March 20



USA:

'Schindler's List' one of many key Holocaust films


Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List," which arrived on DVD last week,
received much praise for its shocking, stark verisimilitude. But it
captures just one of many uniquely moving Holocaust stories.

The Shoah Visual History Foundation, established by Spielberg after
filming "Schindler's List," has spent 10 years documenting the
recollections of Holocaust survivors. To date the foundation has filmed
more than 50,000 interviews with survivors, comprising an indispensable
resource of first-person accounts of one the most horrible events in
history.

Different roles

So given the wealth of documentary and archive material, and the number of
excellent Holocaust documentaries available on DVD, where do fictionalized
(if still historically faithful) films such as "Schindler's List" and
Roman Polanski's "The Pianist" (2002) fit in? Why study Spielberg's
meticulous re-creation of a concentration camp, when little he devised can
honestly match the powerful reality captured in Alain Resnais' shocking
documentary "Night and Fog" (1955), with its wrenching, groundbreaking
footage?

It's a tough moral call whenever the worlds of entertainment and education
intersect, especially given a subject as delicate as the Holocaust. That's
the subject of Annette Insdorf's book "Indelible Shadows: Film and the
Holocaust," which was honored two years ago by the National Board of
Review. Indeed, films about the Holocaust are sometimes dismissed as Oscar
bait, despite the fact that Holocaust films aren't as prevalent at the
Academy Awards as some claim.

"The only people who say we don't need another movie about the Holocaust
have never seen a movie about the Holocaust," says director James Moll.
"People feel they know everything there is to know, but they actually know
very little if anything about what took place.

"So I think that when people say, `Why do we need another film about the
Holocaust?' it taps into exactly why we need another film about the
Holocaust."

Moll directed the Oscar-winning documentary "The Last Days" (1998), about
the systematic murder of Hungarian Jews even as World War II was winding
down, and he also contributed "Voices of the List," an account of the
survivors saved by the German industrialist Oskar Schindler, on the
"Schindler's List" DVD. "The Last Days" is among the most powerful of
Holocaust documentaries on DVD, in no small part due to the first person
accounts of survivors Moll met while working with the Shoah Foundation.

Other Holocaust documentaries on DVD include: "Paragraph 175" (2000),
about the persecution of gays and lesbians in Nazi Germany; "Shoah"
(1985), the massive nine-hour account of witnesses and survivors; "The
Long Way Home" (1997), about the post-war fate of Jewish refugees; and
"Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2000), about
the rescue of thousands of Jewish children.

Even Spielberg admits, on the "Schindler's List" DVD, that the accounts of
actual survivors are "as powerful, perhaps more so, than any film."

But of course Spielberg never intended "Schindler's List," or any other
production, to supplant the stories of actual survivors. Rather he, like
Moll, sees movies such as "Schindler's List" or "The Last Days" as
complementary to the raw material amassed in the Shoah Foundation
archives.

Reaching the masses

"They're all different ways of telling the story," Moll says. "I don't
think any one is stronger than the other, and `Schindler's List' is a good
example of that.

"`Schindler's List' opened a lot of people's eyes to the Holocaust, since
a dramatic film is going to meet a much larger audience. There are too
many teenagers out there who have never heard of Auschwitz. There are too
many people who don't have a personal connection with the Holocaust, as I
didn't. Growing up not Jewish, my only connection was what I learned in
school. It wasn't until I started working with Steven Spielberg and the
Shoah Foundation that I started to connect and understand the enormity of
what happened with the Holocaust."

"`Schindler's List' has probably done more to educate people about the
Holocaust than almost anything you could name," says Douglas Greenberg,
president and CEO of the Shoah Foundation. "But it is still a movie. I
think what Steven felt was that because it was a movie, there needed to be
a place where the faces and the voices of Holocaust survivors could be
seen and heard forever. That's the Shoah Foundation.

"Different ways of communicating about the past, and particularly about
the Holocaust, are important. `Schindler's List' is one way, but we hope
that when people see `Schindler's List' it makes them curious enough that
they want to learn more about the subject. In a world in which there is
lots of Holocaust denial, it makes a difference to have people who can
say, 'I was there.'"

