May 23



USA//VIRGINIA:

Virginia museum to return painting stolen by Nazis


A painting Nazis stole from an Austrian Jew more than a half-century ago
soon will be returned to its original owner's sole heir.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is giving back "Portrait of Jean d'Albon"
to art collector Julius Priester's sole heir and the manager of his
estate, 78-year-old Kurt H. Schindler of Hampshire, England.

The 16th Century, French School painting is attributed to the Dutch-born
Corneille de Lyon.

Schindler said he has been fighting courts, police, museums and collectors
around the world since 1953 to secure the return of more than 20 paintings
that rightfully were Priester's.

"We're just not making much headway," he said Friday. "This is the first
one we've really recovered."

Schindler first called the museum three months ago.

"It was clear from the nature of his information that his claim was
serious," said Kathleen Morris, an associate curator at the museum in
Richmond. "It's our policy to respond to those kinds of claims as quickly
as possible."

Morris said it was the first artwork stolen from Jewish owners during that
time period the museum has been asked to return. She said the museum is
investigating the history of all its artwork with gaps in ownership
records between the years of 1933 and 1945.

She said Schindler's evidence, which included a photograph of the painting
and a 1950s European police report, was critical to proving his claim.
Eight versions of the painting are known to exist. Morris credited art
historians for their research of the artist and the Internet for providing
information about Jewish-owned art stolen during World War II.

"It's a shame because we're so many generations out from the people who
lost their property," she said. "It's only now, as the children of these
people are dying, that the information has become available."

The oil-on-wood-panel painting has been at the museum since 1950, when
museum benefactor Wilkins Williams bought it from a gallery in New York.
It has lain in storage since 1985, when the museum began an expansion
project. Morris said the museum is certain the Wilkins family did not
knowingly buy stolen art.

"They would have been as shocked as we were to find out this was stolen,"
she said.

Museum officials plan to display the painting for two weeks while they
arrange to ship it to Schindler, Morris said.

"I was delighted," Schindler said. "I've had so many, sort of, disasters
that until I actually see the thing, I won't believe it."

Schindler said he plans to keep fighting to have his estate's remaining
paintings returned.

"As long as I can keep going, I'll keep going," he said.

(source: Associated Press)





USA//NEW JERSEY:

Holocaust restitution fight to go on


A South Jersey woman said yesterday she plans to appeal a federal judge's
decision to dismiss a $200 million claim by her family that they were
swindled of land in Berlin during the Holocaust.

Barbara Principe, 71, of Newfield vowed that she and her family will not
surrender their quest for restitution.

"We're going to appeal," said Principe from her Gloucester County home.
"The fight is going to go on. I'm not going to give up."

Principe and other members of the Wertheim family are suing a German
company that was the corporate successor of her father's chain of Berlin
department stores. The lawsuit alleges that a subsidiary of the company,
KarstadtQuelle, acquired the chain of six department stores through fraud.

The family is still seeking $300 million in restitution in German courts.

Principe's attorney also said Friday that he plans to appeal the judge's
decision.

"The court recognized that we made a strong showing that the Wertheims
were defrauded, and we're confident that the Court of Appeals will find
that we also showed that the defendants are the legal successors of the
companies that committed the fraud," lawyer Gary Osen said in a statement
to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Principe's father, Gunther Wertheim, owned the chain of stores with his
brother in the 1930s. In the late 1930s, the stores were confiscated under
Nazi "Aryanization" laws, which forbade Jews from owning land or
businesses. The family alleges the chain was swindled from them illegally
using those laws.

The brothers agreed in 1951 to drop restitution claims in exchange for
$5,100.

Some of their offspring living in the United States forfeited postwar
compensation claims in 1951 after they agreed to sell the chain and
remaining assets for a fraction of their real value. The assets included
property in the Soviet zone, which they were told would be worthless.

The collective heirs -- living in the Netherlands, Great Britain, the
United States and Germany -- have been fighting with German restitution
authorities for the return of rights to the land, arguing it should never
have been taken from them in the first place.

The claim dismissed in Newark on Friday related to land in western Berlin
that is now owned by KarstadtQuelle, Germany's largest department store
chain.

The Wertheim stores eventually became part of the Hertie department store
chain, which Karstadt later acquired.

Given "the corporate history of Hertie and Wertheim," a federal judge
concluded on Friday, it had not been proved that Karstadt was the legal
successor to Hertie.

"The judge seems to have made a thoughtful decision, and we're very
pleased with the dismissal," said Andrew Frank, a New York- based
spokesman for KarstadtQuelle.

(source: The Star-Ledger)





GLOBAL:

Last Chance to Catch Aging Nazis--Time is running out for Simon Wiesenthal
to catch the last Nazis


The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center is making a last ditch effort to
track down Nazis before they die of old age. Already underway in eastern
Europe, the project will be expanded to Germany in June.

Time is running out for Simon Wiesenthal and the Nazis he's been pursuing
for the past 50 years. At 95, the Austrian Jew is spearheading one final
push to bring to justice the perpetrators of the Holocaust before they
die. Called "Operation Last Chance," the project relies on rewards,
advertising campaigns, press conferences and telephone hotlines to urge
people to share what they know about Nazi war criminals who escaped
justice.

After being implemented in eastern Europe and Austria, the Simon
Wiesenthal Center plans to take its campaign to Germany. Starting in June,
it will begin tracking down Nazis who have gone undetected for more than
half a century. A reward of 10,000 ($12,000) awaits anyone offering
information that leads to the sentencing of a person for Nazi crimes.

