April 15



USA/NEW JERSEY:

Ex-Nazi guard's citizenship revoked


In Camden, a federal judge has revoked the citizenship of a retired
blueberry farmer because of his past as a Nazi guard during World War II.

The Justice Department said Andrew Kuras, 81, of Mays Landing, served as a
guard at three concentration camps in the 1940s.

Officials said Kuras concealed his Nazi past when he entered the United
States in 1951 and when he became a citizen 11 years later.

The judge entered the court order Tuesday.

"No one who assisted the Nazi regime in its persecution of innocent
civilians is entitled to the privilege of United States citizenship,"
prosecutor Christopher A. Wray said in a statement Wednesday.

In a 2002 interview with the Press of Atlantic City, Kuras said he did not
kill or hurt anyone and that he did not remember specific duties he had as
a guard.

A Justice Department spokesman said the government had not decided whether
to try to have Kuras deported.

Calls placed Wednesday to the office of Kuras' lawyer were not answered.

(source: CNN)




USA/MISSISSIPPI:

Holocaust bill challenged, passed in House


Black lawmakers Wednesday challenged a bill creating a Holocaust
commission in the state, imploring their colleagues to see that while
European atrocities need recognition, Mississippi has yet to acknowledge
its own history of lynchings and slavery.

House Bill 1269, which the governor plans to sign, creates a commission to
educate Mississippians on the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of 6
million Jews.

After two black lawmakers' withdrew their amendments, the bill passed the
Senate Wednesday and was forwarded to the House.

One of the lawmakers' Sen. John Horhn, D-Jackson, said he has tried for
years to pass legislation seeking to create a South African-style truth
commission in Mississippi to investigate atrocities suffered by African
Americans over the years.

"It is unconscionable that we don't try to get our own house together
first," said Horhn, who offered an amendment to add his commission to the
Holocaust bill. "We still have some wounds in this state, wounds that are
not healed and the only way that we're going to heal them is to talk about
them."

Sen. Mike Chaney, who handled the bill in his Education Committee, said he
was "blindsided" by the amendments and asked the chamber to vote for the
bill because some of its supporters had traveled a distance to watch the
passage.

He also pointed to other bodies that address civil rights issues in
Mississippi, including one at the University of Mississippi.

Gov. Haley Barbour also had scheduled a mock bill signing for the
legislation Wednesday afternoon.

Sen. Terry Burton, R-Newton, said the commission would not be limited to
issues of the Holocaust. "The lessons learned from the Holocaust are not a
stand-alone issue. They are all inclusive," he said.

Sen. Johnnie Walls, D-Greenville, also tried to amend the bill to include
black citizens and Native Americans.

Walls said his father was hired as a driver for some of the Nazi soldiers
who lived in Mississippi as POWs. He drove them around and watched as they
slipped into balls and cotillions around the state, entering through the
front door, while he was relegated to the kitchen door.

"We have a right to bring this before you," Walls said from the floor.

Horhn said his proposal has died a slow death in previous years, but the
prospects for passage look better for next year. "It may be a little too
close to home, and I think a lot of people are still in denial in this
state," he said during a break.

(source: The Clarion-Ledger)




USA/DELAWARE:

Holocaust victims remembered----Wilmington event to mark international day
of observance


Manya Perel was 15 in 1939, when the German government, led by Adolf
Hitler, began systematically killing Jews, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war
and others his regime considered inferior.

By the time the war ended in 1945, the death toll from the Holocaust was
more than 11 million. That included two-thirds of Europes's Jewish
population, or about 6 million Jews, according to the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Perel, whose parents and siblings died in the Treblinka concentration camp
in Poland, will talk about her experiences in Nazi concentration camps at
a Holocaust Remembrance Day observance Tuesday in Wilmington.

Event organizer Regina Alonzo said opportunities to learn about the
Holocaust from the people who lived through it are becoming more limited
every year as survivors die. Hearing their stories provides a more
intimate connection to history than other ways of learning.

"You know it's true because you've met this person and you believe them,"
she said.

Holocaust Remembrance Day is officially Sunday. Observances typically
start as early as the week before. Other activities planned around the
state include movies and speeches.

