April 11



USA//CALIFORNIA:

Film Festival Preview: Movie tracing Holocaust-era footsteps to lead Chico
Jewish film fest


An acclaimed documentary about families, faith and intolerance will
highlight a Jewish film festival to be held April 16-18 in Chico.

"Hiding and Seeking" tells the story of a Jewish family that searches for
members of the Polish farm family who hid and saved one of their relatives
during the Holocaust.

The award-winning film will be shown twice during the festival, at 10 a.m.
on April 17 and 6:30 p.m. on April 18 at Chico Cabaret in the Almond
Orchard Shopping Center on Pillsbury Road. A discussion, with a moderator,
will follow the second showing.

It is one of six films to be shown during the festival, which is sponsored
by Chico Havurah, a Jewish congregation. The festival is a fund-raiser to
help pay for the Torah the group recently bought.

In a telephone interview last week, Oren Rudavsky, co-director of "Hiding
and Seeking," said the film is part of a trilogy he and co-director
Menachem Daum hope to complete. The trio of films would center on Jews'
response to faith after the Holocaust.

Rudavsky and Daum, both of New York, have known each other about 15 years.
They come from different sectors of the Jewish world. Where Daum was
raised in an Orthodox community, Rudavsky grew up with far less emphasis
on religious observance.

What they share, Rudavsky said, is a belief in the potentially great value
of religious faith and a concern about its equally great potential for
harm if it becomes narrow and exclusive.

To a degree, "Hiding and Seeking" responds to the Sept. 11 attacks,
Rudavsky said. After that, Daum became very depressed, realizing elements
of his own Orthodox Jewish community were intolerant in the same way as
extremists in the world of Islam.

The catalyst for "Hiding and Seeking" was a talk given by a New York rabbi
and heard by Daum's wife. She was disturbed by the rabbi's advising his
listeners to distrust the non-Jewish world and distance themselves from
it.

Later, Daum described the incident to his two sons, who live in Israel and
follow an ultra-orthodox strain of Judaism. When they seemed to agree with
the rabbi, he was alarmed.

Daum reminded them they wouldn't exist were it not for family in Poland
who hid their grandfather during the Holocaust. He challenged them to join
him in trying to find members of that family. The film records their
journey.

One of the things he's proudest of about "Hiding and Seeking" is the
portrait it presents of Daum's family, Rudavsky said. "It's powerful and
dramatic."

(source: Chico Enterprise)



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


WASHINGTON (state):

60 years after the Holocaust, local residents tell their stories



Sixty years ago, Nomi Ban and Fred Fragner staggered out of the Nazi death
camps and into life.

They were little more than skeletons when they were liberated from
Auschwitz and Buchenwald, escaping the fate of 6 million other Jews in
Europe who were murdered by Hitler between 1933 and 1945. More than 1
million of them were children.

As many as 6 million others - among them prisoners of war, Gypsies,
Jehovah's Witnesses and homosexuals - also were killed.

"I always say I love life," says Ban, 82. "For me, to be alive is a gift."

The Bellingham residents will speak of those harrowing times during
Western Washington University talks titled "Sixty Years After: Reflections
from Survivors of Nazi Death Camps."

Ban will speak Monday, the same month that U.S. Army soldiers helped free
her after she was sent on a death march from Auschwitz.

Fragner, 89, will talk in May, the month 60 years ago when he was
liberated from Buchenwald.




Yom Ha'Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, falls on May 6 this year.


The talks fall near Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is
May 6 this year.

HISTORY TODAY

The Germans invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938. At 23, Fragner joined his
fellow resistance fighters in the Czech Underground. He was eventually
captured and interrogated for 24 hours before being shipped to Buchenwald
in 1940.

Fragner, a retired mental health worker, weighed 92 pounds when he was
freed May 4, 1945.

He will talk about how those years affected him, bad and good. Many things
have happened in his life since the camps, Fragner says, including his
ability to have greater compassion for others.