(source: Chicago Tribune)


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



For Holocaust Survivors, It's Law Versus Morality


In 1998, after Swiss banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion for keeping the
property of victims of the Nazis and for laundering the profits of Nazi
slave labor, the question arose: how should the money be spent, given that
only part of that sum could be traced back to individual who had their
money stolen?

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled that the poverty of
Holocaust survivors in the former Soviet Union required the bulk of the
available money, saying that current need is more important than perfect
restitution. In essence, he said survivors who live in richer countries
should receive less than those in poorer ones.

But that answer leaves some people, including many Holocaust survivors,
angry and frustrated. "The whole point of restitution is to compensate
people for their actual suffering at the time of the crime," said Thane
Rosenbaum, a law professor at Fordham University and the son of Holocaust
survivors.

History rather than charity should supply the guiding principles, said Mr.
Rosenbaum, the author of a forthcoming book, "The Morality of Justice,"
which argues that the legal system often fails to achieve moral results.
The Swiss bank settlement, he says in the book, is such a case.

"From a moral perspective, it's the victims' money," Mr. Rosenbaum said,
adding that it is up to survivors to determine how the money should be
used.

Edward R. Korman, the chief judge of the federal district court in
Brooklyn, acknowledged the difficulty of the problem. "A comparison of
needy survivors is by definition an odious process," he wrote in the
decision issued last week. But morality required him, he said, to send
some 70 percent of what may amount to $400 million to survivors in the
former Soviet Union, and only 4 percent to survivors in the United States.

Of the 900,000 or so Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution, 19 percent to
27 percent live in the former Soviet Union while 14 percent to 19 percent
live in the United States. Those in the former Soviet Union, the judge
wrote, live in desperate poverty. The poverty of some American survivors
is by contrast "clearly less pressing," he said, given the public
assistance and private charity available to them.

But Samuel J. Dubbin, a lawyer for the Holocaust Survivors Foundation-USA,
which says it represents more than 50 organizations and 20,000 American
survivors, objected to the judge's reasoning.

"You can't say that a survivor in need here is less worthy than a survivor
in need in the former Soviet Union," he said. "The reason you can't say
that is that this is survivor money. Maybe you could say that if this was
community money, if this were charity."

Instead, the foundation asked Judge Korman to base future distributions on
pro rata allocations to the nations where large numbers of survivors live
and only then require distribution within those nations to the neediest
survivors.

"There's not enough money to hand out to all the survivors,
unfortunately," said Leo Rechter, a 76-year-old retired banker who was
born in Vienna and spent the war in hiding. "The next best solution is
that all the needy people be taken care of."

"The percentage of survivors' money in each country should be allocated to
that country," said Mr. Rechter, whose father died at Auschwitz, "and from
that money the needy people there should be taken care of."

Judge Korman rejected that and other alternatives. He wrote that trying to
adjudicate claims individually would be unwieldy, expensive and in many
cases impossible. A simple pro rata distribution, on the other hand, would
yield "literally pennies to each of the millions of individuals"
victimized by the Nazis, including all survivors and their heirs. He
called the hybrid solution proposed by Mr. Dubbin and the survivors'
foundation frivolous and inconsistent with law and morality.

Should other lawsuits for historical wrongs succeed, the problem in the
Swiss bank case is likely to recur. Burt Neuborne, who represents the
plaintiffs in the settlement, has written that some claims should by their
nature give rise to indirect compensation in the form of social programs.

For instance, he said, if lawsuits seeking damages for American slavery
ever produce damages, the proper response may be affirmative action or
providing money to assist for poor blacks.

And Stuart E. Eizenstat, deputy treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 and
the author of "Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor and the
Unfinished Business of World War II," an account of the negotiations
leading to the settlement, said such suits have an important moral and
political aspect that may call for ignoring some usual legal remedies.

"A purely legal response," he said, "does not work."

In this case, all agree that the dispute needs a speedy resolution. The
average survivor is 77 years old if living in Israel and 84 if living
elsewhere. Their numbers, according to a report issued in 2000 by the
court-appointed special master in the case, Judah Gribetz, are projected
to fall by 6 to 8 percent each year through the end of the decade and
faster afterward.

(source: New York Times, March 14)




USA//NEW YORK:

Film tracks WWII diplomat's efforts


The fate of a young Swedish diplomat credited with saving the lives of
thousands of Jews from the Nazis is the focus of a new documentary by area
residents.