The remembrance date corresponds each year with the 27th Day of Nisan -
the seventh month on the Hebrew calendar - when Israel commemorates
Holocaust victims. The events are intended to remember the victims and
serve as a reminder that, even in civilized societies, bigotry, hatred and
indifference can lead to tragic consequences, according to the museum's
Web site.

The local observance is organized by the Halina Wind Preston Holocaust
Education Committee, an interfaith volunteer group connected with the
Jewish Federation of Delaware. About 200 people attended last year, Alonzo
said.

The event also will include brief speeches by elected officials and
readings about other survivors' experiences in the Majdanek concentration
camp in Poland. A ceremony will follow at the Holocaust memorial on the
plaza outside the state office building.

Jack Zigon, director of Jewish community relations and planning for the
federation, said a recent fire bombing of a Jewish school in Canada and
desecration of a Jewish cemetery in France show why passing on the history
of the Holocaust today remains relevant.

"One of the things we said after the Holocaust is never again," Zigon
said. "It's important each generation know what happened and why it
happened."
'(source: The NewsJournal)





USA/ILLINOIS:

Bank whose ex-chief praised Hitler tries to make amends


Glenview State Bank, whose former president riled the Jewish community for
praising Adolf Hitler, has been trying to undo the damage.

The suburban bank will sponsor a photo exhibit on the Holocaust beginning
Saturday, showcasing a trip made by suburban teens last August to a Czech
Republic town where thousands of residents died in the Holocaust.

The same month the youth group visited the town of Kolin, Glenview State
Bank's then-president, David Raub, stepped down amid an uproar over
comments he made in a July newsletter that praised Hitler as an economic
leader of his time. The Anti-Defamation League persuaded the bank to post
an apology on its Web site at www.gsb.com.

Bank executives, including bank holding company chairman and chief
executive John Jones, have since met with local Jewish leaders. The bank's
actions are winning kudos from the same Jewish leaders who were offended
by the Hitler remarks.

In addition to the photo exhibit, bank officials in October agreed to a
tour of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., said Richard Hirschhaut,
the league's regional director.

Recently, the bank was a sponsor for the league's annual African
American-Jewish Freedom Seder, a commemorative meal that marks the Jews'
exodus from Egypt and slavery and blacks' slavery history.

"We've done a number of things to reach out to the Jewish community," said
David Kreiman, vice president and director of marketing.

All of which has earned the bank praise from Hirschhaut. "So much good
came out of an unfortunate mistake," Hirschhaut said.

The "Quest for Kolin" photo exhibit will be on display at the Glenview
bank through April 23 and at its Northbrook branch, 1707 Shermer Rd.,
through April 30.

(source: Chicago Sun-Times)







HUNGARY:

Hungary opens Holocaust memorial


A Holocaust memorial and documentation centre opens in Budapest on
Thursday.

The opening marks the 60th anniversary of the start of the deportation of
Hungarian Jews to the death camps.

Israeli President Moshe Katsav will open the centre amid tight security -
two days after an alleged plot to blow up a Jewish museum in Budapest.

Police have arrested a Hungarian citizen of Palestinian origin for the
alleged plot and have charged him with planning a terrorist attack.


Private collections

The Holocaust centre cost $9m and was funded entirely by the Hungarian
state.

It is dedicated to the approximately 600,000 victims - among them
half-a-million Jews, tens of thousands of Roma, homosexuals, and others
who simply opposed the Nazis.

The centre is housed in a specially-built complex adjoining a synagogue,
opened in the 1920s, which has stood derelict since the end of World War
II.

During the communist period, no official research took place into the
Holocaust in Hungary, but documents relating to it were gathered in
private collections in Hungary and abroad.

This will be the fifth Holocaust memorial centre to open, following others
in Jerusalem, Washington, London and Berlin.

(source: BBC)




AUSTRIA:

Urgency drives head of Austria's Holocaust fund


When she was 15, Hannah Lessing, daughter of a Holocaust survivor, was
picked to play a teenage inmate at Auschwitz in "Holocaust,"
the groundbreaking 1978 television mini-series that did much to enlighten
a generation of Americans about the darkest chapter of the 20th Century.

