August 12


(in) EUROPE:

Jewish Group Denounces Video on Auschwitz


An Internet video that depicts the Nazi death camp Auschwitz as a
rave party drew sharp criticism Wednesday from a Jewish rights group,
which urged authorities to have it removed from European Web sites.

The three-minute video titled "Housewitz" a pun on house music and
Auschwitz casts Nazi soldiers as DJs. It alternates black-and-white still
photos of Holocaust atrocities with color images of youths at an outdoor
party. And it advertises a "Free taxi ride home," showing a wheelbarrow
full of corpses.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center's European office denounced the video as
"outrageous," saying it goes "beyond the bounds of freedom of expression
to an unprecedented level of obscenity."

The center asked the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe to call on countries where Web sites have posted the video to
"immediately stop the spread of this pernicious nihilism."

Jaroslaw Mensfeld, a spokesman for the museum at the Auschwitz Memorial in
Poland, said he was "absolutely shocked." Some 1.5 million people, mostly
Jews, were killed at the Nazi camp during World War II. "I don't
understand how a person can make such a movie," he said.

The film is featured on one Dutch and two Polish Web sites, the Wiesenthal
Center said.

The Dutch Web site, Geenstijl, says it's doing nothing wrong in posting
the video. The site, whose name means "no style," says it mixes news with
"light subjects and pleasantly twisted nonsense." It has published a
disclaimer saying it copied the video after learning it was being talked
about in Internet chat rooms.

"We didn't make the video, but it is an integral part of the discussion by
our viewers. It's not illegal and we don't intend to remove it from the
site," said Oscar van Wijland, one of the Web site's writers.

According to the Dutch Complaints Bureau for Discrimination on the
Internet, the video's maker is a 22-year-old Dutch student. Six weeks ago,
the bureau received a complaint about the video and had it pulled from
three Web sites.

Later, when the Geenstijl site posted the film, the complaints bureau went
to the Amsterdam Public Prosecutor but was told the video was "not illegal
enough" to prosecute, the bureau said. It plans to appeal.

(source: Associated Press)





HUNGARY:

Hungary Holocaust museum unveils exhibition


A permanent exhibit will be unveiled in early 2006 at Hungary's Holocaust
museum, with the fate of four families used to illustrate the suffering of
hundreds of thousands of the country's Jews.

The Holocaust Memorial Center, inaugurated last year, has had several
temporary exhibits, but no permanent collection. It has set educating
youth as one of its key aims. The names of over 80,000 Holocaust victims
are engraved on one of the inner walls of the museum, which has had
100,000 visitors since its inauguration.

Some 550,000 of Hungary's 825,000 Jews were killed in the Holocaust and
around a third of those killed in Auschwitz and the nearby Birkenau
concentration camps were Hungarian. Several tens of thousands of Roma (or
Gypsies) also perished, many in the same concentration camps as the Jews.

The Holocaust Memorial Center incorporates an old synagogue, exhibit halls
and documentation archives. The synagogue was used as an internment camp
for Jews during the last years of World War II. After the war, it was used
as a factory and later abandoned.

The museum's inaugural exhibit, on display until September 5, is of the
Auschwitz Album, a collection of photographs mostly of Hungarian Jews
taken at the concentration camp in 1944.

(source: Associated Press)





ITALY:

Ex - Nazi Captain's Italian Holiday Sparks Anger


An Italian town rose up in arms on Wednesday after a former Nazi SS
officer sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in a 1944 massacre
arrived for a court-approved holiday at a friend's villa.

Former SS captain Erich Priebke was extradited from Argentina and
eventually convicted in 1998 for the slaughter of 335 men and boys at the
Ardeatine Caves south of Rome.

He was released under house arrest a year later due to his advanced age
and fading health.

But this week, 92-year-old Priebke turned up in Cardana di Besozzo on the
shores of the northern Lake Maggiore after a Rome court approved a
police-supervised vacation.

``It's an act of injustice,'' Marco Reguzzoni, president of the region,
told AGI news agency on Wednesday, saying he could understand the
``indignation'' of residents.

``This isn't any old man. After being a fugitive of justice all his life,
he gets house arrest, but giving him holiday on Lake Maggiore is too
much,'' he said, responding to complaints by local politicians.

To make matters worse, Priebke was staying at the villa of Herman Bickler,
a former head of the Gestapo secret police, where he was visiting Bickler's
son, AGI said.

``But I don't have the power to intercede against this undesired
presence,'' Reguzzoni said.

The Ardeatine massacre was one of many shootings carried out as German
troops retreated to the so-called ``Gothic Line'' of defense that cut
across Italy from the port of La Spezia to the Adriatic.

(source: Reuters)





USA//FLORIDA:

Financial institutions urged to consider Holocaust survivors

Florida's Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher Thursday called on
financial institutions operating in Florida to waive the wire-transfer
fees charged to Holocaust survivors and their families on payments for
Holocaust-related reparations or restitution.

Gallagher has written a letter asking the CEOs of financial institutions
doing business in Florida to voluntarily waive these wire transfer or
processing fees. His letter was sent to more than 500 financial
institutions across the state.

The Department of Financial Services plans to actively follow-up with each
of the institutions and will establish a page on its Web site,
www.fldfs.com, that will list those financial institutions that have
agreed to waive the fees.

Financial institution fees on wire transfers vary, ranging from $10 to $40
per transaction, Gallagher said in a release.

As many as 10,000 survivors reside in Florida, the state's CFO said. The
transfer fee can amount to a 10 percent tax on each payment a survivor
receives, while an estimated 35 percent to 40 percent of Holocaust
survivors in Florida live at or near the poverty level, Gallagher said.

A number of banks in New York, Illinois and California have already
adopted a policy of waiving all wire transfer fees on Holocaust
reparations, Gallagher said.

(source: American Cities Business Journal)





THE NETHERLANDS:

Dutch Prosecutors to Check Spoof Auschwitz Video


Dutch prosecutors will launch an investigation into a spoof video
portraying the Auschwitz Nazi death camp as a techno party to decide
whether to take action against its makers, an official said on Thursday.

The video, billed as an advert for a rave party called ``Housewitz,'' has
angered Polish authorities who asked the Dutch Foreign Ministry to punish
the makers and remove the clip from a Web site.

The clip is illustrated with pictures of the death camp, advertising a
``free taxi ride home'' with a picture of a heap of corpses on a
wheelbarrow and a ``hot shower'' with a picture of a gas chamber.

Some 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered at the death camp in
Poland.

The Amsterdam public prosecutor's office said it would investigate the
video after receiving an official complaint from the Dutch Complaints
Bureau for Discrimination on the Internet (MDI).

``We received an official complaint by MDI and the public prosecutor will
look at the video,'' the prosecutor's spokesman said.

``The prosecutor saw the video a couple of weeks ago, when MDI first
complained about it, but he didn't find it illegal and did not take any
actions against the makers,'' he said.

However, now the MDI has lodged an official complaint, prosecutors are
obliged to re-examine the case.

``We don't like the video but we cannot guarantee that the prosecutor will
change his mind this time and find it illegal,'' the spokesman said.

MDI complained on Wednesday that the video was against Dutch law. It said
that three sites had removed it voluntarily and its producer, a
22-year-old student, had apologized.

MDI had also asked Amsterdam prosecutors to get the clip removed from
another Dutch Web site, www.geenstijl.nl. Representatives for the site
were not available to comment.

Earlier on Thursday, Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Tomasz Szeratics
told PAP news agency the video was still available on the site.

``There is no doubt that in the Netherlands and Poland alike such
publication is violating the law,'' Szeratics said.

(source: Reuters)