July 11



AUSTRALIA:


Film by Holocaust denier pulled from Australian film festival

A controversial film made by British historian and Holocaust-denier David
Irving was pulled Thursday from the schedule of a Melbourne film festival
for fear of protest.

Richard Wolstencroft, the director of the Melbourne Underground Film
Festival, said demonstrators had blocked organisers from entering a venue
where the film was to have screened Thursday.

``All kinds of ugliness has happened,'' Wolstencroft said.

``It's far too scary ... We will never play another film by a historical
revisionist again.''

Wolstencroft declined to say whether festival organisers had received
threats over its screening of the film or who had locked the cinema.

Earlier this week Australia's Jewish community failed in its legal bid to
have the film, ``The Search for the Truth in History,'' banned.

The Jewish Community Council of Victoria state said the film vilified
Jewish people and incited others to hate Jews.

It lodged a complaint two weeks ago with the Equal Opportunities
Commission, claiming the film breached Victoria's Racial and Religious
Tolerance Act.

Irving made the film in response to having been banned from entering
Australia in 1993.

Australasian Union of Jewish Students Victorian vice president Geoffrey
Kozminsky, who was among the demonstrators Thursday, welcomed the
cancellation.

``We're happy that Melbourne's holocaust survivors don't have to be
subjected to lies, anti-Semitism and racism, after everything they have
been through,'' he said.

Wolstencroft said while the festival did not support Irving's ideas ``we
do support his right to freedom of speech.''

``Australians do have the right to hear his perspective.''

Irving has been turned down for an Australian visa three times, most
recently in January, in part due to his 1992 conviction in Germany for
defaming the memory of the dead.

Irving has written numerous accounts denying the reality of the Holocaust
- Nazi Germany's systematic slaughter of some six million Jews between
1933 and 1945.

Wolstencroft said the festival would ``happily programme anything by the
Jewish community'' next year.

(source: Agence France Presse)




NEW ZEALAND:

Academic in Holocaust controversy launches book



A book co-edited by controversial former Massey University historian Joel
Hayward has been launched at the university.

Dr Hayward was embroiled in controversy in 2000 when he was accused of
denying the Holocaust in his master's thesis.

The thesis was written at Canterbury University in 1993.

The university later apologised and Dr Hayward wrote an addendum to his
thesis.

He was a senior lecturer and programme co-ordinator for defence and
strategic studies at Massey University before leaving last year.

Since then he has pursued a career as a freelance writer and has had four
books published this year.

Dr Hayward did not talk about the controversy at the book launch, apart
from commenting that he had had "a dark year or two".

The book launched last night - Born to Lead? - is a study of New Zealand
military commanders.

It was co-edited by Glyn Harper, who teaches in Massey University's Centre
for Defence Studies.

(source: New Zealand Herald)




GERMANY:

Progressive Jews mark 75th anniversary in Berlin


The largest Jewish movement celebrated the 75th anniversary of its first
conference on Thursday in the city where the Holocaust was planned.

German Interior Minister Otto Schily said the choice of Berlin to
mark World Union for Progressive Judaism anniversary was ''a sign the
community has become a lively, firm part of cultural and religious life in
Germany.''

Germany has the fastest growing Jewish community in the world.
Before the systematic attempt by Nazi Germany to kill off European Jews,
the country had some 600,000 Jews.

Since the early 1990s Germany's Jewish population has mushroomed to
more than 100,000 from 30,000, swelled by immigrants from the former
Soviet republics.

''Jewish immigration is an important sign of trust in German
society and our democracy,'' said Schily. ''We will continue to make every
effort to strengthen the Jewish community in all its religious
persuasions.''

The German government last month signed an agreement with the
Central Council of Jews in Germany to pay 3 million euros ($3.41 million)
per year towards maintaining Jewish cultural property as well as expanding
and integrating the Jewish community.

(source: Reuters)




USA:

Holocaust survivor tells of horrors in new book


The children cowered in an open field encircled by Nazi barbed wire
infants, toddlers and school- age kids wailing in a howl of foreign
tongues: Mother, Father, help us.

