August 30



UNITED KINGDOM:

Millions of buttons in memory of Holocaust


IT'S set to be a work of art with a poignant message.

Hundreds of schoolchildren and students across Huddersfield have been
challenged to collect 6 million buttons for a new work for the public art
gallery.

Every button will represent one of the people killed in the Holocaust.

The buttons will be laid out in the art gallery and used to illustrate the
sheer industrial scale of the Holocaust and the continued oppression of
minorities.

The project is being run by Kirklees Council's Community History Service
for next year's Holocaust Memorial Day.

Students from 12 Kirklees secondary schools, Huddersfield New College and
Greenhead College will be working with Community History Service staff and
Leeds-based artist Antonia Stowe.

Kim Strickson, of the Community History Service, said: "Since the 1940s,
genocide has continued to stalk our world.

"During this project, young people will be asked to consider the reasons
why and to learn from people who have lived through such experiences and
continue to be hopeful of a better future."

She said buttons were particularly appropriate because they came in all
shapes, sizes and colours - just like people.

Ms Strickson added: "They also remind us of the clothes removed from death
camp victims.

"It was not only Jews who died from starvation, disease and gas chambers
in the camps. Well over 1m others died, political opponents, homosexuals,
Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabled, gypsies and people from other racial
groups."

Six people who survived the Holocaust, together with six refugees from
places as far apart as Bhutan and Bosnia, will share their experiences
with each other and the schools in the project.

They will be working with film- maker Chris Squire and writer Adam
Strickson to create a DVD.

The film will be part of the installation in the art gallery and the DVD
will be available for schools to use.

* The public is being asked to help in the collection of the buttons,
although it is stressed that buttons should not be bought specially.

* Buttons of any shape, size, colour and material can be handed over to
staff at any Kirklees museum, Huddersfield Art Gallery, Huddersfield Town
Hall or Dewsbury Town Hall between September 1 and December 15.

* They will be collected in large plastic see-through tubes. The number of
buttons being contributed must be clearly indicated.

* Anyone wanting information about the Holocaust Memorial Day event being
held in Huddersfield Town Hall on Wednesday January 25 should leave
contact details at any button collection point.

(source: Huddersfield Daily Examiner)




AUSTRALIA/HUNGARY:

No records exist of wartime fascist

HUNGARIAN archives have turned up no information about the wartime
activities of fascist Lajos Polgar, despite his senior position in the
Nazi-aligned Arrow Cross party.

A search of Budapest's Holocaust Documentation Centre revealed no records
of anyone named Lajos Polgar.

Mr Polgar has claimed he worked as a secretary to the party official Jozef
Gera, who was hanged for war crimes in 1946.

Tamas Kovacs, of the Holocaust Documentation Centre, said that since the
centre held no records on Mr Polgar - who emigrated to Australia in 1949 -
he may have been exaggerating his position within the party.

"This means that his position within the Arrow Cross party could not have
been very high," Mr Kovacs told the Budapest Sun. "The fact that he was a
member of that party does not mean he is guilty of any crimes."

But the Hungarian Association of Jewish Communities said regardless of
whether records were held on Mr Polgar, he should face court.

Mr Polgar, 89, emigrated under a false name and changed his birth date. He
neglected to tell Immigration of his wartime service with the Arrow Cross
and that he was a soldier in the Hungarian army for two years.

(source: The Australian)






USA//MASSACHUSETTS:

Holocaust memorial marks its first decade


For 10 years, a veil of smoke has risen from the lucid towers of the New
England Holocaust Memorial, a beacon in the center of downtown Boston.
Millions of visitors have paused at the site since its dedication
in 1995, with faces tilted to the sky in wonder or to the ground in silent
grief. The patch of green has become a solemn burial ground, providing
consolation to those with relatives who vanished in the Holocaust and
education for those too young to know the horrors perpetrated during World
War II.

To mark its first decade, the Friends of the New England Holocaust
Memorial is planning a major commemoration ceremony on Sept. 18 at the
site.

Every day I go by, I see people I dont expect to see there, said
Richard Mann, president of the memorial. Many just come across it. They
stand in front of it. They are absorbed by it.

In the 1980s, with the help of then-Mayor Raymond L. Flynn of Boston and a
group of Holocaust survivors, a Newton man and a survivor began to sketch
out the idea of a memorial. I struggled very hard to make sure we have a
memory mark, said Stephan B. Ross, founder of the memorial.

Between 1940 and 1945, Ross survived five years in 10 different
concentration camps. He was liberated at Dachau by American troops at the
age of 14. Not only was Ross instrumental in the creation of the Holocaust
memorial in Boston, but later he worked tirelessly to see that a granite
marker was installed on the site of the memorial to honor the U.S.
soldiers who freed the survivors in the camps at the end of World War II.

