March 6


POLAND:

Poles mark Stalin's Katyn Forest massacre


Poles on Saturday attended a Mass, sang patriotic songs and lay flowers
on a monument to more than 21,000 military officers and intellectuals
massacred by Soviet agents in Katyn Forest, marking the day 65 years ago
that dictator Josef Stalin ordered the killings.

Along with the homage at Warsaw's St. Ann's Church, the Katyn Committee,
an organization of relatives of those killed in Katyn Forest in western
Russia and at other sites in 1940, demanded more Russian attention to the
massacre.

A recent Russian investigation failed to produce any new names of
surviving perpetrators among the secret police force that carried out the
killing, largely by shots to the back of the head, over several nights.

"We are calling on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reveal the
names of those who were responsible for the genocide in the spring of
1940," said Stefan Melak, the head of the group. "We are calling on
Russian authorities to accept this crime as genocide," Melak said.

"Katyn will always remain a symbol of a death sentence passed on Poland,"
he said.

Krystyna Balcer, a 62-year-old retiree whose uncle was killed in Katyn,
remained angry about the massacre and the Soviet invasion of Poland prior
to World War II, carried out under a secret agreement between Stalin and
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

"They betrayed us - they stuck a knife in our backs," she said of the
Soviets invading Poland from the east in 1939, 17 days after Germans
entered from the west. The massacre "was unimaginable cruelty, it was
genocide."

The March 5, 1940, order for the massacre was signed by Stalin among
others. Soviet agents shot 21,768 Polish military officers, intellectuals
and priests who had been taken prisoner during the invasion.

Historians in Poland believe Stalin was seeking to liquidate Poland's
elite to prevent the rebirth of a sovereign Polish state.

The massacre is still an irritant to relations between Poland and Russia.
Polish war crimes prosecutors opened their own investigation into the
massacre in December.

Until the fall of communism in 1989, any mention of the massacre was
forbidden in Poland. The following year, the Soviet government accepted
responsibility for the murders, but refused to refer to them as a genocide
attempt, calling it a war crime on which the statute of limitations has
passed.

The slaughter became known to the world when 4,100 bodies were discovered
by German forces in 1943 after they overran the area near the Russian city
of Smolensk, and the event was widely broadcast by the Nazi propaganda
machine.

(source: Associated Press)





FRANCE:

Holocaust query draws suspension

A professor at a French university said gas chambers may not have been
used to kill Jews


A French university said Friday it would suspend a professor for five
years after he questioned whether the Nazis used gas chambers in the
Holocaust.

Bruno Gollnisch, No. 2 in the National Front party of extreme-right leader
Jean-Marie Le Pen, already faces a legal probe in France after he
questioned how Nazis used the gas chambers and how many Jews were killed.

Lyon University, which is named after Jean Moulin, the hero of the French
Resistance murdered by the Nazis in 1943, said Gollnisch would be
suspended from his functions as professor of Japanese civilization for
five years.

Gollnisch told a news conference Oct. 11 that he recognized gas chambers
existed but said he thought historians had yet to decide whether they were
actually used to kill Jews.

He called for an open debate about whether the total number of Jews killed
in the Holocaust was 6 million as stated.

French Jewish organizations and anti-racism groups have condemned
Gollnisch's remarks.

Gollnisch told reporters Friday he was the victim of a "real witch hunt"
and blamed pressure from the government for his suspension.

French prosecutors have opened an investigation into Gollnisch, which
focuses on "denying crimes against humanity."

France's anti-racism laws have made denying the Holocaust a crime,
punishable by fines and prison.

(source: Reuters)





GERMANY:

German court awards Holocaust claim


Holocaust survivor groups are hopeful that a Friday ruling by a German
court will open the door for further claims by heirs to a pre-World War II
retailing fortune.

"We assume that this landmark decision will enable the (Federal
Restitution Authority) to reach decisions soon on all other Wertheim
properties," said Gideon Taylor of the Jewish Claims Conference, which is
working with the family."The legal issues have now been clarified, so
there is nothing preventing the speedy resolution of these cases and the
rightful restitution of these assets."

The case is one of the largest outstanding Jewish Holocaust claims. The
family of former German retailer Guenther Wertheim is believed
to be seeking a total of about 145 million euros (USD 192 million) in
damages from German retailing giant KarstadtQuelle, which now owns some of
the familys former real estate holdings in central Berlin. Barbara
Principe, a New Jersey-based grandmother who is Wertheims daughter, has
charged in a lawsuit that German department store chain Hertie - later
acquired by Karstadt - committed fraud in 1951 when it convinced her
father and his brother to relinquish claims to the property.

Karstadt disappointed

The Berlin court was ruling only on a small portion of that property -
valued at about 17 million euros - and Friday's verdict will not result in
Karstadt making a direct payment to the Wertheim family heirs. But the
decision could open the door for the family to recover significant sums
from the retailer at a later date.

"We are disappointed with this decision," said company spokesman Joerg
Howe. He declined to predict how much the company could eventually be
forced to pay in the Wertheim case, although Karstadt put the figure of
145 million euros (USD 192) in a recent prospectus.

Grand flagship store

The flagship Wertheim store on Berlin's Potsdamer Platz was once among the
world's grandest, and the family's extensive holdings in the German
capital included property that was later the site of the bunker where
Hitler committed suicide in 1945. But in 1938 the family was forced to
sell all its shares to a non-Jewish consortium, and in 1939 family members
fled Germany.

(Ynetnews)