Raoul Wallenberg was working on behalf of his government and the United
States in trying to save Jews in Hungary when the Soviets took him into
custody in 1945. Wallenberg was 32 and the son of a prominent banking
family.

Various stories have emerged about Wallenberg's fate, including an
admission by the Soviets in 1957 that the diplomat had died in a gulag in
1947. Gulag is a Russian term used to refer to a prison or forced-labor
camp where political prisoners and others were sent.

But one woman claims to have worked with Wallenberg in the gulag in 1953.
She is among those featured in "Searching for Wallenberg," which will be
screened April 21 at the Nyack Center. It is the first time the film is
being shown in the United States; it has been shown in several European
nations.

The documentary's writer and executive producer, Bob Kimmel, said he
became interested in Wallenberg and his fate after working on a video
production for the U.S. Postal Service when it issued a stamp in 1997 in
the young man's honor.

It took four years of research, interviews and production to complete the
film. Kimmel, of Tarrytown, previously worked in news radio for NBC and
ABC.

"I got incredibly interested in the man and what he did," Kimmel said. "I
guess I was rather taken by his work."

Kimmel said Wallenberg helped save lives by giving out passes stating the
bearer was likely to become a Swedish citizen. The Nazis left people
carrying the passes alone. Wallenberg would sometimes go to the train
station where Jews were being loaded for shipment to death camps and hand
out passes, and after the Nazis began the forced marches of Jews to the
camps, Wallenberg drove trucks out to the marchers, handed out passes, and
rescued more Jews.

Kimmel said that at least 25,000 passes were handed out, but Wallenberg
may have saved as many as 100,000 Jews. When the Nazis were preparing to
wipe out a ghetto where about 70,000 Jews lived, Wallenberg told them he
would hold them accountable for any deaths and treat them as war crimes.
The ghetto was left alone.

Jack Allalouf served as the documentary's cinematographer. The Tappan man
was working with Kimmel on the video for the stamp commemorative when he,
too, became interested in the Swedish diplomat's work.

"A lot of people don't know who Raoul Wallenberg is," Allalouf said. "I
figured this is a way to bring out who this guy is."

Allalouf, who has worked on many documentaries, said he believed it was
important for people to know about Wallenberg's courageous efforts.

Among those interviewed and filmed by Kimmel and Allalouf was Eli Wiesel,
a Nazi concentration camp survivor and winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace
Prize. In the film, he described Wallenberg as "a man who proved that it
was possible to stop the killing. It was possible to save the victim. All
that was needed was some compassion, and courage, and he had both."

Kimmel said Wallenberg's actions were as valid today as during World War
II.

"I think people should care about this today because he is emblematic of
the kind of person who is needed in the world today," Kimmel said. "A
person who will give of themselves to save lives."

(source: The Journal News)




USA/HUNGARY:

Justice fighting for dismissal of Hungarian Holocaust suit


In Miami, the Justice Department has hardened its position on a Holocaust
lawsuit claiming the U.S. Army plundered riches seized by Nazis from
800,000 Hungarian Jews and covered it up for decades.

In court Monday, government attorney Caroline Wolverton said she could not
commit to mediation and would fight for dismissal of the lawsuit, which
claims $50 million to $120 million in seized gold, jewels, art and other
valuables were taken by Americans from a Nazi train they caught in 1945.

Last September, Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler, Wolverton's boss
and head of Justice's civil division, wrote U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum,
R-Pa., to say the department is committed to working with the Hungarian
Holocaust survivors "to reach a full and fair resolution of their claims."

After the hearing, Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said, "What
she said is where we are right now, and we have no comment with regard to
the correspondence between the assistant attorney general and Sen.
Santorum."

Amy Hybels, a spokeswoman for Santorum, said, "We are looking into what
transpired today." His office got involved at the request of constituents
Andrew Katona and his wife, of Bala Cynwyd, Pa.

About 30,000 Hungarian Jews and their survivors are asking for trial on
their class-action claims of large-scale looting and official denials that
the train even existed until a 1999 report on Holocaust assets by a
commission named by President Clinton.

"The allegations in the complaint are ones that I don't think any American
would be proud of," said U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz. "The
practical question is, 'What do you do now 60 years later, and what would
be a fair resolution?'."