It was then that Ross headed for these shores and settled in Boston.
Nearly every dignitary, foreign and national, visiting Boston has passed
under the towers. The mayor sees the memorial every day [from his City
Hall office across Congress street], said Mann. For him, the most touching
visit was that of Helmut Kohl, premier of Germany, who visited the
memorial in the late 1990s at the end of his term.

For many survivors the memorial is their only real place to go to mourn,
said Mann. It is a place where they can mourn for their relatives as we
could mourn for our loved ones.

Countless survivors have visited the site, many placing stones along the
side of the memorial, as on Jewish gravestones. On the night of its
dedication on Oct. 18, 1995, Ross and his family slept under the towers in
sleeping bags. I wanted them to understand the horrors we went through, he
noted.

For Ruth Fein of Boston, founding president of the New England Holocaust
Memorial, the site has become another symbol of Boston, just as the
Lincoln Memorial is a symbol in Washington, D.C.

The memorial also serves as the gathering place for the Jewish community
in its annual observance of Yom HaShoah, the day of Holocaust remembrance.
A candle lighting ceremony and the recitation of the mourners Kaddish
honors the memory of the six million Jews who perished.

The memorial has also become a living monument to the dangers of
intolerance. Events have included commemorations of homosexual victims of
persecution, the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings in Japan at the end of
World War II, and rallies protesting ethnic cleansing in Darfur and
Kosovo.

Although the commemoration on Sept. 18 will mark what the Friends of the
New England Holocaust Memorial, or FNEHM, consider the final phase of the
memorials development, the organization works on an ongoing basis to make
it a living memorial, one that can educate the young and whose message
remains relevant to the world today.

Students of all backgrounds and nationalities have visited the memorial
and drawn lessons of tolerance and freedom, according to FNEHM. The
Friends has developed a study guide for students and organizes tours
throughout the school year, led by Holocaust survivors and volunteer
guides. Fein recalled a group of sixth-graders from a school in Bostons
Chinatown whose visit to the memorial was their first introduction to the
Holocaust. Other students have come from other inner-city schools and
surrounding communities and beyond. Some have even come from Israel. They
said it was the only place you could see Hebrew in Boston, said Mann.
According to Fein, the memorial has not experienced vandalism or
anti-Semitism in the decade since it was dedicated. When we founded it, of
course, we thought, its glass, she said, acknowledging some early concerns
about property damage. Although the Friends ordered six additional glass
panels in case of emergency, they have not been used.

On Tuesday evening, a contractor was sitting below a tower, filling in the
history of the memorial one letter at a time where the inscription had
faded. Maintenance of the memorial requires about $80,000 per year,
including expenses such as electricity and steam for the glowing ember
pits below each tower. A new fiber-optics lighting system has also been
installed, and repairs have been made to the granite and landscaping where
passersby have taken shortcuts across the grass.

An additional $30,000 is allocated by FNEMH to community programs tours
and lectures at the memorial. The funds to support the memorial come
primarily from an endowment fund, a source of revenue made up of
contributions from private donors. Gifts to the fund have often been
generous, as much as $10,000 from individual donors, according to Mann and
Fein. In tribute to those donors, the Friends plan to unveil a plaque to
them during the 10th anniversary celebration; the plaque will complete the
structure of the memorial.

Look at these towers, passerby, and try to imagine what they really mean
what they symbolize what they evoke. Elie Wiesel said at the 1995 opening
ceremony, reminding listeners of the many metaphors conjured by the
towers. Six towers recall the six main death camps, the six million Jews
who died, six chimneys of extermination, and a traditional menorah with a
missing candle, invoking loss. On Sept. 18, the city will mark the six
towers that govern the skyline and give voice to those silenced 60 years
ago.

(source: Asya Pikovsky, The Jewish Advocate)





POLAND:

200,000 victims of Lodz ghetto remembered


Holocaust survivors and their families gathered in Lodz on Monday for
ceremonies commemorating more than 200,000 Jews from the central Polish
city who were killed by the Nazis.

Marking the 61st anniversary of the last transports from Lodz's ghetto to
Hitler's death camps, the two-day ceremonies that began on Sunday included
the opening of a new Jewish information center and a march of remembrance
through the city's streets on Monday afternoon.

"The strength of evil can only be answered with an even greater strength
of love," French Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger said at a mass that opened
the commemoration.

Lodz, some 120 kilometers southwest of Warsaw, was a thriving center of
commerce before World War II, with the city's 230,000 Jews representing
about a third of its population.

(source: Associated Press)




USA/GERMANY:

Man tells story of misery on other side of WWII


Stories that most Americans hear about World War II are about "our side."

Not so often do accounts describe life inside former enemy nations.