Ban was living in Hungary when Germany invaded her country on March 19,
1944. She was 21. Within months, the family was shipped to Auschwitz.
Ban's grandmother, mother, 12-year-old sister and 6-month-old brother were
gassed, their bodies burned in a crematorium.

**

HOLOCAUST TALKS

Two Bellingham residents who lived through Hitler's efforts to exterminate
Jews will speak at Western Washington University Monday and May 4 at
Western Washington University in talks titled "Sixty Years After:
Reflections from Survivors of Nazi Death Camps."


NOEMI BAN, who survived Auschwitz, will talk at 5 p.m. Monday in Fraser
Hall 3. She will speak for 45 minutes, then answer questions from the
audience.


FRED FRAGNER, who spent five years in Buchenwald, will speak at 7 p.m. May
4 in Miller Hall 163. He also will talk for 45 minutes, then answer
audience questions.


Both events are free.


INFORMATION: 650-3337, ray.wolpow@... and the Northwest Center for
Holocaust Education at www.wce.wwu.edu/ Resources/NWCHE/about.shtml .

**


Yes, 60 years is a long time ago, but Ban, a retired school teacher, says
it's still important to publicly air those atrocities. She wants people to
learn over and over again what prejudice, bigotry and hate can do if left
uncontrolled.

She wants to refute those who claim the Holocaust never happened, or if it
did, that it was exaggerated.

"I'm a peaceful person, but when I hear this I get angry, I get
frustrated," she says. "If they have any doubt it happened, I am here as a
witness to answer."

Talking about that time takes its toll because it transports her back to
the horror and the loss of her "dear ones," but Ban says seeing the love
and compassion in the eyes of her audience has helped her heal.

"It helps me go on," she says.

STANDING UP

Ban also speaks out because she wants others to confront prejudice. After
all, genocides remain part of modern history.

Beginning in 1975, the Khmer Rouge murdered some 1.7 million Cambodians,
or 30 percent of the population. And 800,000 Tutsis were massacred in
Rwanda in 1994, an event that formed the heart of the movie "Hotel
Rwanda."

Ray Wolpow, director of the Northwest Center for Holocaust Education at
WWU, remembers seeing a recent screening of the movie with Ban.

"I expected Nomi to compare the atrocities we saw on the screen to those
in her own story," he says. "Instead, she surprised me by saying, 'Now I
know what it has been like for you, Ray. You listen with painstaking
attentiveness, you feel my sorrow and pain, but you can never really
understand. You were never there, and what happened there is beyond words,
beyond what can be shown in a movie.'"

Wolpow concedes he "cannot really know what happened."

"However, I can be a member of a community that seeks understanding of the
incomprehensible," he adds.

"In doing so, I can engage myself and my students in learning that is
restorative, that moves me and my students, from sympathy to empathy to
action when we learn about suffering elsewhere."


INTERNET RESOURCES
history1900s.about.com/cs/holocaust/a/yomhashoah.htm for a look at Yom
HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, which falls on May 6 this year.

Northwest Center for Holocaust Education, at
www.wce.wwu.edu/Resources/NWCHE/about.shtml .

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: www.ushmm.org/.

Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation was established by
Steven Spielberg in 1994 to document survivors and other witnesses to the
Holocaust by videotaping nearly 52,000 testimonies. Find it at
www.vhf.org/.

www.remember.org/ features art, photos, discussions, poems and facts
about the Holocaust.

Holocaust Teacher Resource Center: www.holocaust-trc.org/home.htm.

www.holocaustsurvivors.org/ shares the voices, photos and stories of the
Jews who lived through the mass murders.

The Holocaust Chronicle: www.holocaustchronicle.org.

www.holocaustforgotten.com/ Details Hitler's annihilation of non-Jews.

The Legacy Project focuses on violent events that have struck various
cultures in the 20th century: www.legacy-project.org/.