"There's no question that there is sufficient political will in Germany
today to bring Nazis to justice," Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center's Jerusalem office, told DW-RADIO.

New information

"The basic idea behind this project is to reach individuals who have
information and otherwise would never have come forward," Zuroff said.
"With all due respect to the prosecutors, we're talking about people who
have chosen until now not to make that information available."

The project was launched in 2002 in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and has
since also been underway in Austria, Poland and Romania -- with varied
amounts of response.

"It's been extremely successful in the Baltics and less successful in
Austria," Zuroff said. "We've received the names of close to 300 suspects
and over 70 of those names were submitted to prosecutors."

After the Center hands over the information, it's up to the prosecutors to
act on it, which isn't always a given. "We chose to initiate the project
in those countries in which there are serious problems in bringing Nazis
to justice, and there's relatively little political will to do so," Zuroff
lamented. "This is a big part of the problem."

Many still in hiding

Zuroff is certain that there are still many former Nazis in hiding in
European countries, something which is evidenced in trials over the past
few years, including the indictment earlier this month in Italy of three
former SS officers for the 1944 massacre of 560 civilians in the Tuscan
village Sant'Anna di Stazzema. The three German men, all in their 80s,
were tried in absentia and it remains unclear whether they will be
extradited to Italy to serve their sentences.

"You have to remember that in order to carry out such a heinous crime,
which resulted in the murder of six million Jews and millions of others,
it takes hundreds of thousands, millions of individuals who were involved
in different ways," Zuroff pointed out.

Around 2,000 war criminals could still be living in Germany, Micha
Brumlik, the director of Frankfurt's Fritz Bauer Institute, which is
devoted to researching the Holocaust, told the Die Tageszeitung newspaper.
Brumlik reportedly tried to convince Zuroff not to offer rewards for
information because people would be motivated by money rather than morals.

Already too late?

Brumlik also doubted whether the Wiesenthal project would lead to many
indictments. "It would be extraordinarily difficult to collect valid
evidence," he told the paper. He said the fact that suspects would be very
old meant they would likely never be tried or forced to serve jail
sentences. He said only nine of the cases "Operation Last Chance" had
handed over to prosecutors in the Baltics were actually being investigated
by the authorities.

Zuroff admitted, too, that he wasn't optimistic about prosecutions taking
place. But time is running out. Zuroff plans to expand the project to
Croatia, Hungary and Ukraine.

"There are still thousands of war criminals in Europe. We're going
wherever Jews were murdered," he told German newsmagazine Focus.

(source: Deutsche Welle)








ISRAEL:

Yad Vashem postpones on-line Holocaust database


The inauguration of a Yad Vashem Internet site listing the names 3 of the
6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust has been postponed until the
fall, Yad Vashem officials said Thursday.

The introduction of the Web site, which was originally slated to be up and
running in the spring, is one of the major events Yad Vashem is planning
to mark its jubilee year with. Celebrations will peak with the opening of
the new historical museum in March 2005.

"This is an unprecedented, huge and complex project, one that requires
both technical and substantive expertise," Yad Vashem said in a statement
Thursday about the delay in launching the state of the art Internet
database, which will be accessible worldwide.

"Both the pre- and post- launch aspects of this vital endeavor require
extensive investment of financial resources, and these clearly would be
speeded up if more resources were available."

(source: Jerusalem Post)




AUSTRALIA:

At last, a place to rest - and grieve - for Holocaust victims


Holocaust survivors Abe and Cesai Goldberg, at front, mourn for lost loved
ones as a box of anonymous ashes is buried at Springvale yesterday.

Unknown victims of the Holocaust were finally laid to rest yesterday when
a box of ashes and bones retrieved from the notorious Auschwitz
concentration camp was interred at Springvale's Jewish cemetery.

It is hoped the grave - the first of its kind in Australia - will help
bring some peace to the estimated 60 per cent of Melbourne's 50,000-strong
Jewish community who lost relatives during the Holocaust.

Leading the emotional service, Rabbi Philip Heilbrunn said the furnaces
that consumed the bodies of 6 million Jews in World War II also denied the
victims a proper burial under Jewish law, which forbids cremation.

"This represents for many people that are here the closest that they
personally can come to any semblance of burial for those they lost during
the terrible period we call the Holocaust," Rabbi Heilbrunn said.

"It is vital for us, in these unique circumstances, where we are able, to
bring these sacred bones and ashes to a proper Yiddishe kevurah - Jewish
burial."

The ashes were taken from Auschwitz in the late 1980s and kept at
Melbourne's Holocaust Centre.

Many in the crowd of 300 wept as Holocaust survivors shovelled earth onto
the box of ashes. A memorial will be built later to commemorate the site.

Married couple Abe and Cesai Goldberg, both Auschwitz survivors, said the
grave and memorial would provide a crucial physical connection to loved
ones killed by the Nazis.

The site would become a place to visit on special dates, such as the
anniversary of his mother's death, said Mr Goldberg, who has been
treasurer of the Holocaust Museum for 19 years.

"Who knows if the ashes are from my mother?" Mrs Goldberg said after the
service concluded with the recitation of the kaddish, the prayer for the
dead.

"You can't imagine what I feel like standing here," she said.

(source: The Age)