Dec. 1



MAINE:

Boston firm to design holocaust center


The new Holocaust Education Resource Center in Augusta will be designed
by a Boston architectural firm.

A 12-member building committee reviewed submissions from Japan, Israel and
New York City, in addition to Boston. In the end, Shepley Bulfinch
Richardson & Abbott of Boston won the job.

Groundbreaking could start by next summer. The building on the University
of Maine at Augusta campus is expected to open a year later.

The 6,000-square-foot center will be attached to the east side of Bennett
Katz Library. The price tag is $1.8 million, more than half of which
already has been raised.

(source: Associated Press)





ISRAEL:

New Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum to Open in March

In March 2005 the new Holocaust History Museum will open at Yad Vashem.
The new museum will replace the current Historical Museum, which opened
thirty years ago. Beginning with a glimpse at the Jewish world that
existed before the war, the new museum is three times the size
of the current one, and it presents the story of the Holocaust from the
Jewish perspective, through authentic artifacts, documentation, personal
objects and the stories behind them. The personal story will be interwoven
into the historical and thematic narrative.

The Holocaust History Museum will include Holocaust era art in its exhibit
and use contemporary artists to present an entire theme.

The new Hall of Names will be an integral part of the museum, and include
the repository of the Pages of Testimony as well as access to the Central
Database of Shoah Victims Names.

In addition to the Holocaust History Museum, as part of the redevelopment
of Yad Vashem, a new Art Museum - displaying the worlds most extensive
collection of Holocaust Art, an Exhibition Pavilion, a Visual Center,
Learning Center and Synagogue will be opened as well.

(source: Israel National News)


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Nazi-Looted Rembrandt Handed Back 65 Years Later


A drawing attributed to Rembrandt and looted by the Nazis in 1939 has been
handed back in an unprecedented voluntary gesture, an organization hunting
stolen art said on Tuesday.

"The Liberation of Saint Peter From Prison" was posted in a plain envelope
to the Commission For Looted Art in Europe along with a description of how
it happened to be in the hands of the anonymous current American owner who
offered it without charge.

It will be returned to Uri Peled in Israel, one of the descendants of the
original owners.

"This is a unique situation because the person who had the drawing
voluntarily returned it," said Anne Webber, co-chair of the non-profit
organization, from its London headquarters.

The drawing was one of 700 belonging to Arthur Feldmann that were looted
by the Nazis from his family home in Brno in March 1939 as Adolf Hitler's
German armies marched into Czechoslovakia at the start of World War Two.

(source: OmegaLetter)