Sept. 2




POLAND:

Polish Holocaust victims remembered 60 years after transports to Nazi
death camps


Holocaust survivors and their families gathered at one of Europe's
largest Jewish cemeteries Sunday to remember more than 200,000
Jews from this city killed by the Nazis, a ceremony marking the 60th
anniversary of the last transports from the Lodz ghetto to Hitler's death
camps.

On the edge of the 19th-century cemetery, some 1,500 people stood in
silent tribute as a Jewish cantor and a choir chanted Hebrew prayers in
honor of those taken in railway cattle cars to Auschwitz and other camps.

Survivor Eljezer Zyskind remembered the horror as the ghetto's residents
were rounded up and taken away.

"I can still hear the cries of little children torn from their mothers,
crying, 'Mama, mama!'" Zyskind said, his voice quavering with emotion.

Lodz, about 75 miles southwest of Warsaw, was a thriving center of
commerce before World War II. The city's 230,000 Jews represented about a
third of its population.

After invading Poland, the Nazis sealed the ghetto with barbed wire on
April 30, 1940, concentrating Jews in a crowded space sequestered from
society, much the way they did in Warsaw and other conquered cities.

About 45,000 Jews from other parts of German-occupied Europe, including
Luxembourg, Austria and Germany, were also forced into the Lodz ghetto, as
were about 5,000 Gypsies.

Used as forced labor, many died from the horrific conditions. The Nazis
decided to kill those remaining in August 1944.

"I lost my parents, my brothers, my sisters, my grandfather, my uncles and
my aunts and my nieces," said 83-year-old Ivor Leiser, who traveled from
his home in Melbourne, Australia, to mourn and honor them.

"I am the only one that was left," said Leiser, who escaped death by
fleeing Poland and served in the Australian air force during the war. "I
survived to remember. This day means a lot to me."

After the prayers, survivors, city leaders and Israeli Science and
Technology Minister Ilan Shalgi placed flowers at a monument to the
victims near the cemetery gate.

They then moved to the railway station about a mile away, where some of
Lodz's Jews began their final journey to the death camps. Three old wooden
cattle cars - still marked with the name of Hitler's railway, "Deutsche
Reichsbahn" - sit in the station today as a grim memorial.

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

Poland recalls Nazi invasion


Poland's prime minister marked the 65th anniversary of the start of the
Second World War on Wednesday, unveiling a new memorial on the spot where
a German warship fired the opening shots at a Polish munitions depot,
sparking nearly six years of bloody conflict.

The ceremony began to the wailing of sirens on the Westerplatte peninsula
in the Baltic port of Gdansk at 4:45 a.m., the exact time that the German
ship Schleswig-Holstein shelled the depot and its 182-strong garrison on
Sept. 1, 1939, starting the war that left an estimated 50 million dead,
including six million European Jews at the hands of the Nazis.

Unveiling an obelisk of a white eagle, Poland's national symbol, Prime
Minister Marek Belka acknowledged the soldiers of Westerplatte who died
that day, and all other Polish victims of the war.

"I pay tribute to the victims of the concentration camps, gulags and
ghettos," Belka said. "I pay tribute to the millions of victims of the
German and Soviet invasions of Poland, to all those who to gave their
lives in the name of a free, independent and democratic Poland. Peace to
their memory."

Later in the day, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski bestowed medals
upon Polish war veterans in Wielun, the first town to be bombed by Nazi
warplanes on Sept. 1, 1939.

"Sixty-five years ago, the first bombs dropped by German planes fell onto
the homes of sleeping, defenceless residents of Wielun," Kwasniewski said
as he hung medals around the necks of veterans dressed in the military
uniforms. "This started the bloodiest war in the history of humankind."

From the Vatican, Polish-born Pope John Paul sent special greetings to all
"those still living who defended our homeland" and offered prayers for
those who died.

Adolf Hitler's demand for the return of Gdansk to Germany, where it is
known as Danzig, was the main pretext of the German invasion of Poland.
The port city was made part of Poland after the First World War under the
1919 Treaty of Versailles, which put together parts of eastern Germany and
western Russia to recreate the country.

The fact that Poland was the first country invaded by Hitler and was
initially divided up between Germany and the Soviet Union under a secret
pact is a powerful memory for Poles still today.

In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democratic party issued
a statement marking the anniversary recalling the invasion that "began a
long period of unspeakable suffering for the Polish people and all of
Europe" and stressing the importance of German-Polish ties today.

A solemn ceremony was also held in Berlin's Neue Wache memorial to the
victims of war, where dignitaries including Polish Ambassador Andrzej Byrt
and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer laid wreaths to commemorate
the occasion.

(source for both: Associated Press)




SWITZERLAND:

IBM Asks High Swiss Court to Reject Holocaust Suit


Computer giant IBM has asked Switzerland's high court to block a Gypsy
rights group's attempts to sue it for allegedly helping Nazi slaughter in
World War II, lawyers said on Monday.

The group accuses IBM of facilitating the mass slaughter of gypsies by
selling Nazi Germany its punch-card Hollerith tabulating machines -- the
mainframe computer of its era -- knowing it would use them to track and
identify victims.

IBM had its European headquarters in Geneva during the war.

"We have appealed the case to the supreme court in Switzerland and we are
confident that we will prevail," IBM spokesman Fred McNeese said.

IBM wants the high court to overturn a ruling giving Geneva courts the
green light to hear the case.

If the Gypsies' case goes ahead and is successful, it could eventually
cost IBM $12 billion in claims, the plaintiff's lawyer Henri-Philippe
Sambuc said.

"(But) if the decision overrules the court of justice in Geneva, the case
will be over," Sambuc told Reuters by telephone.

The five plaintiffs, all of whom lost family members in death camps in the
1939-1945 period when Nazis killed an estimated six million Jews and
600,000 gypsies in Europe, will claim $20,000 each from IBM.

Based on the outcome, Sambuc aims to proceed in Swiss courts representing
a broader gypsy victim group and seek damages of $12 billion.

IBM has refused to discuss the suit in detail. "We are not discussing the
charges and will discuss our case in court," McNeese said.

The IBM appeal adds at least three months to the procedures, launched in
2001 and expected to last at least another five years as lawyers grapple
with numerous complicated aspects of international law, Sambuc said.

In 2001, investigative reporter Irwin Black published a book called "IBM
and the Holocaust" saying IBM let the Nazis use its machinery to carry out
ethnic cleansing.

At that time, IBM said it had lost control of its German subsidy Dehomag
before the war began in 1939.

Historians have known for decades about the Nazi use of Hollerith
tabulators. IBM has contributed $3 million to a German fund to compensate
the victims of World War II slave labor.

(source: Reuters)