July 19


ISRAEL:

Holocaust denial may be under Israeli jurisdiction


Holocaust denial committed overseas would be an offense under Israeli
legal jurisdiction and serve as grounds for extradition under legislation
that is expected to pass a first reading in the Knesset this week.

The government is backing the bill, drafted by MK Aryeh Eldad (National
Union). Eldad originally proposed the measure as a move against then
Palestinian Authority prime minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) for his
doctoral dissertation 20 years ago in which he estimated that the Nazis
killed less than a million Jews.

But the bill is unlikely to be anything more than declarative in nature.
Countries that do not have laws against Holocaust denial are unlikely to
extradite citizens to be tried in Israel for the crime, although Israel's
protective measure would not require such a law to be on their books,
according to Justice Ministry officials. Another problem is the fact that
Holocaust denial is a crime of expression, and most countries treat such
crimes liberally.

A more practical implication of the law is that it would deter Holocaust
deniers from visiting Israel.

In 1994, Israel extended its legal protection abroad for the state and its
citizens to Jews and Jewish institutions, which enables it to obtain
justice for them as it does for Israelis. At the time, the idea of
including Holocaust denial in Israel's exterritorial laws was considered,
but eventually dropped.

Eldad said the amendment to the law in Israel, where Holocaust denial is a
crime, is necessary because "almost all" of those crimes are committed
abroad.

He said he believes the law is going to be "very practical," since
violations would give Israel the right to demand prosecution even if it
does not request extradition.

He said it would also enable Israel to file counter suits if Jews are sued
for libel for labeling Holocaust deniers.

The law would also "send a signal to a Holocaust denier like Abu Mazen,"
that if he enters Israel he is a "criminal," Eldad said.

Moreover, he said the passage of the law would send a message that for the
Jewish people there is "no statue of limitations" on the Holocaust. "The
generation of survivors is dwindling," he noted, emphasizing the need to
keep Nazism from rearing again.

Avner Shalev, chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, said the passage of
the law would provide an "added tool" to fight against the phenomenon of
Holocaust denial.

"It sends the message that Israel is against Holocaust denial everywhere
and anyone who engages in it is not welcome in Israel," Shalev said.
The bill has the support of Knesset factions on the Left and Right.

(source: Jewish World)




NEW YORK:

Polish Holocaust survivors reunite


When Sally Sachs last saw her friend Pola Horowicz Sigiel, they
were both teenagers in a Nazi concentration camp.

Yesterday, the two women from Czestochowa, a city in South Poland that is
known for the famous Paulite monastery and the Black Madonna painting,
reunited. Surrounded by their families and friends, they recounted their
stories of terror and triumph.

Sachs said she is continually amazed that she survived being horribly
brutalized, and wants experts doctors and scientists to explain why she
lived through beatings, starvation and imprisonment in a concentration
camp.

"I still think about the human body and how a person can take what I took
and still be alive," said Sachs, 80, of Floral Park, N.Y. "I'm one of nine
kids and everybody was killed. I'm the only survivor."

Sigiel, 81, had a similar story, having lost her family when she was 15
1/2. She lost her "mom, dad, home everything."

"It's hard to describe," Sigiel said, but added images were indelibly
imprinted upon her memory.

"You never forget," she said. "The damage is there and will stay forever.
You just have to make the best of life and go on with life, but it's not
easy to be so young and to lose everything."

Yesterday's reunion of Czestochowa natives and their families was the
brainchild of Alan M. Silberstein, a Tenafly, N.J., man, whose parents,
Rose and Leon Silberstein, were from Czestochowa.

Silberstein who helped organize an exhibit in Poland in April that
documented the lives of Czestochowa's Jews said his involvement with
bringing the Czestochowa survivors and their descendants together was
exciting.

Although there were some tears, the 25 or so people who gathered yesterday
at the home of Lea Wolinetz, Sigiel's daughter, were overjoyed to see one
another. They reminisced about their relatives and ate from a sumptuous
buffet and admired the newest additions to their families.

Sam Bida, 89, of Cliffside Park, N.J., smiled at his infant
great-granddaughter. As she slept in her carriage, Bida talked about his
life.

Bida was in several concentration camps and was on a death march from the
Buchenwald concentration camp when he was liberated in May 1945.

Though Bida was happy to see some of his townspeople and their families
yesterday, he said he was far less interested in Czestochowa itself. Bida
has not returned to his hometown since he came to America in 1948.

"I've never been back and I don't have the desire to go there because I
went through so much there," Bida said.

Iris Rozencwajg of Houston said she burst into tears yesterday when she
met Wolinetz for the first time after having corresponded with the woman
for months by e-mail.

Rozencwajg's father escaped Czestochowa in 1936. Though Rozencwajg was
born in New York, she was raised in Aruba along with a small group of
other Jews who had fled the hostilities.

Amazed by the depth of feeling yesterday, Rozencwajg was gratified to be
around people to whom certain things didn't need to be explained.

"It's just a wonderful opportunity to know people who know all the
unspoken stuff," Rozencwajg said. "I'm just very glad I got to be a part
of this."

So, too, was Sigiel, whose husband, David, was also present.

"Everybody should have roots," she said. "Everybody should know where they
belong and where they're coming from and have respect for each other."

Wolinetz said she hopes yesterday's reunion won't be the last. The event
marked "a beginning of a lot of old friendships and returning to our
roots," she said

"For me, it's a wonderful connection with people again."

(source: The Journal News)



BELARUS:

Monument to Holocaust victims will be unveiled in Belarus


In Minsk, a monument in memory of 1,137 Jews killed in Nazi troops
during World War II will be unveiled in the Belarussian village of
Gorodeya on Sunday, July 18, Leonid Levin, chairman of the Belarussian
Union of Jewish Public Organizations and Communities, told Interfax.