(source: Bellingham Herald)

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


Mormon senator gets just recognition


During the Holocaust, one of the strongest voices in Washington for rescue
of refugees was one of the unlikeliest -- Elbert D. Thomas, a former
Mormon missionary from Utah.

Thomas had little to gain from standing up for the Jews. There were few
Jewish voters in Utah, and little public interest in U.S. government
action to aid refugees from Adolf Hitler. But Thomas chose principles over
politics, which is why my organization, The David S. Wyman Institute for
Holocaust Studies, has undertaken to seek public recognition for his
humanitarianism. As a result, tomorrow has been proclaimed by the governor
of Utah as "Elbert Thomas Day."

To get a better understanding of what motivated Thomas, I recently met
with his daughter, Esther Thomas Grover, who has lived on Silver Spring's
Linden Lane for more than 60 years.

Esther, 91, vividly recalls her father's unusual career. Thomas grew up in
Salt Lake City in the late 1800s, where he and his family experienced
prejudice because of their Mormon beliefs, shaping his sympathy for the
Jews.

From 1907 to 1912, Thomas was a leader of the Mormon Church's Mission in
Japan. On his way home from Japan, he visited Turkish-occupied Palestine.
Seeing the biblical holy sites and the efforts of the early Zionist
pioneers made him a Zionist.

"The idea of the Jews gathering from round the world and creating their
homeland is part of our religion," Mrs. Grover noted. Her daughter, Jane,
who joined us for the conversation, cherishes a ring her grandfather gave
her, which has a stone he brought from the Sea of Galilee.

After completing his doctorate and teaching at the University of Utah,
Thomas plunged into politics in 1932, winning election to the first of
three terms in the U.S. Senate. Esther worked in her father's Senate
office as a typist and file clerk.

She told me about her father's visit to Germany in 1934, when Thomas "saw
firsthand what Hitler was doing to the Jews and when he came back he spoke
about it, warning that Hitler was a danger," she said. "But nobody wanted
to believe him."

When news of the Nazi mass murder of Europe's Jews was confirmed in 1942,
Thomas called for U.S. rescue action. He called the rescue issue and
Jewish statehood "the last question on which we can afford to be silent or
evasive."

Esther would often go hear her father speak on the floor of the Senate.
"He was a strong and convincing speaker," she said, recalling with pride
how he spoke out about the plight of the Jews.

Thomas became active in the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People
of Europe, a lobbying group led by Jewish activist Peter Bergson. He
signed on to newspaper ads criticizing the Allies' refugee policy, and
co-chaired Bergson's 1943 conference on rescue, which challenged the
Roosevelt administration's claim that nothing could be done to help the
Jews except winning the war.

Although a loyal Democrat and New Dealer, the senator from Utah boldly
broke ranks with Franklin Roosevelt over the refugees. Thomas played a key
role in advancing a Bergson-initiated congressional resolution calling for
creation of a government rescue agency.

Sen. Tom Connally of Texas, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, stalled the resolution. When he took ill one day, Thomas
quickly introduced the measure, which passed unanimously.

Meanwhile, senior aides to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. had
discovered that State Department officials had been obstructing rescue
opportunities. Armed with this information, Morgenthau went to FDR in
January 1944, to convince him that "you have either got to move very fast,
or the Congress of the United States will do it for you."

FDR responded by establishing the War Refugee Board. During the final 15
months of the war, the board played a major role in saving some 200,000
Jews and 20,000 non-Jews. Among other things, it helped finance the
life-saving work of the famous Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.

In 1945, Thomas visited the Allied-liberated Nazi death camps. There he
came face to face with the horrors that he had discussed so passionately
on the Senate floor.

"It was the first time I had ever seen my father unshaven," Grover
recalled about the day that her father returned from that trip. "He was so
terribly distressed by what he had seen that he didn't follow his regular
routine. The camps left an impression on him that he couldn't shake."

In high schools in Utah on "Elbert Thomas Day," students will learn about
this extraordinary role model, a man whose humanitarian voice was not
stifled by political considerations.