Hans Huber, born in Germany on Hitler's birthday, April 20, and now an
American citizen, at age 75 decided to tell his childhood experiences
under Nazi rule and of his adult immigration to Canada and finally the
United States.

Starvation, fear and violence vied with Theresia and Josef Huber's desire
to raise their orphaned grandson, whom they adopted after his mother died
of cancer, in as normal a childhood as possible.

Children in Nazi Germany were encouraged to report anyone, including
parents, who criticized Nazis.

"I would never have done that. My youth was a very happy one because I
felt the love of my parents, and I loved them dearly." Huber sometimes
refers to his grandparents as father and mother.

Neighbors and co-workers reported non-approved activities to the Nazi
police. Once, Huber's grandfather spent time in prison for listening to
the BBC on the radio. The family never knew whether a neighbor or a police
tracking device detected that illegal activity.

Hunger was widespread.

The Huber family also included a daughter, now Rita Kleinken, of Kehl,
Germany, Huber's aunt whom he calls his sister. They were able to scrounge
for a little more produce than others because of country relatives.

Jewish neighbors were eventually forbidden to shop in community stores, so
Hans was sent to shop for them secretly.

"My grandfather would never say what some people said, 'Kill the Jews
because they killed Christ.' We helped them. He went to Dr. Rosenthal's
house and lit candles for Shabot. Dr. Karl Rosenthal. He died in a
concentration camp."

Jewish friends began disappearing. Nazi officials said "they went on boats
to America."

The Nazis also took Huber's blind cousin, returning his ashes with the
claim he had died of pneumonia.

Only later did the family learn that in addition to Jews, Nazis killed
those with birth defects, the retarded, mentally ill, homosexuals,
foreigners, gypsies, the senile, the institutionalized and others in its
eugenics program to improve society by euthanizing of "inferior elements."

"The Nazis said these people were not useful," Huber says.

"Most Germans didn't know what went on in concentration camps," Huber says
sadly.

"After the liberation, the Americans and British threw down pictures of
bones of humans from the camps. I didn't believe it. I'm not sure even my
grandfather believed it, it was so horrible."

The grandfather's courage, Huber thinks 70 years later, also came from not
fearing death: "That man had jumped off the undertaker's table so many
times he wasn't afraid."

At 14, Huber became an electrical apprentice. It was 1944. He was forced
to begin every work day saluting and saying, "Heil, Hitler." Huber,
sitting in his Chesterfield County family room, mimics the salute,
grimacing.

After the war, the grandfather told how he secretly, at great risk to his
and his family's safety, provided clothing for Allied soldiers, pilots and
the French underground, who were downed behind German lines near Kehl, in
the Black Forest on the Rhine River across from Strasbourg, France. Hans,
fluent in French, at 14 also was with the French underground.

"We had nothing to eat during the war. From '45 to '48, there was nothing
to eat. The stores were not open.

"We ate garbage, or a stolen rabbit or chicken, carrots, potato soup. No
butter. The French and the Americans had garbage cans and you went there
to get something to eat. They separated the garbage into good table
scraps, less good half-eaten food and food in which a soldier had ground
out his cigarette. It was nice of them in one way."

A man who had a garden next to his grandfather's plot, Otto Pink, had been
a Nazi "kreisleiter," a county administrator. Yet when war crimes
tribunals were Nazi-hunting, the grandfather refused to speak against his
neighbor with whom he so vehemently disagreed yet who had protected him.

"He said, 'Otto, I forgive you. God forgives you.'"

At age 21, Huber fell ill. His weight halved to 99 pounds. Nuns prayed for
him as they took care of him. He recovered.

He earned a certification as an electrical engineer, but when he
immigrated to Canada in 1957, he wasn't allowed to work in that field.

Instead, he became a butler to two wealthy families.

One employer was Donald Gordon, late head of the Canadian National
Railroad, who entertained Hollywood stars, business moguls, high-ranking
clergymen and politicians.

Huber was serving as butler at one dinner and overheard a titled
conservative British politician and newspaper owner talking to his
employer.

"I was standing in the corner," Huber recalls, when the politician
remarked, "'Don, I blame Hitler that the Jewish problem wasn't solved. He
didn't go far enough.'

"When I heard that, I ran in the kitchen and said, 'My God, I didn't know
these people talked like that!'"

Huber soon left domestic service for an insurance career, starting in 1962
with Occidental Life.

He prospered, rising through the ranks to become a top-producing branch
manager. He then sunk his life savings into a now-closed gold-mining
operation in Orange County. He still owns a mineral lease and property in
Goochland.

After years of keeping his war experiences private, Huber, with his wife,
Marilyn, has written about them in a book. It's still in search of a
publisher.

(source: Richmond Times-Dispatch)