Jan. 27




SWITZERLAND:

Annan: Holocaust deniers 'bigots'----The largest death camp, Auschwitz,
was liberated on January 27, 1945.


U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said the world must remember the
unique tragedy of the Holocaust and reject all attempts by "bigots" to
deny the extermination of the Jews during World War II.

"It must be remembered, with shame and horror, for as long as human memory
continues," Annan said Friday in a statement released to mark the first
international day commemorating the victims of the Holocaust.

"Holocaust denial is the work of bigots," he said.

Annan was scheduled later Friday to meet with Holocaust survivors in the
Swiss city of Zurich. The commemoration comes just three days after Iran
said it would follow through with plans to organize a conference on what
it terms the "scientific evidence" for the Holocaust.

The planned conference, which has drawn condemnation from Western leaders,
is yet another step in hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's public
campaign against Israel.

Ahmadinejad has called the Nazis' World War II slaughter of 6 million
European Jews a "myth," and said the Jewish state should be "wiped off the
map."

Without mentioning Iran by name, Annan said "we must reject their false
claims whenever, wherever and by whomever they are made."

"Remembering is a necessary rebuke to those who say the Holocaust never
happened or has been exaggerated," he said. "Millions of Jews and members
of other minorities were murdered in the most barbarous ways imaginable.
We must never forget those men, women and children, or their agony," Annan
said.

Last year, the U.N. General Assembly commemorated the 60th anniversary of
the liberation of the Nazi death camps with a special session, a stark
change for a body that was often reluctant to address the extermination of
the Jews during World War II.

Soviet troops liberated the largest death camp, Auschwitz, on January 27,
1945. Between 1 million and 1.5 million prisoners -- most of them Jews --
perished in gas chambers or died of starvation and disease there. Overall,
6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

On Tuesday, Iran defended its plan to organize the conference on the
Holocaust, though it has yet to set a time or place. It also was unclear
who might attend.

Ahmadinejad has been issuing the highly inflammatory comments about Israel
and the Holocaust in conjunction with the country's deepening
confrontation with the West over its nuclear activities. The United States
and its allies accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons. Tehran says the
program is designed for electricity generation, and is within its right
under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

(source: Associated Press)





GLOBAL:

International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the
Holocaust


The United Nations has designated 27 January as an annual International
Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. On this
date in 1945 the Auschwitz death camp was liberated.

Auschwitz, in southern Poland, was the biggest Nazi death camp and
liberated by Soviet Red Army troops on 27 January 1945. Up to 6 million
Jews are estimated to have died in the concentration camps, as well as
hundreds of thousands of others deemed undesirable due to ethnic origin,
religious beliefs or other reasons, including gays and communists.

(see: http://www.hrea.org/feature-events/Holocaust-commemoration-day.php)

(source: HREA.org)




EUROPE:

European leaders remember the Holocaust


European leaders remembered the Holocaust today, the 61st anniversary of
the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, with commemorations shadowed
by concern over anti-Israeli remarks by Irans president.

Several leaders used the occasion to reject Mahmoud Ahmadinejads statement
that Israel should be wiped off the map and his description of the
Holocaust - the murder of 6 million Jews by the forces of German dictator
Adolf Hitler as a myth.

On a clear, cold day at Auschwitz, Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz
Marcinkiewicz placed a wreath and bowed his head at the foot of the main
memorial in honour of the some 1.5 million people who died at the Nazi-run
camp.

The Holocaust is a crime that tarnishes human history, Marcinkiewicz said.

Let it be a warning today and for the future. One cannot submit to
ideologies that justify the possibility of trampling on human dignity.

Marcinkiewicz was joined by the Israeli ambassador to Poland, camp
survivors and representatives of the Jewish community.

Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz and the neighbouring Birkenau camp on
January 27, 1945, as the Second World War neared its end.

Some 1.5 million people, most of them Jews, died there from gassing,
starvation, exhaustion, beatings and disease.

