March 25


HUNGARY:

Hungary: We have no Holocaust victims' lists


Sixty years after the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian
Jews to Nazi extermination camps in the waning days of World War II, a
state report issued by the Hungarian government concludes that long-sought
Nazi-era lists with the names of the Jewish victims no longer exist.

The findings of the Hungarian report, which was sent this week to Yad
Vashem, and obtained by The Jerusalem Post, have been repudiated by
Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld as "disinformation."

"We are in the position to state that despite the extensive and thorough
research, the list of names... that would make possible the indirect
identification of victims forced to death camps during the Holocaust in
Hungary can only be found very sporadically in Hungarian collections," the
February 24 report states.

"We have no choice but to accept the fact that similarly [sic] to the fate
of many other important sources, the damages and scatterings of records
caused by the war, as well as the requisition and destruction of records
during the communist era, inflicted heavy losses on these materials too,"
the English-language version of the report's conclusion reads.

In the wake of the report's findings, Klarsfeld is calling on the Israeli
government and Yad Vashem to boycott next month's inauguration of a new
Holocaust Museum in Budapest. "Based on this report alone the government
should boycott the events in Budapest," Klarsfeld said Thursday.

Both President Moshe Katsav and the chairman of Yad Vashem's Directorate,
Avner Shalev, are among the Israeli dignitaries scheduled to attend the
April 15 event, which will be hosted by the Hungarian president and prime
minister.

A statement from Beit Hanassi issued Thursday said that they had not heard
of or received any such proposal from Klarsfeld.

More than 550,000 Hungarian Jews perished in the Holocaust, including some
430,000 who were sent to concentration camps in less than seven weeks in
the spring of 1944, when the Nazis' defeat was imminent.

Officials at Yad Vashem, who have maintained a close rapport with the
Hungarian government and share a variety of archive materials relating to
the Holocaust, called the Hungarian government report "too pessimistic."
"It seems to us the picture presented in the report of the total
destruction of the lists of Hungarian Jews is too pessimistic," said the
director of Yad Vashem's Hall of Names, Alexander Avraham.

Avraham noted that the report itself states that copies of the World War
II listings of Jews were sent to four different Hungarian bodies: the
police, the Gendarmerie Headquarters, the Ministry of the Interior, and
the registry of the community council.

He added that similar listings were found in other European countries that
also suffered severe war damage.

With the 60th anniversary of the deportation of the Hungarian Jews slated
to be commemorated next month, Klarsfeld, a Holocaust survivor himself,
had hoped to obtain a complete listing of the Jews deported from the
country in time for the commemorative ceremony.

"Such a tragic event so important to the history of Hungary, and the
history of the Jewish people, cannot be commemorated in a dignified manner
if the deportation lists remain hidden voluntarily and if the outside
world knows that the Hungarian authorities refuse to release the names of
the victims," Klarsfeld wrote in a letter to the Hungarian premier last
year.

Together with his wife, Beate, the Paris-based Klarsfeld began his work in
Hungary 14 years ago. He has published similar lists of Jews deported from
France and Belgium.

Meetings with Hungarian officials over the years led Klarsfeld in the
1990s to a list of tens of thousands of Jews killed fighting in the
forced-labor battalions of the Hungarian Army, where, he said, they were
put on the front lines.

That list was subsequently published in a seven-volume book, which lists
the names of nearly 80,000 Hungarian victims of the Holocaust that he has
compiled to date.

Klarsfeld, whose father died in Auschwitz, escaped death at the hands of
the Nazis as a child of eight by hiding in a closet with his mother and
sisters.

(source: Jerusalem Post)


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

Silent bells and torture chamber in Holocaust-inspired exhibition


Magda Watts made her first doll when she was a 15-year old interned in a
Nazi concentration camp in Nuremberg, Germany.

As a Hungarian Jewish deportee forced to labour in a plant of the Siemens
electrical firm, she gathered rags to form beautiful figurines with
elaborate dresses that offered her a means of survival under Nazi
persecution.

"I made my first doll at the Siemens plant and the overseer there took a
liking to it," Watts said. "I told her I will make you another one if you
give me more food. That is how I survived, because as a 15 year-old I only
weighed 27 kilos then."