But as his daughter in Silver Spring reminded me, Thomas' good deeds are a
model not just for students in Utah, but for young people everywhere who
need to learn to "speak their conscience, and do the right thing, no
matter what."

(source: Commentary, Rafael Medoff is director of the David S. Wyman
Institute for Holocaust Studies, www.WymanInstitute.org.----Washington
Jewish Week)


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

INDIANA:

Holocaust museum reopens after arson----Investigators in Terre Haute are
still looking for a suspect.


A Holocaust museum gutted by a November 2003 fire reopened Sunday in an
expanded space that includes displays of books and photos charred by the
still-unsolved arson.


About 500 people attended Sunday afternoons reopening of the new museum.
The 3,700-square-foot buildings entrance is flanked by six slender windows
that resemble candles and represent the estimated 6 million Jews who
perished in the Holocaust.

Holocaust survivor Eva Kor in 1995 opened the original CANDLES museum,
which stands for Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Experiments Survivors.

Im asking you a special favor, to remember today as a shining example of
triumph over evil, Kor said to the crowd.

As a child, Kor, 71, and her identical twin sister, Miriam, were prisoners
in Polands Auschwitz concentration camp and were subjected to Nazi doctor
Joseph Mengeles experiments on twins.

The museum, which Kor opened in hopes of teaching Midwesterners about the
horrors of the Holocaust, saw thousands of schoolchildren visit in the
following years.

On Nov. 18, 2003, the museum was gutted by an arsonist who apparently
spray-painted Remember Timmy McVeigh on the outside wall next to the
smashed window.

McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber who shared sympathies with white
supremacists, was executed at a federal prison outside Terre Haute in
2001.

Donations of nearly $300,000 allowed Kor to rebuild.

(source: Associated Press)




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

UTAH:

Movies: U.'s Holocaust remembrance looks at Nazis' deadliest propaganda
film


There are few words more potent, or more carelessly tossed about, than
"propaganda."

The Webster's definition is "the spreading of ideas, information or
rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, cause or a
person." In these politically charged times, the word is usually applied
to whatever is being said by those you disagree with. Liberals apply the
word to Fox News; conservatives use it to describe Michael Moore's work
product.

In recent weeks, the government's internal watchdog, the General
Accountability Office, used the phrase "covert propaganda" to describe
phony TV-news segments produced by the many arms of the Bush
administration. These segments, which look like real news reports, have
covered such topics as support for the war in Iraq, airport security and
agricultural markets. (Bush's Justice Department sent out a memo to
agencies, telling them to ignore the GAO report.)

But there's propaganda and there's propaganda. For an example of the
most unvarnished, lethal form of propaganda ever made, watch - if you can
stomach it - "The Eternal Jew," a 1940 "documentary" from Nazi Germany
that argues Hitler's case against Judaism.

The movie will screen Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Olpin Union Theatre on
the University of Utah campus. The screening is part of the U.'s annual
Days of Remembrance, an annual commemoration of the millions of victims of
the Holocaust.

Ronald Smelser, a history professor at the U. who teaches about World
War II and the Holocaust, does not screen the movie without some
trepidation.

"I would never say to a student, 'You ought to see this,' or assign it.
It's extremely important before they look at it that it's contextualized,"
said Smelser, who will deliver a short lecture before the screening to do
just that. (The movie also dovetails with the Days of Remembrance's
keynote speaker, Duke University professor Claudia Koonz, whose topic is
"Making Racism Respectable: The Nazi Regime and Ordinary Germans." Her
lecture is set for Thursday, 7 p.m., in room 1110 of the Language &
Communication Building.)

"The Eternal Jew," produced by Joseph Goebbels' propaganda ministry,
delivers its message with brutal directness. It repeats every nasty Jewish
stereotype - Jews as parasites who pervert other cultures, Jews as
unscrupulous businessmen, Jews as criminals and pornographers.