Other victims included Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, Gypsies,
homosexuals and political opponents of the Nazis.

In Prague, Auschwitz survivor Felix Kolmor urged people to look ahead as
well as back. Lets not forget that memories of our suffering have to also
be a point of departure for creating a better future, said Kolmer, 83.

Meanwhile, in Budapest, Hungary, some 3,000 people gathered outside
parliament to release 600 white balloons symbolising the 600,000 Hungarian
victims of the Holocaust.

Tamas Bandi, 66, attended the memorial with his 13-year-old granddaughter,
Agnes. My mother and father were deported in front of my eyes when I was 4
years old, Bandi said, tears running down his face.

These are my parents, Bandi said, pointing to the names he had written on
a balloon. When I let go of the balloon, I will think of them looking down
on me and wish that this never happens again.

Germanys parliamentary president Norbert Lammert urged that the lessons of
the Holocaust continue to influence national policy, referring to recent
remarks by Ahmadinejad in warning of the danger of anti-Semitism.

Lammert stressed that the need to commemorate the millions of Jews and
other victims murdered by the Nazis will not diminish with time.

We want to and we must continue to be prepared to learn from our
history, Lammert said at a special session of parliament.

The past weeks have shown us how much not only we Germans need this
remembrance day, he said. With dismay we have had to note that today, even
presidents insist on describing the Holocaust as a fairy tale and go so
far as to make anti-Semitic remarks.

Germany has joined other nations in expressing concern about Ahmadinejads
calling the Holocaust a myth and saying the Jewish state should be wiped
off the map or moved to Germany or the US.

In a statement released at the UN European headquarters in Geneva, UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan said it was imperative the world remember the
unique tragedy of the Holocaust and reject all attempts by bigots to deny
the extermination of the Jews during World War II.

It must be remembered, with shame and horror, for as long as human memory
continues, Annan said in the statement, released to mark the first
international day commemorating the victims of the Holocaust.

(source: Ireland Online)




SWITZERLAND:

Swiss schools remember the Holocaust


For the third year running, Swiss schools on Friday are taking in part
in Holocaust Memorial Day, on the anniversary of the liberation of
Auschwitz.

The event is marked by schools across the European Union, but it is not
known how many classes in Switzerland will participate. Central themes
this year are racism and tolerance.

This year marks the first International Day of Commemoration in memory of
the victims of the Holocaust.

The United Nations passed a landmark resolution last year to make 27
January an annual day of remembrance for the six million Jews killed
during the Second World War.

Holocaust Memorial Day started in the EU in 2002, when it was decided to
hold in schools of member states "a day of remembrance for the Holocaust
and for thinking about the prevention of crimes against humanity".

The Swiss Conference of Cantonal Education Directors decided to follow
suit two years later, and in 2004 the first memorial day took place in
Swiss schools.

The event is always marked on January 27, when Soviet troops liberated
Auschwitz before the end of the Second World War in 1945.

Relevance

Richard Heibling, general secretary of the Foundation for Education and
Development, says it's important for children to know about the Holocaust.

"The subject matter is very distant for kids today," Heibling told
swissinfo. "It has to be brought to life and that's not very difficult."

For although the murder of millions of Jews happened over 60 years ago,
genocide and crimes against humanity are still shockingly prevalent:
Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnya can all be brought into the discussions.

"The day enables us to remember the genocide and to work in related themes
to history lessons," said Michel Rohrbach from the Conference of Cantonal
Education Directors.

Gradual introduction

Rohrbach said schools choose different ways of approaching the topic.
"This year pupils in Geneva are being shown the film Shoah [French
director Claude Lanzmann's 1985 nine-hour collection of interviews with
people connected to the Holocaust, 'Shoah' in Hebrew].

"Of course one day isn't enough to deal with this subject," said Rohrbach,
adding that young people have to be introduced to the difficult issues
gradually.