'Benjamin A. Samuelson,' an 18-year-old Romanian Jew interned at Auschwitz
in 1944, then led the tear-streaked mass to its death.

In the throng he saw a face, an 11-year-old girl, her eyes red and
swollen, his sister Gitel Marim. Their eyes met.

"She was crying. She was so helpless, going into the gas chamber. She was
so helpless there was nothing I could do about it,' Samuelson recalled
nearly 60 years later from his San Fernando Valley-area home.

"I was numb, plain numb. I was like a ghost. I did what I was told to do,
that's it. I didn't know they were going to execute me after 90 days. I
wanted to go in with her together. There's no language for the horror.'

Samuelson was one of a handful of sonderkommandos-- or death-camp inmates
forced to assist in the killing and cremation of millions of Jews and
other enemies of Nazi Germany to survive the Holocaust.

He has just published the story of his burden in "Abiding Hope: Bearing
Witness to the Holocaust' (Ulyssian Publications, $24.95), as told to Jeff
Shevlowitz.

Many have hailed his account as told through a pseudonym to avoid
potential harassment of him and his family as a warm and deeply human
memoir of a Jewish youth's journey through hell.

"His (story) was so vivid, waiting so long to tell it, it's a treasure to
have someone speak unspeakable truths,' said Rabbi Steven B. Jacobs of Kol
Tikvah in Woodland Hills, who volunteered to write the forward for
Samuelson's book.

"This isn't just about the Holocaust. ... It's about being able to
transcend pain and suffering, the great fear of death, and to be able to
go on with your life.'

Samuelson's 287-page tale begins in his native village of Rozavlea,
Romania, where generations of his family had farmed, fished and lived a
poor but culturally rich Orthodox Jewish life.

He lovingly recounts his zades-- or grandfathers, his immediate and
extended family, whose devotion to Jewish custom matched its fondness for
wine, chicken soup, stuffed cabbage and such favorite dishes as chulindt,
a stew of barley, beans and beef.

After returning home from his jewelry business in Budapest, the teenage
Samuelson and other Jews of his village were rounded up by the Nazis and
crammed into boxcars for the trip to the Auschwitz death camp.

What followed was a year of beatings, deprivation and exhaustion at the
hands of his SS guards.

As a sonderkommando-- assigned to the children's camp, Samuelson herded
prisoners, loaded bodies and shoveled ashes of the dead.

He also managed to escape by crawling into a pile of dead inmates' clothes
and was nearly bayoneted by suspicious guards before fleeing to another
portion of the camp.

Throughout his harrowing imprisonment at four concentration camps
Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dora and Bergen-Belson Samuelson survived numerous
close calls, including the gallows at an experimental hospital and a
trainload of poisoned bread.

After Auschwitz, he never again saw his father, mother, little sister or
many other relatives.

"Tragedy piled upon tragedy,' said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of
the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, who read Samuelson's
manuscript.

"First and foremost, these people were victims,' he said. "The
sonderkommandos,-- they were at the end of the line,' unlike the
kapos,-- or guards who volunteered to police fellow prisoners for special
privileges.

Si Frumkin, a 72-year-old Holocaust survivor from Studio City, also holds
no grudges.

"I don't know how he manages to keep his sanity,' said Frumkin, who
recalled 10 sonderkommandos from Auschwitz assigned to build a
crematory at his labor camp outside Dachau.

"The kapos were by choice, ambitious people. ... Often as brutal as the
Germans themselves.'

Samuelson wrote his book, he said, to bear witness to the Nazi crimes, to
prevent them from being repeated.

He tells of his fight with God, his battle with himself, and his abiding
hope that good will prevail.

"Sometimes, no matter how angry you are with God or how much you try to
deny His very existence, an incident will occur that makes you believe in
God all over again,' he writes of one of many miracles to befall him.

He also tells how a farm boy from Romania grew up to not only survive the
Holocaust, but fight in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence and become a
successful entrepreneur and Valley resident for 35 years.

