Dec. 9

ISRAEL/POLAND:

Polish Ambassador: Youngsters have scant Holocaust knowledge


Basic knowledge of the Holocaust among young people worldwide six decades
after World War II is scant, Polish Ambassador to Israel Jan Piekarski
said Thursday.

"The overall knowledge of Auschwitz and the Holocaust is quite misty and
almost nonexistent in the younger generations," Piekarski said during a
press briefing in Jerusalem, ahead of next month's commemoration marking
60 years since the liberation of Auschwitz.

The Polish ambassador's remarks came on the heels of a BBC poll released
earlier this month that found nearly half of all Britons have never heard
of Auschwitz.

"The knowledge of young people [around the world] about the Holocaust is
very superficial," he said, adding that high school pupils "routinely
learn about the Roman Empire, but don't learn about the Holocaust."

Therefore, Piekarski said, the January 27 commemoration at the camp should
be not only a historical marker, but also a warning for the future and an
educational event for the international community. He said there was
massive international interest in the event.

President Moshe Katsav, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, Russia
President Vladimir Putin and three survivors are the only scheduled
speakers at the event, which will be attended by heads of state from
Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Latvia, Germany,
Slovenia and Switzerland.

The event is expected to attract 10,000 participants, including 2,000
survivors, the Polish Ambassador said.

When Kwasniewski invited Katsav and Putin to join him as patrons of the
commemorations, the reason for his choice was obvious: Auschwitz is in
Poland, Jews represented the highest percentage of Auschwitz victims, and
it was Russian troops who liberated Auschwitz in 1945.

The ceremony will begin with the signal of a train entering the camp,
where more than 1 million prisoners perished in the gas chambers or died
of starvation and disease before Soviet troops liberated the camp.

After the speeches, prayers will be said, a memorial plaque will be lit
and the shofar will be blown.

This will be Katsav's second visit to Poland in less than two years.

He was previously there for the 60th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising, when he led the March of the Living through Auschwitz-Birkenau
with Kwasniewski.

During his two-day sojourn in Poland in January, Katsav, who is a firm
believer in personal contacts between heads of state, will avail himself
of the opportunity to engage in bilateral talks with European leaders.

In May 2005, he is planning to travel to Moscow at Putin's invitation for
the 60th anniversary of VE Day, which marked the end of World War II. It
will be Katsav's second presidential visit to Russia.

(source: The Jerusalem Post)




CANADA:

Montreal's Holocaust centre marks 25 years


As it begins its second quarter-century amid heightened levels of
anti-Semitism, the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre (MHMC) and Museum
plans to rededicate itself to education and remembrance, and to making
itself more visible and accessible to all sectors of society.

That pledge was delivered by president Jack Dym at the MHMCs recent annual
meeting.

The son of Holocaust survivors, Dym described an, extraordinary year of
transition and growth for the MHMC.

Its renewed museum opened in May 2003 to wide acclaim. It was ranked among
the finest...in the province, according to a 2003-2004 annual report
commissioned by the Quebec government.

Museum officials expected 10,000 visitors the first year, but the number
far exceeded expectations by reaching 15,000. Two-thirds of the visitors
were students and two-thirds of the students were Quebec francophones.

"Our museum surpassed 73 other [provincial] institutions in its first year
of operations," reported Kim Smiley, MHMCs acting executive director.

"Closer to home, we have consistently been ranked among the 10 must see
institutions in surveys and reader polls conducted about cultural life in
Montreal."

Dym and Smiley both referred to the upsurge in anti-Semitism, both
domestically and internationally.

"Over the last year, Canada has experienced the worst anti-Semitic
activity in recent memory," Dym said.

Smiley said despite the last year being a period of, profound evolution
for the MHMC, "we have witnessed a dramatic regression - with levels of
worldwide anti-Semitism unparalleled since the 1930s."

Dym recollected asking his mother - a survivor of three forced labour
camps, four concentration camps, and a death march - about the "new"
anti-Semitism. "She retorted: 'Jackie, Im still trying to deal with the
old
[one].'"

In their reports, Dym and Smiley described scores of plans and activities
both over the past year and for the coming one that will serve to enhance
the work of the MHMC and its museum.

Dym, for example, said the MHMC, as part of its Holocaust awareness
programming, is in the preliminary stages of developing teaching trunks
Holocaust-era suitcases filled with artifacts and photos to be pored over
by students.

Other plans include increasing the volunteer base among francophone
Quebecers to improve outreach to that population; improved fundraising and
public relations; networking with more advocacy organizations and NGO's;
and planning for a 25th anniversary event.

Smiley, in a lengthy report, summarized the MHMCs mandate in one phrase:
"to teach, collect, preserve, and remember the Holocaust."

Besides educators and Jewish and non-Jewish students from all age groups,
the MHMC Museum has also outreached to public officials and opinion-makers
of all stripes. VIP visitors have ranged from Paul Martin and Romeo
Dallaire to Jean Charest and Natan Sharansky

Smiley also noted that the MHMC Museum was the first to receive official
partnership status with Yad Vashem.