Exhibitions are staged, reports from witnesses and victims are read, and
themes such as racism, discrimination, human rights and tolerance are
discussed and debated. Canton Lucerne has produced a book containing ideas
for teachers.

Teachers receive support from Educa, an information exchange platform
belonging to the Conference of Cantonal Education Directors, and from the
Foundation for Education and Development, which provides suggestions for
projects and complementary teaching material.

It's then up to the individual cantons and schools and ultimately the
teachers how and if they want to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

"I think it's important to talk about all this," said one student.
"Fascism is something we're still always discussing in school."

Shame and horror

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Friday that it was imperative that
the world remember the unique tragedy of the Holocaust and reject all
attempts by "bigots" to deny the extermination of the Jews during the war.

"It must be remembered with shame and horror for as long as human memory
continues," Annan said in a statement released to mark the first
international day commemorating the victims of the Holocaust.

"Holocaust denial is the work of bigots," he said.

Annan, who is attending the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in
Davos, was due to meet Holocaust survivors in Zurich on Friday.

(source: Swiss Info)




BRITAIN:

Britain remembers the evils of holocaust----The event marked the 61st
anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau


Wales yesterday played host to Britains national Holocaust Memorial Day,
commemorating the 61st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau
by allied troops.

The event held at the Cardiff Millennium Centre was the highlight of a
week of remembrance across the nation. It marked the anniversary of the
liberation of the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Nazis murdered
Jews, Poles, Romas and Gypsies, gay men and women, political prisoners,
people with disabilities, and others during the Second World War.

The United Nations formally declared today, the 27th January as an
international day of remembrance for the Holocaust.

The events, which took place in Wales yesterday, were organised around the
theme "One Person Can Make a Difference". Participants included Clare Keen
Thyrin, whose family were part of the Belgian resistance group and hid a
young Jewish girl during the war, and General Romeo Dallaire, the U.N
General who tried to stop the genocide in Rwanda, and who is the focus of
the film 'Shake Hands with the Devil'.

Holocaust Survivors living in Britain, together with those involved in
their rescue, as well as religious and political leaders, attended the
event. These latter participants included the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan
Sacks, the Archbishop of Wales, The Most Reverend Dr. Barry C Morgan, and
Rhodri Morgan, the First Minister of Wales.

Others taking part in the event will included Welsh Opera Singer,
Katherine Jenkins, The Holocaust Memorial Day Orchestra (assembled
especially for this event), The Penylan Synagogue Choir, the National
Dance Company of Wales and Simon Weston OBE, Falklands veteran and founder
of charity Weston Spirit, which promotes the personal and social
development of socially excluded and disaffected young people.

Children from a number of Welsh schools and from a variety of cultural and
ethnic backgrounds read a specially commissioned poem by Gillian Clarke,
Cardiff's 2005 Centenary Poet, and will tell how they have made a
difference in some small way.

Over 500 separate community and school events also marked the UKs sixth
annual Holocaust Memorial Day across the UK, from Enniskillen to
Edinburgh, Norwich to Jersey and Aberdeen to the Isle of Wight.

The United Nations formally declared today, the 27th January as an
international day of remembrance for the Holocaust. However, the UK opted
for last night to be the main focus of rememberance in order to include
Jews and Muslims who would not be able to take part had the event have
been held on a Friday evening. Commenting on the day, Dr Stephen Smith,
Chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, which is responsible for
overseeing the commemoration, said:

Cardiff Council Leader Cllr Rodney Berman said, "I am honoured that
Cardiff Council has been chosen to host the sixth annual UK Holocaust
Memorial Day commemoration event. It is an incredibly important occasion
and is it is a privilege for us to be allowed to show our respects for all
those people who did make a difference during this dark period in our
history."

Rhodri Morgan, First Minister for Wales, said: "The purpose of Holocaust
Memorial Day is to ensure that the Holocaust's horrendous crimes against
humanity are never forgotten, and its relevance for each new generation is
fully understood. This national commemoration event in Cardiff will make a
difference because it will help promote a democratic and tolerant society
that respects and celebrates diversity, free of the evils of prejudice and
racism."