After earning a degree from Vienna's University of Economics, Lessing
abandoned acting for a career in international banking. "I wasn't
long-legged or blond enough for the movies," she said.

But another kind of role came along in 1995 when her government asked her
to head Austria's compensation fund for Holocaust victims.

The choice raised some eyebrows: She was young -- 32 at the time -- and
she was Jewish.

It would turn out to be an inspired choice on both counts. Lessing's
personal touch and political acuity have given Austria a better record
than some of its neighbors in repaying the debts of the Holocaust.

"Hannah has done a simply superb job," said Stuart Eizenstat, the former
Clinton administration official who played a key role in securing the
overdue financial settlements for Holocaust victims.

"She has run this national fund in such a transparent, efficient way,
getting a huge data base together, getting money to the people and winning
the confidence of the Jewish community and her government," he said.

Before Lessing took the role in the television mini-series, she consulted
with her father, noted photographer Erich Lessing, who was 16 when he fled
Vienna to escape the Nazis. His mother perished in Auschwitz.

"We had a long discussion," she said. "He said [the mini-series] was a
banalization of the Holocaust. `You can't banalize this,' he said. My
answer was that if you want this generation to understand, we have to
banalize it."

Fortunately, the television series turned out to be far less banal than
many had expected.

Years later, when she was about to take charge of Austria's compensation
fund, Lessing again consulted her father.

"He said there could be no compensation, that no amount of money could
ever compensate," she said.

The words sunk in, and profoundly shaped the way Lessing would approach
the survivors.

"I understood that we would have to beg their forgiveness before giving
them money. . . . I understood that the right words were more important
than the money," she said.

The Holocaust compensation litigation of the late 1990s produced a series
of landmark settlements that demonstrated the extraordinary capacity of
American courts to reach back half a century and resolve disputes
originating in distant countries.

In 1998, after months of contentious negotiations, Swiss banks accepted a
$1.25 billion settlement on the dormant accounts of Holocaust victims and
their heirs. A year later, the German government and more than 60 German
companies agreed to a $5.2 billion payout to survivors of Nazi slave labor
camps.

Similarly, class-action lawsuits prodded a consortium of European
insurance companies to set up a commission that would settle unclaimed
life insurance policies of Holocaust victims.

But more than five years after the first of these settlements, many
victims are still waiting for their checks.

Misappropriated funds

A low point came two years ago when an audit revealed that the
International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC), the
body set up by the insurers, had offered victims $41.5 million in
settlements while lavishing more than $40 million in expenses on itself.

Neal Sher, head of the commission's Washington office, resigned in June
2002 after an investigation found that he had misappropriated funds. Sher,
who won fame as the Justice Department's chief Nazi-hunter in the 1980s
and 1990s, was disbarred last summer.

This past February, Edward Korman, the New York federal judge who presided
over the Swiss banks case, accused the banks of perpetuating the "Big Lie"
of the Nazi era by withholding information on some four million Nazi-era
accounts. Thus far, little more than $150 million of the $1.25 billion
settlement has been paid out.

It was during Sher's tenure as head of the Justice Department's Office of
Special Investigation that Kurt Waldheim, the former UN secretary general
and then-president of Austria, was placed on the U.S. government's "watch
list" for lying about his role as a Nazi collaborator. The Waldheim
episode was an acute embarrassment for Austria and triggered a profound
national soul-searching.

A bogus claim

Post-war Austria had long taken comfort in the bogus claim that it was
Nazism's "first victim." But by the early 1990s Chancellor Franz Vranitzky
bluntly told his countrymen that while some Austrians resisted the Nazis,
"many more integrated themselves into the Nazi machinery . . . and became
some of the most gruesome of evildoers."

Facing historical facts and eager to avoid the bad publicity the Swiss
were bringing upon themselves regarding the Nazi era, Vranitzky's
government set up its own fund to compensate Austrian victims of Nazism.
Lessing, who campaigned for the job, was put in charge of the effort.

Unlike the Swiss banks or the insurers, Lessing has actively sought out
survivors who qualify for compensation.