Wolverton responded, "The United States has good grounds to dispute these
allegations." When the judge asked for suggestions for a mediator,
Wolverton said, "I don't know that I have the authority to commit to
agreeing to mediation."

The judge noted mediation is mandatory under congressional directives and
U.S. Supreme Court rules.

The court hearing was held as the legal dispute intensifies over claims in
the 172-page lawsuit. In a procedural quirk, the U.S. government has not
filed a formal response to the suit originally filed in 2001.

The judge asked both sides to exchange information by Wednesday.
Meanwhile, reports from expert witnesses analyzing the train dispute are
due Friday, and survivors are set to begin six weeks of depositions
Monday.

The judge said she hoped in early September to consider Justice's request
for dismissal based on a procedural question of jurisdiction.

"The decision to fight this on jurisdictional grounds would appear to be a
policy decision by the Department of Justice," said plaintiff's attorney
Samuel Dubbin. He told the judge he thought mediation was vital.

"You've not been able to move them this far," the judge observed. "They
need to see the plaintiffs in the flesh. It need to become a human case."

Attorneys for the survivors have poured over papers in the National
Archives as well as confidential files in Clinton's presidential archives
to research the case.

The judge told attorneys she thought is was "very critical" to videotape
the depositions of the aging survivors, noting an appeal that could take
two years to resolve is likely after she decides the dismissal motion.

Hungarian Jews claim the United States illegally seized, sold or
distributed gold, jewels, 1,200 paintings, silver, china, porcelain, 3,000
Oriental carpets and other heirlooms seized by the Nazis from their
households.

The families claim a train with 29 boxcars moved from Hungary to Austria
to avoid advancing Soviet troops days after Germany's surrender and was
intercepted by U.S. soldiers in May 1945.

Ownership was marked on many items, and many families still have receipts
for the seized property, their lawyers said.

The United States agreed in 1946 to return all looted Hungarian property
but later reclassified the train's treasures as "captured enemy property."
Much was sold at New York auctions in 1948 to help defray the costs of
Jewish restoration programs in Europe.

ON THE NET

Law firm site on lawsuit:
http://www.hagens-berman.com/frontend;jsessionidaxiPkoOGs6he?commandLawsui
t&taskviewLawsuitDetail&iLawsuitId85

(source: Associated Press)






GERMANY:

Jewish writer wants Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf made available to German
public


Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, long banned in Germany, should be made
available to the public, a well-known German Jewish writer said.

Rafael Seligmann, speaking Thursday at a presentation of his new biography
of the former dictator, Hitler: The Germans and Their Fuehrer, said nearly
60 years after the end of the Second World War, Germans are mature enough
to deal with the book and should give themselves more credit.

"We stand here as the idiots of history with our inferiority complex," he
said.

Hitler dictated Mein Kampf to deputy Rudolf Hess while serving time in
prison in the early 1920s after staging a failed coup. The book, which
details his anti-Semitic and other beliefs, is banned from public display
or sale under German law but can be read in public for scholarly,
scientific or journalistic purposes.

Seligmann said it also no longer makes sense to ban the book in Germany,
especially since it is available on the Internet and has even been
translated into Hebrew for Israeli readers.

(source: Associated Press)


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

German museum bust over Hitler statue


A waxworks museum in Berlin in Germany that featured a life-size figure of
Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler has proved to be so controversial it is to be
shut down.

In a reminder of how sensitive an issue Germany's Nazi past remains almost
60 years after the end of World War Two, the German bank which owns the
building housing the Galerie Art'el and its effigy of Hitler has asked the
museum to leave.

"I had to get rid of Hitler," museum director Inna Vollstaedt said.

"My landlords have cancelled my lease and told me to close from today, I'm
very disappointed."

Ms Vollstaedt said the bank was worried about being associated with the
Nazis and wanted her museum out as soon as possible.

"They were tired of being continually hassled on the phone, apparently
people have been out on the streets protesting about the figure in
Israel," Ms Vollstaedt said.

The Wuerttembergische Hypothekenbank, who Ms Vollstaedt said owns the real
estate firm that the building belongs to, was not immediately available
for comment.

The wax Hitler shared a room with his wartime adversaries the Soviet
Union's Joseph Stalin, US President Franklin D Roosevelt and British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill overlooking Checkpoint Charlie, the former Cold
War border crossing between East and West Berlin.