In one segment, the movie shows a map of the historic migration of Jews
from the Middle East through Europe and the rest of the world. Then it
shows another, very similar map depicting the spread of rats through the
Middle Ages. The narration is unmistakable in its hateful metaphor: "Rats
symbolize sneakiness and subterranean destruction among the animals, just
as the Jews do among mankind." (This echoes a medieval prejudice that Jews
helped spread plague. "The old medieval accusation was that Jews caused
disease; the new racial accusation was that Jews are the disease," Smelser
said.)

The movie is adept at showing things out of context. Footage of Jews in
Poland's Lodz ghetto, Smelser said, "deliberately sought out those faces
which most closely resembled the anti-Semitic stereotypes." The narration
claims Jews choose to live in squalor, when in fact "the misery that's
shown there is basically the misery the Nazis created for them in these
ghettos," Smelser said. The movie also uses a scene from Fritz Lang's 1931
film classic "M" - a speech in which Peter Lorre tries to rationalize his
many murders of children - and suggests such psychopathy is common of all
Jews.

But as harsh as "The Eternal Jew" is (like its footage of livestock
being ritually slaughtered), it's the more subtle message that Smelser
finds more insidious. Take, for example, a clip of Hitler giving a speech,
in which he says, "if they, the Jews, force us into war, it will lead to
the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe."

"Clearly, it points the way to the destruction of the European Jews,"
Smelser said. "The film lays the case against the Jews, and at certain
strategic moments the film points the way that their fate will ultimately
be - to be wiped out like vermin, to be slaughtered like cows."

Smelser said he must be careful with a volatile film like "The Eternal
Jew" - for one thing, it's a popular title among neo-Nazi groups. But
showing it, and explaining the twisted mindset that created it, is an
important step in keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive.

"The point is to make people aware of what happened," Smelser said,
"and to make them aware of what can happen when a modern, civilized
country with a high level of technology can do when it sets out to
marginalize a group of people, label them dangerous or subversive, and
then kick them out - either expel them or kill them."
---

Days of Remembrance

The University of Utah's annual Days of Remembrance runs Tuesday
through Thursday on the U. campus, with these events:

"The Eternal Jew," the 1940 Nazi propaganda film, screens Tuesday, 7
p.m., in the Olpin Union Theatre. Ronald Smelser will give a lecture
explaining the film in historical context.

Smelser offers a one-day workshop about the Holocaust, Wednesday, 1-5
p.m., in the Mark Green Auditorium of the Francis Madsen Building. The
workshop is good for one credit, by registering through the registrar's
office.

Keynote speaker Claudia Koonz, history professor at Duke University,
on "Making Racism Respectable: The Nazi Regime and Ordinary Germans,"
Thursday, 7 p.m., in room 1110 of the Language & Communication Building.

The screening and lecture are free to the public. For more
information, visit http://www.diversity.utah.edu.

(source: Salt Lake Tribune)

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

Jewish Leaders Say LDS Baptisms for Dead Jews Continue Despite Agreement



Jewish leaders say Latter-Day Saints are still baptizing holocaust victims
despite a ten-year-old commitment that they would stop the practice.
That's why the Jewish leaders say they're headed to Salt Lake to meet
with LDS officials and discuss the matter.

Dan Rascon has been following the story and has this report.

Genealogy work is a top priority among Latter-Day Saint faithful. Thats
because they use these resources to find their ancestors and perform
baptisms by proxy for the deceased person.

It's called baptism for the dead, an ordinance that became very
controversial to the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors ten
years ago.

Back in 1995 members of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust
Survivors met with LDS leaders and worked out an agreement in which the
LDS church promised to stop baptizing deceased Jews.

That organization pointed out that hundreds of thousands of holocaust
victims, who are not direct descendants of church members, are being
baptized in LDS temples.

LDS leaders agreed to withdraw the names of those holocaust victims in
genealogy records and issued a directive to discontinue any further
baptisms of deceased Jews.

Now ten years later Jewish leader Ernest Michel, who headed up that
agreement in 1995, says the church has breached its agreement and is still
baptizing Jewish people.

That's why he and three other Jewish leaders plan to arrive here in Salt
Lake on Sunday to meet with top LDS leaders.

"We have proof of thousands and thousands of Jews, including holocaust
victims, who have been baptizedWe will not stand for these continuous
baptismsWe are hurt, we are frustrated and we want to make it right," said
Michel.

Ernest Michel would not say what LDS leaders they plan to meet with. But
he says they will get here on Sunday, meet for dinner and then spend
Monday discussing their concerns.

The LDS church did confirm the meeting is taking place but denied further
comment.

(source: KUTV News)



EASTERN EUROPE:

IOM: Gypsy Holocaust Survivors Need Assistance


The U.N.-affiliated International Organization for Migration says
tens-of-thousands of impoverished elderly Gypsy Holocaust survivors in
Eastern and Central Europe are in desperate need of aid.

The International Organization for Migration estimates about 145,000 Gypsy
Holocaust survivors living in eastern and central Europe are in need of
aid. Since 2002, IOM and other agencies have provided basic assistance,
such as food, firewood, coal, and hygiene articles to 64,000 Gypsies, also
known as Roma.

IOM Roma Expert Delbert Field says funds for these programs are running
out.

"We found many more survivors than our donors had expected," he said. "We
found that these people had safety nets that were quickly disappearing
because of the profound economic changes going on in eastern and central
Europe. We found that many Roma lived in squalid settlements, without any
services and settlements, which do not even appear on the map. Even in
countries, which have recently joined the European Union, found Roma
living in destitution, lacking access to education, health care and
housing."

Mr. Field says these elderly people are living on pensions ranging from
$10 to $120 a month.

During World War II, Roma were persecuted by the Nazis. Many were deported
to concentration camps, where they perished. Others were enslaved by the
Nazis and their allies. Mr. Field says there is no reliable estimate of
the number of Roma killed.

"We have seen numbers from one-quarter-of-a-million to 1.5 million
persons. Why? Because there was an unreliable count of Roma at the time,"
he said. "They were isolated, as they are now. They were socially
excluded, as they are now. They were more nomadic than they are now,
especially in eastern and central Europe. And, also, because of the nature
of their killings. This was mass murder that, for the most part, took
place away from public view. Most never made it to the camps."

Mr. Field says first-hand accounts from scores of survivors indicate that
family members were rounded up, executed and dumped in mass graves.

Funds for the Gypsy Holocaust survivors have come from the Swiss Banks
Settlement in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York
and from the German Foundation. Mr. Field says $214 million are needed to
assist 126,000 elderly Romas for five years at a cost of $300 per person
per year.

(source: Voice of America)






GERMANY:

Holocaust survivors, German leader honour victims of Buchenwald


Survivors of the Buchenwald concentration camp joined German leaders
Sunday to mark its liberation by U.S. troops 60 years ago and to warn that
the suffering of its hundreds of thousands of prisoners must never be
forgotten.

Some 240,000 prisoners passed through the camp just outside the city of
Weimar between 1937 and 1945 - Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, prominent
political prisoners, Jehovah's witnesses and others. About 56,000 died,
many worked to death by the Nazis.

About 1,000 people gathered in a cold drizzle as German Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder and camp survivors observed a minute of silence and placed
flowers where prisoners were forced to assemble.

Earlier, Schroeder expressed shame in Germany's name and honoured the
victims in a ceremony at Weimar's National Theater, a symbol of the city's
classical cultural heritage.

"They fell victim to hunger, sickness, the sadistic terror and systematic
murder," Schroeder said in a speech. "I bow before you, the victims and
their families."

Though Buchenwald was not expressly built for mass killing, as Auschwitz
was, it was just as much part of the Nazis' effort to wipe out anyone
deemed un-German. Starvation, disease, overwork and medical experiments
claimed many lives.

Jerry Hontas said he arrived as a 21-year-old army medic the day after
U.S. troops reached Buchenwald.

"It was so incredible - stacks of bodies, the smell, the total shock and
confusion, people walking around by the thousands," he said. "We had no
concept for this kind of insane cruelty."

By that time, Georg Sterner, a Hungarian Jew, had been at Buchenwald for
10 months. He recalled looking out from Barracks No. 37 when the first
U.S. tank crashed through the barbed-wire perimeter fence on April 11,
1945.

"We always kept up hope," said the 77-year-old retired engineer from
Budapest.

The official ceremony was part of a weekend of commemorations. It began
with music by Ludwig van Beethoven, a representative of the cultured
Germany of which Schroeder said the Nazis were "the absolute negation."

A women's choir sang a song written by two Austrian inmates at Buchenwald
that became the secret camp anthem.

"Oh Buchenwald, I cannot forget you, because you are my destiny," they
sang. "Only those who leave you can grasp how wonderful freedom is."

Former inmates recalled the stench of the crematoriums, the beatings and
the forced labour. They worried that the world will find it harder to
understand what happened under the Nazis once the survivors are gone.

"In a certain sense the cycle of active memory is closing, with the vow
not only to cast our eyes back upon the past but also to look forward to
the future," said Spanish writer and former culture minister Jorge
Semprun, himself a former Buchenwald inmate.

With an eye on recent electoral successes by Germany's extreme-right
fringe, Schroeder pledged that his country would remain vigilant against
neo-Nazi stirrings.

Buchenwald inmates rose up against their Nazi captors as the 6th Armoured
Division of the U.S. 3rd army approached the camp. When U.S. troops
arrived, they found some 21,000 survivors.

The Americans then forced Weimar residents to look at what had been going
on about eight kilometres outside their town. Some women reportedly
fainted when they saw the piles of corpses.

But Schroeder noted that Buchenwald's sinister history continued after the
Nazi defeat in the Second World War, when the Soviets turned it into a
Stalinist prisoner camp where thousands died.

These days, Weimar would rather be remembered as the place where Johann
Wolfgang Goethe, Germany's most revered classical writer and playwright,
had his home. Goethe, who died in Weimar in 1832, walked in the forests
where the Buchenwald camp later was built.

"This Weimar stands for humanity, enlightenment, idealism," Schroeder
said. "It is the geographical closeness of culture and barbarism that
makes us so speechless."

(source: Associated Press)





NEW ZEALAND:

PM of NZ Suspends MP For Holocaust Comments


New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark announced Sunday that she is
suspending fellow Labor MP John Tamihere for saying he is "sick
and tired" of hearing how many Jews got gassed in the Holocaust.

According to a New Zealand Herald, in response to a question by
Investigate Magazine on how the country's society can focus on the
mistakes of the past, Tamihere said, "The Wiesenthal Institute is the
same. I'm sick and tired of hearing how many Jews got gassed, not because
I'm not revolted by it - I am - or I'm not violated by it - I am - but
because I already know that. How many times do I have to be told and made
to feel guilty?" he said.

Jewish organizations reacted angrily to the statements

(source: Arutz Sheva)





ISRAEL:

Israel's holocaust survivor fund broke


Israel's Holocaust Survivors' Welfare Fund is overwhelmed with claims
from increasingly aged and needy people.

The fund deals with financing care giving for survivors who cannot
manage daily activities such as eating and bathing, and also helps pay for
dental and eye care, prostheses and medications.

But at least 12,000 applications for assistance are backlogged, the
2005 budget for special grants has already been exhausted and toward
October the care-giving budget will also run out, Haaretz reported
Thursday.

The math is simple -- the number of people receiving care giving has
risen 60 percent since 2002, while the fund's budget has remained
stationary.

The fund's budget in 2004 was $30 million and the fund asked for an
increase to $45 million for 2005. However, it received only $31 million.

Most of its budget comes from the Claims Conference, the body in
charge of handling Jewish property and reparations from Germany and
Austria.

(source: United Press International)