The MHMC museum is also involved in dozens of cross-cultural and
sensitization initiatives, ranging from the Montreal police and Black
Coalition of Quebec, to the Canadian Human Rights Foundation and a
significant initiative with the English Montreal School Board that
encourages students to visit the Museum.

In that context, the museum created a, pre-visit guide for educators with
background information on the permanent exhibition.

"We believe our capacity for sensitization is inestimable," Smiley said.

Vital MHMC educational activities not related to the museum include the
much-expanded Holocaust education series, Yom Hashoah and Kristallnacht
commemorations, bar and bat mitzvah remembrance programs, and continued
survivor testimonies.

Next May, Smiley announced, in cooperation with the Dutch consulate, the
MHMC will sponsor a temporary exhibit on the life of Anne Frank at the
Maison de la culture Frontenac. Among those present for the opening will
be Princess Margaret of Holland.

For Dym, the MHMCs 25 years of transforming ignorance into understanding
underscored not only the need to recommit, but to appreciate roots.

"We often talk about the new Museum as a landmark institution. But, we
must always remember that the [MHMC] was a landmark institution and museum
25 years ago in its own right."

"The new museum is a continuation of the 25 years of commemoration and
education."

Dym had many people in mind, and named them, including founding 1979
president Steven Cummings and his successors, the executive directors, and
the members of the Association of Survivors of Nazi Oppression who founded
the MHMC three years before it opened officially in the basement of the
Cummings House.

Most fundamentally, Dym thanked the survivors, the torchbearers.

"None of [the MHMCs accomplishments] would have been possible without the
dedication of the Montreal Holocaust survivor community and a corps of
committed volunteers," Dym said.

(source: Canadian Jewish News)




POLAND:

Warsaw's Anne Frank tells of hell in burning ghetto


AS FLAMES engulfed the Warsaw ghetto and Nazi soldiers hunted for any
remaining Jews, a young woman kept a diary of her struggle to survive
while hiding in a cramped basement.

The six-page journal, which has only recently surfaced at a Holocaust
museum in Israel, is believed to be the only first-hand contemporary
account of the 1943 Warsaw uprising to have survived.

The author, who did not give her name and whose fate is unknown, provides
a chilling insight into the events during nine days in the basement.

In neat Polish handwriting, she said that while the Germans outside were
burning down houses, she lived on a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee a
day.

"The ghetto is burning for the fourth day," she wrote. "You see only
chimneys standing and the skeletons of burnt houses. At the first moment,
the visions arouse a horrible chill."

The Warsaw ghetto was established in Poland in 1940. Jews from surrounding
areas were forced to crowd into the cramped neighbourhood. At its peak in
the spring of 1941, about 450,000 Jews lived in the its 740 acres. Most
died of starvation or were killed in Nazi gas chambers.

When the Germans moved to liquidate the walled ghetto entirely in 1943,
60,000 Jews were still alive there. Hundreds of them fought back with few
weapons, little ammunition and limited food and water.

Against all odds, they held out for 27 days, until the Nazis burned down
the ghetto.

The diary is reminiscent of Anne Franks famous journal, only the womans
circumstances are even darker.

The account begins on day six of the uprising - 24 April. She lives with
several others in the basement of a home. The Germans set the house on
fire several times and smoke seeps into the hiding place, making breathing
difficult.

The Jews at first try to put out the blaze but give up, apparently
deciding the fire will help to cover up their hiding place.

At one point a neighbouring hideout is burned and the occupants flee to
the basement where the author is hiding. The newcomers have no food and
are noisy, increasing the danger the hideout will be discovered.

Sometimes, she writes, she must guard the hideout.

The pages are part of a large collection of letters, notes and pages
collected after the war by Adolf-Abraham Berman, a survivor of the ghetto
and leader of the Jewish Underground who moved to Israel after the war.

Berman donated the artefacts in the 1970s to the Ghetto Fighters House, in
northern Israel. Experts at the museum realised the importance of the
pages only recently, while organising the Berman archive.

While the womans identity is not known, her age can be guessed at: she
discloses she was a member of a Jewish youth group, indicating she was in
her late teens or early twenties.

Yossi Shavit, the director of the Ghetto Fighters House archives, said:
"The uniqueness of this diary is that it is the only one found in the
world, that we know of, that was written right at the time of the
fighting. The other diaries were written afterward."

Mr Shavit added: "We are not sure she was killed. She could be lying in a
nursing home in the United States."

The last entry, on 2 May, is the longest, as if the writer understands her
opportunity to describe the destruction is drawing to an end.

"The only thing we are left with is our hiding place," she writes. "Of
course this will not be a safe place for very long."

The last words seem to indicate death is near: "We live this day, this
hour, this moment."

(source: The Scotsman)