"In our first two months, we made 111 payments; in the first year, we made
12,000," she said. Thus far, the original fund has disbursed about $180
million, with each survivor getting about $6,500.

But it is another number that drives Lessing's sense of urgency. Elderly
Austrian survivors of the Nazi era are dying at a rate of 1.5 per day.
"Time is running out," she said.

Lessing has traveled from Argentina to Australia, visiting far-flung
Jewish communities in search of Austrians who were victims of the Nazis.
Twice she has addressed Jewish groups in Skokie.

"We have to travel the whole world," she said. "The burden is not on them
[the survivors] to find out about us. I want to find them."

Some have viewed the notion of a Jewish woman working as agent of the
Austrian government with suspicion. Edward Fagan, the ubiquitous and
frequently outrageous lawyer who filed many of the Holocaust class-action
suits, was among them.

"Ed Fagan told me, `Hannah, you have a conflict of interest. You can't
represent victims and the government of Austria,'" Lessing said.

But Lessing, who wears a gold Star of David around her neck, sees it as a
confluence of interests. Austria, she said, has an interest in actively,
if symbolically, making amends for its past.

"She's tough but diplomatic," said Eizenstat. "She's committed to helping
the victims, but she's also a proud Austrian."

Lessing's office in Vienna has the feel of a political campaign going full
bore, full young people busy over computers.

The average age of her 90 employees is 27. Only three are Jewish. For the
rest, the job has been an eye-opening history lesson.

"We've laughed together, we've cried together, we've had our differences,"
she said.

Unexpected rewards

For Lessing and her staff, the most gratifying part of the job is the
personal contact with survivors. Occasionally, there are unexpected
rewards -- when, for example, tracking down names and addresses of
survivors reconnects long-lost family members who had long presumed each
other dead.

Lessing's job took on a new dimension in the late 1990s as the German and
Swiss cases were wending their way through U.S. courts and the Austrian
government came to recognize certain "gaps and deficiencies" in its own
1995 settlement.

No doubt embarrassment over the 1999 electoral success of far-right
politician Joerg Haider and yet another class-action suit filed by Fagan
contributed to the Austrian government's decision to create a new $210
million fund to settle victims' claims on real estate, liquidated
businesses, bank accounts, mortgages and insurance policies.

An agreement, brokered by Eizenstat and signed in Washington during the
waning days of the Clinton administration, also promised an additional
$150 million to compensate Austrian survivors for the loss of their houses
or apartments after the 1938 Anschluss, when Germany annexed Austria.

Thanks in large part to Lessing's efforts, most of that $150 million has
been disbursed, but to her frustration, the $210 million general
settlement fund remains untouched even though some 20,000 claimants have
filed more than 80,000 claims.

According to the terms of the Washington agreement, disbursements cannot
begin until "legal peace" is achieved, and that won't happen until two
pending lawsuits -- one in New York, the other in California -- are
resolved.

The litigation underscores two additional problems that have made the
distribution of settlement money such a contentious issue. The first is
lawyers' fees. Some U.S. lawyers have profited handsomely from Holocaust
litigation, and critics suggest that the huge settlement funds have only
whetted their appetites for more.

"It's true. There's no business like Shoah business," said Lessing,
sarcastically punning on the Hebrew word for the Holocaust. "At the same
time, I have to admit that without somebody like Ed Fagan, who started it
all, the settlements would not have happened."

A more complex problem is the continuing debate within the Jewish
community over the distribution of funds.

Some argue that all of the money belongs exclusively to the survivors and
their heirs. Others suggest that the Jewish community as a whole is heir
to the Holocaust and some of the compensation money should be spent on
educational and social programs that benefit the entire community. Still
others suggest that some settlement funds should go to Israel.

`Peanuts'

Soon after the Washington agreement was signed, Ariel Muzicant, the leader
of Austria's Jewish community and one of the signatories of the agreement,
dismissed the $210 million settlement as "peanuts." He encouraged Austrian
Jews in the U.S. to seek more through class-action suits, though that
would further delay payouts.

Muzicant's real goal appears to be gaining settlement funds for Austria's
small Jewish community, which is heavily in debt. The lawsuits, by holding
up the payouts, give him leverage over how the settlement money will be
distributed.