Germany's biggest-selling newspaper Bild described the waxworks, which
include figures such as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Diana,
Princess of Wales, a "macabre show".

"This figure should be banned before Checkpoint Charlie becomes a place of
pilgrimage for neo-Nazis," Bild quoted Lea Rosh as saying, the woman who
launched a campaign for a memorial in Berlin to victims of the Holocaust,
as saying.

Ms Vollstaedt, who said she had lost half her relatives in the 900-day
Nazi siege of Leningrad during the war, dismissed suggestions she had been
trying to glorify Hitler and blamed the press for the furore.

"The visitors who came to see him said the press were wrong to get so
worked up about it," she said.

"They said they were glad to be able to show their children this appalling
man who started the war and did so many terrible things."

(source: Reuters)





GLOBAL:

When memories are short, hatred is forever


East Galicia was once the site of a rich Jewish civilization dating back
several centuries. But last March, when I visited what is now West
Ukraine, the snow-swept streets and squares were silent. Ancient
cemeteries had become marketplaces, ruined synagogues were garbage dumps,
mass graves were unmarked and forgotten. The Nazis killed the Jews; in the
years that followed, the local population erased their memory. But not
quite. The local Ternopil newspaper carried a headline: Jewish Pogrom. The
Jews, the article claimed, were again trying to take over Ukraine. It was
as if the 500,000 murdered Jews were going to rise from the mass graves
and crematory ashes and reclaim their space (and stolen property) in this
ethnically cleansed province.

The fear of Jewish return is one element in the new anti-Semitism
spreading in many parts of the world. Two-thirds of European Jewry was
killed by the Nazis in World War II. For Adolf Hitler, the Jews
represented ultimate evil. They polluted the German race and culture,
brought pernicious modernity and capitalism, promoted internationalism,
caused and profited from wars, became parasites on the labors of others
and plotted to take over the world. This was a potent mix of anti-Jewish
Christian prejudice and newfangled ''scientific'' racism.

For a while after World War II, anti-Semitism became a bad word. But
memories are short, and vows tend to be broken, whereas deeply embedded
cultural and religious prejudices are hard to eradicate.

Europe's anti-Semitism did not vanish. It was banished to the fringes of
society; it was buried in the recesses of people's consciousness; it was
transformed into philo-Semitism and fads for things Jewish; it seeped back
in as self-righteous indignation against Israel; and it was exported into
the Muslim world. Now that it is back, we can see where it was hiding all
these years.

The new anti-Semitism uses images strikingly similar to Hitler's. It
condemns the Jews as controlling the world's only superpower and seeking
to take over the rest of the world, as promoting a destructive policy of
globalization, as supporting the allegedly criminal and illegitimate
Nazi-like state of Israel. Like its Nazi predecessor, it promises to do to
the Jews what they are supposedly doing to the world. It is inherently,
then, genocidal.

But rather than being the policy of one state, this new anti-Semitism is
the domain of very different cultures, political ideologies and religious
teachings. Its more soft-core manifestations can be found in the European
left, camouflaged as anti-Americanism and an anti-Zionism that denies
Israel's right to exist.

The effect on public opinion is tremendous. A majority of Europeans see
Israel as the most dangerous country in the world. Although criticizing
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policies is legitimate and
necessary, denying the right of Israelis to live in peace in their own
country is unjust.

Hitler's obsession

But the new anti-Semitism has found its most lethal incarnation in the
Muslim world, where it has become a prevalent subculture, a focus of
identity, a rallying cry for the masses, a tool to divert attention from
the real reasons for poverty and despair, and a cause for militant
mobilization and destructive urges. Ranging from the speech of former
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad to the charter of the
Palestinian organization Hamas, this rhetoric is infused with the same
terrifying images of Jews that were haunting Hitler. And we know where
Hitler's obsession led.

We must not wash our hands of the scourge of genocidal anti-Semitism. For
the power of the word resides in rhetoric and in silence. Prophesies of
destruction must be taken seriously, and silence facilitates their
realization.

Even after the deed, silence ensures its recurrence, for it erases the
memory of what has been destroyed and obscures the guilt of the murderers.
It allows us to forget that when some people say they want to kill you,
they mean what they say.

(source: Commentary, Omer Bartov, who is professor of history at Brown
University; Los Angeles Times)