Levin, one of the monument's authors, said that the monument represents "a
corner of a burnt concrete house, and burnt metallic window frames through
which one can see the sky are fitted in the remnants of the walls."

A path paved with 1,137 stones to match the victims' number will lead to
the monument, he said.

(source: Interfax)


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


Belarus: Monument to Jewish WW2 martyrs opened


Jewish leaders, local officials and Western diplomats opened a monument
Sunday that includes more than a thousand stones - one for each of the
Jews killed by the Nazis outside a Belarusian town on a single day in
during World War II.

The monument near Gorodeya, 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of the
capital Minsk, honors the 1,137 Jews historians say were massacred in a
field outside their town on June 17, 1942.

"On this day, the fascists brutally destroyed practically the entire
Jewish community. They shot the men and knifed women and children," said
Leonid Levin, president of the Union of Belarusian Jewish Public
Organizations and Communities.

"The Jews of Gorodeya shared the fate of dozens of towns and villages
destroyed by the fascists in Belarus," he said. Some 800,000 Jews were
killed in Belarus during World War II.

Levin also designed the monument _ a concrete sculpture of a burned,
battered house surrounded by 1,137 stones. "The pain of each of the dead
rests in these stones," he said.

U.S. Ambassador George Krol, speaking in Belarusian, said the monument
"warns against the repetition of the terrible tragedy" of the holocaust.
The German and French ambassadors also attended the ceremony, along with a
Polish diplomat.

The monument's opening comes amid what Jewish leaders say is rising
anti-Semitism in Belarus _ a phenomenon they say law enforcement
authorities have not done enough to combat.

The local administrative district helped finance the monument's
construction. Its chief, Fyodor Privalov, said authorities "feel
responsible for the memory of people who died on our land."

Most of the financing came from Western donors by way of a Belarusian
committee working to preserve the memory of holocaust victims. Committee
chief Yuri Dorn said the group plans to build monuments this year at the
sites of three other massacres.

Belarus was home to a substantial Jewish minority before the 1917
Bolshevik Revolution, but the community has dwindled to some 28,000 after
a century that brought pogroms, the holocaust and widespread emigration.

(source: Associated Press)



GERMANY:

Holocaust claims firm files suit against survivors


Holocaust survivors who signed up with a company to submit claims to
Germany in their name are now being sued by the company. The company,
Yaffa Golan Investments and Finances Ltd. has filed suit against survivors
who have not paid the 10 percent commission it demanded for representing
them to the German fund for victims of Nazi slave labor.

Eran Huppert, attorney for two of the defendants, claims the company acted
illegally and took advantage of the helplessness of his clients, who are
in poor health. Yaffa Golan claims the defendants are "opportunists"
seeking a chance to avoid paying the company's fee.

Huppert says one of his clients, Magdalena Ness, 86, is aware of the suit
but her cognitive state is poor, so much so that he has to contact her
through a relative. Another defendant, Auschwitz survivor Hedva Moran,
said, "I have never been in court in my life and I don't know what it will
decide." However she refuses to give in, and argues that she received no
significant help from Yaffa Golan. "I approached the fund myself and
that's how I got compensation. All she [Yaffa Golan] cared about was to
send me a demand for payment even before the money was in the bank." Moran
also said she needed the money to support her daughter and granddaughter.

Moran has been corresponding with Yaffa Golan's lawyers for three years,
and says she is running out of strength. At one point, she says, she
offered compromise, but Yaffa Golan's attorney, Ophir Blum, told her if
she didn't pay the whole fee she would have to pay court costs as well.

Huppert recently filed a motion to dismiss, based mainly on the argument
that the law requires an attorney dealing with this type of compensation
not to operate for profit, which is not the case with Yaffa Golan. In
response, Blum stated that Golan is operating in accordance with another
law, which does allow her to represent those asking for compensation.
Moran and Ness were referred to Huppert by the umbrella organization of
Holocaust survivor groups, which is in a long-standing legal dispute with
Yaffa Golan.

Yaffa Golan, who began her career as a clerk at Bank Leumi, was director
of a company owned by attorney Israel Peri, which specialized in obtaining
pensions from Germany for some 10,000 Israeli Holocaust survivors. In
2001, Peri and the company were indicted for fraud and for allegedly
embezzling millions of shekels. The case is still being tried.

Golan eventually split with Peri and left the company at the end of the
`80s. The court dealing with one aspect of the case ruled that Golan stole
a list of thousands of names from Peri's company.

At the end of 2000, when the fund to compensate Nazi slave-labor victims
was established, Golan persuaded thousand of Holocaust survivors that they
would need her services to obtain the money for them. Many of them signed
documents giving her power of attorney and agreeing to pay her 10 percent
of the compensation. But when the fund started to operate, it turned out
that only a simple application was required.

Golan says that in 2001 she had some 19,000 clients. The claims of about
5,000 were recognized and they were awarded about 15,000 German marks
each. This meant Golan stood to make about NIS 22 million. The company is
to receive additional fees from some 1,000 other clients.

"Most of the people paid and didn't make problems," said Golan's attorney
Blum, "but there are some who took advantage of the opportunity and didn't
pay." Blum said Golan was willing, "let's say, in cases where people's
situation was not good," to take a smaller sum, or "to have the money go
to a public cause, so she wouldn't feel like a complete sucker."

Blum says the main reason for the suit is as a warning, "because
additional payment is to come in the future, and we believe there will be
more opportunists." Blum noted that the suit has already borne fruit, and
that "most people understood there was no point in defending themselves
and they paid, so I don't think it will be necessary to sue anyone else."
During Golan's recent court testimony, she reportedly said, "I will never
sue an old person."

(source: Ha'aretz)