicted by the
Yugoslavian government for war crimes yet he continued to be regarded as
a hero among the Palestinian Arabs.

Now contrast the Romanian and Arab denials of their roles in the Holocaust
with the actions of the leaders of Austria, Croatia, and Poland.

Then-Chancellor Franz Vranitsky of Austria admitted before parliament in
1991 that the Austrians were not Hitlers first victims, as many Austrians
were fond of claiming, but rather that they willingly participated in the
crimes of Nazism.

The then-president of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, publicly apologized in 1994
for a book he had authored in which he minimized the Holocaust and in
particular whitewashed the Croatian role in the slaughter. The pro-Nazi
Ustashi regime in wartime Croatia murdered an estimated 20,000 Jews in the
Jasenovac death camp.

Polish President Aleksander Kwaeniewski last year publicly acknowledged
the full, sometimes bitter truth that Polish citizens, not the German
occupation forces, were primarily responsible for the massacre of 1600
Jews in the Polish town of Jedwabne in July 1941. After Polish migr
historian Jan Tomasz Gross exposed the Poles role, the Polish governments
Institute of National Memory investigated the matter and Polands leaders
finally admitted that the traditional claim of we didnt do it was false.

Whether or not Arab leaders will soon follow in the footsteps of the
Austrians, Croatians, and Poles by acknowledging their roles in the
Holocaust remains to be seen. One thing is certain: their extreme
distortions of Holocaust history are nothing less than a new version of
Holocaust denial Prof. Robert Wistrich calls it a soft form of Holocaust
denial and should be recognized as such.
--------------------------------------------------------
source: Dr. Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for
Holocaust Studies, which focuses on issues related to Americas response
to the Holocaust.





USA//FLORIDA:

Hollywood takes step to acquiring Holocaust museum


Jackie Gonzalez couldn't stop shaking hands, hugging and
smiling. Downtown Hollywood, home to restaurants, nightclubs and a few
small niche shops, had just taken the first step toward landing an
international Holocaust museum.

"This raises the bar for the entire city, in terms of culture, education
and just having a first-class place for people to spend their time,''
Gonzalez, Hollywood's director of economic development administration,
said Tuesday after commissioners approved an initial step in the process.

"I just can't imagine a better thing for downtown,'' Gonzalez said.

The city commissioners, in their role as Community Redevelopment Agency
board members, unanimously gave the CRA permission to negotiate buying a
vacant building at 2031 Harrison St., which once housed Deco Drive
nightclub.

The commission has to approve any purchase, which is estimated at $1
million, and the museum directors said they could be open in about one
year.

Plans call for the Holocaust Documentation & Education Center, Inc., to
pay to renovate the building so it can house its vast collection of
letters, artwork and artifacts into the new museum.

Representatives of the organization said they've been operating for 23
years to help educate children and adults about the Holocaust, and have
been instrumental in helping similar museums open around the country.

It has never had its own museum, but instead have loaned its collection to
others.

(source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel)