June 6



USA/NEW MEXICO:

Albq. Holocaust museum wants better space


New Mexico's Holocaust and Intolerance Museum in Albuquerque is housed in
a modest storefront in the city's downtown.

The museum wants to move to a much large location downtown -- although no
site has been selected.

Museum president Andrew Lipman says the goal is to move in two years.

Lipman says the museum will soon receive $985,000 that was approved by the
2005 Legislature.

That will help plan, design, buy and equip a new museum.

Museum founder Werner Gellert says exhibits reflect American Indian
genocide and Armenian and Greek genocide as well as the Holocaust and the
Bataan Death March of World War Two.

Gellert hopes the new site will have room to honor the five million
non-Jews also killed by the Nazis.

(source: Associated Press)



ISRAEL:
Holocaust site upsets Arabs -- Muslim hopes center opens dialogue


At a recent family wedding, no one talked to Khaled Mahameed.

And these days, that's sort of the typical response he's been getting.

Neighbors curse him. And a relative accused him of playing into Israel's
hands.

Mahameed, 43, an Israeli Muslim, opened the Arab Institute for Holocaust
Education and Research in Nazareth, which has lectures and displays 60
photos of the Holocaust, purchased from Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust
Memorial.

Ultimately, he said he believes helping Arabs understand the Holocaust
could lead to coming to terms with Jews, a long-needed step toward
resolving the Mideast conflict.

But there's strong opposition to Mahameed's effort to get Arabs to
understand how the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis has forged
modern-day Israel and Jewish attitudes.

In the Arab world, the Holocaust is not just played down, it's often
denied.

"Arabs often feel that if they acknowledge the Holocaust they give up
their claim of being the real victim of this conflict," said Tom Segev, an
Israeli author on the Holocaust.

Arab attitudes about the Holocaust are to some extent mirrored by an
Israeli indifference to the catastrophes that have befallen the
Palestinians as a result of Israel's creation, said Hashem Mahameed, a
relative and former member of Israel's parliament.

"I proposed that he open a study center about Zionism and its relationship
to the Palestinian pain," he said.

Khaled Mahameed's interest in the Holocaust was sparked by photographs of
Nazi atrocities that he first saw when he was young. But the decisive
moment, he said, came in 2000 when Israeli-Palestinian fighting led many
on both sides to wonder whether peace could ever be achieved. Earlier this
month, the skepticism was heard live from Gaza on Palestine TV when a
Muslim cleric accused Jews of inflating the scope of the Holocaust.

"If I could have talked with him, I could" have changed his mind, said
Mahameed.

While the Holocaust ended three years before Israel was founded in 1948,
there's been a human cost for the creation of the Jewish nation. The
dominant Arab view is that the consequence of the formation of Israel is
the uprooting of thousands of Palestinians, whose refugee status is at the
core of the ongoing struggle and violence on the West Bank and Gaza City,
among other places.

Most Palestinians, living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, know little
about the history of Jews and the Holocaust, which is not taught in their
schools.

But Mahameed's message is getting through to some Arabs.

Khamaisi Mufleh, 34, of Galilee visited the institute and studied the
photographs.

The Jews "relate every demand ... to their fear caused by the Holocaust,"
he said. "We need to change the conversation."

(source: Associated Press)



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Treasury to triple Holocaust survivors' aid


The Treasury announced Monday it would more than triple its contribution
to the cash-strapped Holocaust Survivors Welfare Fund.

The move would funnel another NIS 5 million to the fund, which was slated
to receive NIS 2m. this year, as it did last year.

The Knesset Immigrant Absorption Committee held a special meeting Monday
to address the fund's financial distress. Some 9,800 disabled survivors
80 percent of them immigrants from the former Soviet Union receive help
from the organization, which told the committee it was running $15m.
short.

The committee welcomed the Treasury's new allocation, but called on the
Finance Ministry to increase that amount to cover the full amount the fund
said it needed.

The Treasury also indicted it would "look positively" on providing a
further funding increase in 2006.

Committee Chairwoman Colette Avital (Labor) stressed that with Holocaust
Remembrance Day approaching it will begin at sundown Wednesday night the
country needed to provide assistance to the survivors who need increasing
amounts of help as they age.

"It is the responsibility of the state to take care of the essential needs
of this population," Avital said.

(source: Jerusalem Post)