Lessing said she understands Muzicant's motivation but the survivors'
needs should come first.

"My argument is that we should pay out as soon as possible," she said.

(source: Chicago Tribune)




ITALY:

Spielberg honoured by Italy for preserving Holocaust history through film


Filmmaker Steven Spielberg received Italy's highest decoration Wednesday
for his work in preserving the history of the Holocaust through film and
documentary.

President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi awarded the U.S. director the Cavaliere di
Gran Croce and praised Spielberg's planned documentary built around the
testimony of hundreds of Italian Jews who survived the Holocaust.

Ciampi called the director "a master of filmmaking and of the worldwide
industry of dreams and realities."

Spielberg won seven Academy Awards for 1993's Schindler's List, the
wartime story of 1,100 Jews and the industrialist who saved them. After
that, Spielberg founded the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History
Foundation to gather videotaped testimony of Holocaust survivors.

Later Wednesday, the Cincinnati-born director was receiving a special
David di Donatello award, Italy's foremost movie prize. Fellow filmmaker
Roberto Benigni - whose Holocaust tale, Life is Beautiful, won three
Academy Awards in 1999 - was presenting the award, one of many to be
handed out Wednesday evening.

(source: Associated Press)





ISRAEL:

Study Shows Holocaust Survivor Children Not Traumatized

A new study shows that children of Holocaust survivors, in Israel and
abroad, do not suffer from psychological problems more than other people
unaffected by the Holocaust.

The study, which looked at 4,418 subjects, was carried out by researchers
from Holland's Leiden University and from the Child Development Center of
Haifa University.

The study examined whether or not the trauma of the Holocaust was
transferred to the second generation subjects, manifesting itself in
psychopathologies or psychological illness.

(source: Israel National News)




POLAND:

Polish Firebrand Praises Hitler's 'Early' Policies


In Warsaw, Polish firebrand Andrzej Lepper, whose nationalist
Self-Defense party tops popularity rankings, was quoted Wednesday as
saying he believed Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's early policies were good.

"At the beginning of his activities, Hitler had a really good program,"
Lepper told the Zycie Warszawy newspaper. "I don't know what happened to
him later...who had such influence over him that he moved toward
genocide."

Lepper's growing popularity is part of a wider backlash in future European
Union members from central Europe against years of tough market reforms
and government sleaze.

His nationalist, anti-establishment views also fit into a wider phenomenon
of support for far-right politicians in western Europe such as Austria's
Joerg Haider or France's Jean-Marie Le Pen, both of whom scored electoral
successes in the last decade.

Haider also once praised Hitler's "enviable" record in job creation.

Lepper's remarks are bound to stir controversy in Poland, a country which
Nazi Germany invaded in 1939, unleashing World War II. Five million Polish
citizens, including over three million Jews, were killed by the Nazis.

Asked to confirm the remarks, Lepper said the newspaper had manipulated
his comments. "All I said concerning Hitler is that, yes, he eliminated
unemployment," Lepper told Reuters. "Hitler was the biggest criminal and
murderer in history."

The newspaper played a tape recording of the interview to Reuters
including the quoted remarks.

ONE IN THREE

Surveys show one in three Poles could vote for Lepper in the next
parliamentary elections, which are due next year but could be brought
forward as the current leftist coalition struggles to reconstruct its
government.

Unpopular Prime Minister Leszek Miller will step down on May 2, a day
after Poland joins the EU. His designated successor Marek Belka has yet to
assemble a parliamentary majority.

Some Polish commentators have drawn parallels between Hitler's tactics on
his way to power and Lepper's.
Like Hitler, who scorned Germany's feeble Weimar Republic, Lepper uses
fiery rhetoric to attack the mainstream parties and the shortcomings of
Poland's young democracy.

He opposes Poland's EU membership, wants more state intervention in the
economy and advocates strong presidential powers such as those enjoyed by
Russia's Vladimir Putin.

His popularity is fueled by promises to slash the country's high
unemployment, running at about 20 percent, by launching wide-scale public
works.

Hitler launched huge infrastructure projects including building Germany's
autobahn network and the armaments industry after he seized power in 1933.

(source: Reuters)