Watts' dolls are on display in Budapest at The Hidden Holocaust, an
exhibition gathering works on the 60th anniversary of the start of
deportations from Hungary.

The exhibition details not only the suffering of Hungarys Jews, of whom
600,000 died in Nazi death camps, but also the similar fate of Gypsies,
homosexuals and the mentally ill during the Holocaust.

The exhibition is disconcerting from the beginning.

The visitor is confronted with the stark choice of entering through a door
to the left or to the right depending on whether the person wants to view
the displays through the perspective of a minority or the majority. Once
inside, the exhibition sheds light on the Holocaust through works from the
period - including official documents and photographs - as well as modern
creations including paintings, sculpture and audio-visual presentations.

One contemporary contraption, named Human Transforming Factory, is an
elaborate torture chamber that cynically gives a manual on how best to
cause pain to the victim.

Another display shows two dozen bells laid out in a large hall in no
particular pattern, their jarring silence an understatedly powerful
tribute to those who perished in the Holocaust. In one of the most
haunting scenes, Watts portrays herself in prison garb, toiling over the
table at the Siemens plant, piecing together dolls that stand beside her
in long, embroidered dresses.

In contrast to the dolls around her in the set, the likeness of Watts -
though a young girl at the time - has the haggard face of an old woman
with thinning, yellowish hair. In another scene, victims are clustered
behind the barbed-wire fence of a concentration camp, with the emaciated
faces on the dolls reflecting the terror, anguish and resignation felt in
the depth of this darkness.

A smirking Adolf Hitler doll overlooks the scene from a guard post,
machine-gun in hand.

"I didn't touch the dolls for 40 years because they were such a bad
memory," said Watts, who now lives in Israel. "When I came back to visit
Hungary in 1983, all these memories came back. I had a nervous breakdown,
returned to Israel, sat down in a corner and started making dolls again."

(source: Daily Times)





USA/NEBRASKA:

Holocaust expert to speak on Nazi policy book


A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor is coming to UNL
to discuss when and why Nazi leaders decided to murder millions of
European Jews during the Holocaust.

Remembering the Holocaust
Who: Christopher R. Browning, Holocaust expert and history professor at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

What: Browning will discuss his book about the Holocaust and Nazi Germany.

When: April 8, 7:30 p.m.

Where: Great Plains Art Collection in the Christlieb Gallery, 1155 Q St.
Christopher R. Browning, a Holocaust expert and history professor at UNC,
will come to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln April 8 to speak about his
book, "The Origins of the Final Solution: The evolution of Nazi Jewish
Policy, September 1939-March 1942."

"Browning is an internationally known scholar who has written an important
book," said Alan Steinweis, associate professor of history at UNL. "The
book talks about anti-Semitism and the treatment of Jews in Europe."

The book focuses on the months between the German conquest of Poland in
September 1939 and the beginning of the deportation of Jews to the death
camps in the spring of 1942.

"His book focuses on the decision of when, why and under what
circumstances the leaders of Nazi Germany decided to murder millions of
Jews," Steinweis said.

Occurring around the same time as the talk is Yom HaShoah, celebrated on
April 18, a day established to remember the 6 million Jews who perished
during the Holocaust.

Browning's book is the first in a series, "The Comprehensive History of
the Holocaust," which is being published by the University of Nebraska
Press in conjunction with Yad Vashem, an Israeli research authority that
houses information and conducts research on the Holocaust.

"The series will consist of at least 15 books to be published over the
next decade in English, Hebrew and several other languages," said Paul
Royster, director of the NU Press.

The idea to bring Browning to speak at UNL was conceived by Steinweis and
Gerald Shapiro, director of the Norman and Bernice Harris Center for
Judaic Studies and professor of English at UNL.

Members of the UNL community are hoping to bring in several other authors
from the series in addition to Browning.

"The Holocaust is one of the defining events of the 20th century whose
after-effects surround us still today," Royster said. "By continuing to
study these events and by creating a permanent historical analysis, we
maintain our commitment to remembering and showing the truth."

The lecture is being sponsored by the Henry and Gretl Wald Lectureship
Fund, the Norman and Bernice Harris Center for Judaic Studies and the NU
Press.

Browning's lecture will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Great Plains Art
Collection in the Christlieb Gallery, 1155 Q St. It is free and open to
the public.

(source: Daily Nebraskan)