"It hurts,' said Samuelson, 78, a stocky man of 5-foot-6 with a bristly
mustache and humble manner, whose home is adorned with smiling photographs
of his wife, three children and six grandchildren.

"It was the worst thing in my life, when they had the babies closed into
the camp, sitting in the field. If you would hear the crying of the little
children, it has haunted me for life. The children, I saw many dead, they
don't go out of my mind, 24 hours a day,' he said.

"I didn't want to write the book. I'm having nightmares every night. I
denied it for so many years, it belongs in the past but I do want the
world to know about it so that it shall never happen again.'

(source: Pasadena (Calif). Star News)

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

Justice Dept. hunts Nazis---Special office, formed in 1979, has deported
57 from United States


In Clinton Township, Michigan, Johann Leprich is the latest person snared
in the U.S. Department of Justice's effort to locate and prosecute Nazis
living in the United States.

Since the Office of Special Investigations was formed in 1979, 71 Nazis
have been stripped of U.S. citizenship and 57 have been deported.

"It is the responsibility of the government to show you are never out of
reach of the law," Greg Palmore, the Detroit-based spokesman for the
Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said.

The special office was formed to uncover people in hiding who took part in
Nazi-sponsored acts of persecution before and during World War II, and are
living or are trying to enter the United States. The office has a database
that includes more than 70,000 people who are linked to the Nazis.

Between the end of the war and the creation of the office, only two people
were deported.

Leprich, 78, of Clinton Township, is at least the third Macomb County man
to be accused of lying about being a Nazi concentration camp guard.

Ferdinand Hammer of Sterling Heights was deported in 2000 to Austria.
Hammer had worked as a guard to escort prisoners from a camp in Poland to
Berlin.

Iwan Mandycz, also of Sterling Heights, was accused of working as an SS
guard in 1943 at a camp near Lublin, Poland.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Holocaust Restitution Deal Still Elusive


The North American Jewish federation system is hearing a debate over
whether to spend Holocaust restitution on education or on poor survivors,
but a resolution seems as distant as ever.

On Monday, the Claims Conference -- the main organization in charge of
Holocaust reparations spending -- and an association of groups called the
Holocaust Survivors Foundation took their conflicting views to the United
Jewish Communities, the federation system's umbrella organization.

Both sides stated their claims at UJC's New York headquarters.

"I think people learned a lot about people's differences of opinions,"
said Rabbi Israel Singer, the Claims Conference president.

Federation officials lauded the session as a first step in their own
deliberations on the controversy.

Lorraine Blass, a senior UJC planner who is heading the organization's
Holocaust Survivors Services Committee, called the meeting "the beginning
of a process."

"The committee will continue its deliberations about a very complex set of
issues," she said.

At issue is a Claims Conference policy, dating to 1994, to spend 20
percent of $430 million from the sale of recovered but unclaimed East
German Jewish property on Holocaust education, documentation and research.

The rest of the money is spent on survivors.

Since its founding in 1951, the Claims Conference has spent a portion of
unclaimed reparations money on educational ventures such as the Yad Vashem
Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. The 1994 policy formalized such moves.

However, in recent years calls have increased for all of the money to go
directly to ailing and financially needy survivors.

According to a 2002 report by the Association of Jewish Family and
Children's Agencies, about 40 percent of the 127,000 to 145,000 survivors
in the United States lack enough money to pay for home and medical care.
Some $30 million is needed annually to help them, the report estimated.

Calls to boost survivor aid intensified after Rabbi Singer wrote an essay
last year calling for a new Jewish organization to use the unspent portion
of the $11 billion in overall Holocaust restitution on "the future needs
of the Jewish people" in areas such as education, to "rebuild the Jewish
soul and spirit."

Meanwhile, the Holocaust Survivors Foundation lobbied federation leaders,
and the Claims Conference met with survivors and federation officials
around North America.

Some federation leaders began calling for the Claims Conference to change
its spending priorities. That sparked a similar resolution earlier this
year by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the UJC's decision to
appoint the committee that oversaw this week's meeting.

Others, however, say the 80-20 split is equitable.

