July 7



LATVIA:

Holocaust Victims Honored by Latvian Government


Latvia commemorated victims of the Holocaust in Latvia, which happened 63
years ago when Nazis burnt down the Choral synagogue with dozens of Jews
and refugees from neighboring Lithuania.

Another synagogue was burned down that same evening, with about 30 people
and the local rabbi inside. Several years ago, this day was officially
declared a National Memorial Day for Holocaust Victims.

The commemorative event involved numerous officials, including
representatives of the Presidential Administration, the Minister of
Internal Affairs, the Minister on National Minorities' Issues, officials
from the Municipality of Riga, and numerous foreign embassy staff.

Rabbi of the central Synagogue of Riga, Rabbi Mordechai Glazman emphasized
that, in order to keep the memory of that tragedy alive, a museum should
be built, parallel with the continued development of Jewish life in Riga,
with its synagogues, mikvah, and Jewish schools. These institutions are to
serve as a reminder of the wonderful Jewish community that existed here
prior to Nazi occupation.

(source: The Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS)




AUSTRIA:

Holocaust lawyers sue Austria over stolen art


Prominent U.S. Holocaust claims lawyer Edward Fagan said on Thursday he
has filed an $18 billion lawsuit against Austria alleging the country
profited from or wrongfully kept artworks stolen by the Nazis.

Fagan said he had filed the suit in a New York district court this week on
behalf of the Association of Holocaust Victims for Restitution of Artwork
and Masterpieces (AHVRAM) against the Austrian government.

The action follows an identical lawsuit against Germany announced last
month by Fagan, who shot to fame in the late 1990s by suing Swiss banks
for assets left by Holocaust victims.

Fagan did not identify any of the artworks involved but told journalists
he would present the U.S. court with evidence that after World War Two
Austria had conspired to store, transport, withhold or dispose of artworks
stolen from Holocaust victims.

"We came here today to address an issue. That issue is the accountability
of the (culture) ministry and the government for hundreds of thousands,
tens of thousands of paintings that were stolen from Holocaust victims,"
Fagan told reporters.

Under Adolf Hitler, Jewish households across occupied Europe were
systematically looted for their artworks.

Fagan's lawsuit charges the Austria government, the central bank and other
institutions including some museums conspired to keep artwork away from
Holocaust survivors or heirs, or profited from selling, transporting or
exhibiting stolen art.

It also charges that Austrian institutions retained works on the grounds
they had not found living heirs. Fagan said in that case the country
should sell the works and give the money to Holocaust victims.

Austria's ministry of culture, named as a defendant in the lawsuit,
declined to comment before it receives an official copy of the lawsuit and
can study the allegations.

Best known for landing a $1.25 billion settlement in 1998 from Swiss banks
on behalf of Holocaust survivors, Fagan has also stirred controversy with
a slew of multi-billion dollar apartheid lawsuits.

(source: Reuters, July 1()




GERMANY/RUSSIA:

Germany paying compensation to Russian victims of Nazism


Germany will probably finish paying compensation to Russian victims of
Nazism in May 2005, the German ambassador to Russia said on Wednesday.

There are about 500,000 people in Russia that the Nazis put in
concentration camps or submitted to forced labor.

In 1994-1999, the German government allocated funds to compensate victims
of Nazi persecution, and since the summer of 2001, former forced laborers
have been receiving allowances from the German Remembrance, Responsibility
and the Future foundation and the Austrian Conciliation Fund.

The payment of compensation "is going quite well, if one takes into
account all the difficulties," German Ambassador to Russia Hans-Friedrich
von Pletz told Interfax.

He said that by difficulties he meant the collection and processing of
numerous applications and other documents, and "the organization in the
technical sense of the transfer of money from Russian organizations to its
recipients may also be considered a difficult point."

More extensive coverage of the interview, given in connection with the
visit of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to Russia on Thursday, will
be published at www.interfax.ru on Wednesday.

(source: Interfax)






GERMANY:

Out of the Fhrers shadow


Germany have completed the reconstruction of Adolf Hitler's Olympic stadium
and plan to put the arena at the heart of their quest to recover their
status as major footballing power. It is the stadium where Hitler angrily
watched the black American Jesse Owens outrun German sprinters in 1936.

It crumbled after the war. Now it has been modernised, the grey, faintly
sinister architecture lightened by a new wing-like roof, and will be the
centrepiece when Germany host the 2006 World Cup.

As the final is to be played there, Germany were anxious to banish the
Nazi ghosts. There has long been talk of Nazi ghosts and a Nazi
atmosphere, Professor Hans Joachim Teichler, of Potsdam University, a
member of the stadium's historical advisory commission said. "The stadium
is one of the few remaining Third Reich buildings. But the new stadium no
longer exudes the bombastic feeling of the Nazi epoch." The formal opening
of the revamped stadium will be later this month.

The German team were pushed out of the Euro 2004 by what was, in effect, a
Czech B-team. The country is still smarting, the coach has resigned and
nobody seems willing to take on the job. Hopes are now pinned on the 2006
World Cup, and the Olympic stadium is becoming a symbol of the rebirth of
modern German soccer.

It has cost more than euros 240 million to refurbish the 74,000-seat
stadium, but the most important innovation is not the comfort of the
seating, the roof or the lighting (3122,000-watt floodlights now take away
the gloom).

Rather it is the attempt to come clean about the Nazi associations; to
accept that Hitler's presence formed an integral part of the history of the
stadium. That is a significant psychological breakthrough for Berlin.
There will now be a museum at the entrance to the stadium and 35
information boards will explain the history of the building.

For the first time there will be a full evaluation of the stadiums VIP box
where Hitler stood when Owens won four gold medals and made a nonsense of
the Nazi's Aryan master race ideology.

The reconstruction taps into a serious debate about the rights and wrongs
of saving the few Nazi-era buildings left in Berlin, however. The Olympic
complex was not solely a Nazi preserve. The International Olympic
Committee awarded the Games to Berlin before the Nazis came to power, and
the architect, Mr Werner March, had already worked out a design for the
stadium by 1933.

But Hitler took a strong interest in the architectural plans, and scholars
still argue over whether the Nazi leader forced a more fascist design on
the architect or whether March himself adapted to the new mood.

Certainly parts of the stadium still reflect the Nazi influence - for
example the Langemarck Hall, which was dedicated to the memory of German
soldiers killed in the war. It was the Games themselves, however, that
truly poisoned memories of the stadium.

After watching the events in 1936, the British diplomat Sir Robert
Vansittart declared that the Germans "are in strict training now, not for
the Olympic Games, but for breaking some other and emphatically unsporting
world records, and perhaps the world as well."

After the war, British Intelligence set up some of its major Cold War
espionage operations from offices in the stadium. British officers played
polo on the sports fields that had once been used for torch-bearing
parades of athletes.

The Rolling Stones, and most recently Sir Simon Rattles Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra, have performed in the fields adjoining the
stadium. Now the plan is to hire the arena out for extravagant weddings,
and a setting for Berlin's traditional new year party. It could become
Berlin's Trafalgar Square, one investor in the stadium said.

(source: The London Times)