Ultimately the central question is not simply about spending, but "should
that period of time be forgotten?" asked Eli Zborowski, a survivor who is
a top fund-raiser for the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and who
favors supporting Holocaust education projects.

Survivor needs "should be addressed by the community at large," and the
Claims Conference alone shouldn't be blamed for their situation, Mr.
Zborowski said.

At stake is not only the Claims Conference spending but the budgets of
federations themselves: Many federations already aid survivors directly or
through local social service agencies, which the Claims Conference also
assists.

Aside from its member federations' budgets, the UJC has no authority over
Claims Conference policy. Changes can be made only by the Claims
Conference's board of directors, which represents 24 Jewish organizations
and holds its annual meeting July 22-23.

UJC officials met in a closed executive session after Monday's meeting.

"We are going to continue our discussions and decide what, if any,
communications we will give to the Claims Conference," Ms. Blass said.

Claims Conference spokeswoman Hillary Kessler-Godin characterized the
session as "an introduction" to the debate for the UJC.

She would not say whether the UJC meeting ultimately would impact Claims
Conference spending.

"There are many opinions on this subject within the Jewish community and
among survivors, and they'll all be taken into account at the board
meeting," she said.

Judging from comments after the meeting by Holocaust Survivors Foundation
members, Claims Conference officials and federation officials, it seems
few people are budging from their positions.

Julius Berman, chairman of the Claims Conference, said help for needy
survivors worldwide should come not just from the Claims Conference, but
from the Swiss banks settlement, the Holocaust-era insurance company
settlement and the federations themselves.

"In that effort, it may be necessary for the federation system to
re-analyze what its priorities are," Mr. Berman said.

Though the Holocaust Survivors Foundation and others say $30 million would
be enough to help survivors domestically, Mr. Berman said, U.S. survivors
represent only 10 percent of the number worldwide.

"That means you need $300 million" annually for needy survivors in places
such as the former Soviet Union, where many are "living in hovels," he
added.

Among those who argued Monday for aiding U.S. survivors was Mark Talisman,
who as chief aide to Rep. Charles Vanik (D-Ohio) wrote the 1974
Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which tied Soviet trade privileges to Russian
Jews' right to emigrate freely.

"Everyone wants to see" Holocaust education "goals met, but it's very hard
in the face of suffering and death -- and that's not being melodramatic,"
he said.

If the Claims Conference and the authorities overseeing funds from the
Swiss banks and Holocaust-era insurance cases could come up with money for
survivors, the Claims Conference "wouldn't need to change their formula
much," Mr. Talisman said.

(source: Jewish Telegraphic Agency)





NORTHERN IRELAND:

City to honour memory of mass murders


RACISM and intolerance must never again give rise to crimes against
humanity, Secretary of State Paul Murphy has said.

He was welcoming Home Secretary David Blunkett's decision to choose
Belfast to host the fourth National Holocaust Memorial Day next January
27.

Mr Murphy said: "The Northern Ireland commemorations for Holocaust
Memorial Day held in Belfast in 2002 and in Armagh in 2003 were poignant
and moving reminders to us of the great suffering caused during the
Holocaust and other more recent acts of genocide in other parts of the
world.

"I am confident that many in society here will look forward to the
opportunity of communicating the importance of the lessons learned and
still to be learned from these events."

The 2004 commemoration theme is 'From the Holocaust to Rwanda: lessons
learned, lessons still to learn' to mark the 10th anniversary of the
genocide there which left one million people dead in 100 days.

Mr Blunkett said: "Holocaust Memorial Day is vitally important, not just
so we remember those who were abused and murdered by the Nazis, but to
encourage us to take a critical look at the world today and challenge
racism and intolerance head on."

He said Northern Ireland had a proven commitment to Holocaust Memorial
Day. The commemoration will be held in the Waterfront Hall.

Lord Mayor Martin Morgan said: "The commemoration will reflect our
commitment to promoting a just and socially inclusive society where
racism, victimisation and other forms of intolerance have no place."

(source: Belfast Ireland)