(source: PinkNews.co.uk)





RUSSIA:

Moscow Commemorates International Holocaust Memorial Day


Today, the Great Hall of the Central House of Literature Workers hosted
an event dedicated to the International Commemoration Day for Holocaust
Victims, which involved Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar.

The gathering was arranged by the Holocaust Foundation with the assistance
of the Moscow Administration, the Federation of Jewish Communities of
Russia, the Israeli Embassy, the Jewish Agency in Russia, the Russian
Jewish Congress, the International Center for Research on East-European
Jewry, the Israeli Cultural Center, and ORT-Russia and Media Holding
company.

This commemoration ceremony also involved Moscow's Vice-Mayor Vladimir
Resin, Israeli Ambassador Arkadi Mil-Man and other high-profile figures
including Russian Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov, the Arch-Bishop of
Kostroma and Galich Alexander, as well as many leading figures in the
artistic and cultural world.

This gathering featured an awards ceremony to honor winners of the Fourth
International Contest "Lessons of the Holocaust Path to Tolerance", which
involved more than 500 schoolchildren, students and teachers from ten
separate countries. The winners include schoolchildren from Krasnoyarsk,
Kirovsk, Vladimir and the Bryansk Region, as well as students from Moscow,
S. Petersburg, Elista and Boston. The victorious teachers come from
Kazakhstan, Krasnodar and the Novosibirsk Region.

(source: Federation of Jewish Communitites of CIS)

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

Russia's Jewish leaders remember Holocaust, urge fight against extremism


Russia's Jewish leaders, rights activists and officials on Friday
commemorated the Holocaust, the 61st anniversary of the liberation of the
Auschwitz death camp, and called for stepping up the fight against
extremism and anti-Semitism.

Russia's Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar performed a remembrance prayer at a
commemoration event at the Moscow Writers' House, urging leaders worldwide
to do more to promote tolerance.

Lazar lamented that extremist sentiments were gaining popularity around
the world, including in Russia, where a knife attack earlier this month on
worshippers at a Moscow synagogue left eight people wounded.

"Preachers of extremist views must once and for all be excluded from the
political and social life of the country," Lazar said.

Alla Gerber, the head of the Holocaust foundation said today's society
must realize the danger of extremists seizing power, referring to the
crimes committed by the Nazi Germany.

Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz and the neighboring Birkenau camp on
Jan. 27, 1945. Some 1.5 million people, most of them Jews, died there from
gassing, starvation, exhaustion, beatings and disease.

"We must remember them all today ... so that nothing like that ever
happens again," Gerber said.

Russia has seen an increase in racially motivated crimes in the past
several years, including attacks on Jews and dark-skinned foreigners.

Twenty-five people have been killed in hate crimes over the past year and
more than 200 have been attacked, said Alexander Brod, head of the Moscow
Bureau for Human Rights, which runs an EU-funded program monitoring
xenophobia.

Rights activists say hate groups are emboldened by authorities' mild
approach to prosecuting hate crimes and complain that Nazi and other
extremist literature is sold freely.

Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent lawmaker, said Russian officials weren't
doing enough to combat persistent anti-Semitism and xenophobia.

"There is a certain inertia of state anti-Semitism, which was being
cultivated in the Soviet times, especially among law enforcement bodies
... so this is partly the sentiment in a part of the political class,"
said Ryzhkov. He added that such an approach threatened Russia's security
and territorial integrity, because racial tensions could lead to violence
and may lead to the break-up of the huge, multiethnic country.

(source: Associated Press)





GERMANY:

Berlin to Build Memorial to Gays Persecuted by Nazis -- The new monument
will be located in central Berlin


The Berlin government has given the go-ahead for a memorial designed by a
Scandinavian artist-duo in central Berlin commemorating thousands of
homosexuals persecuted by Nazi Germany.

In addition to the famous Holocaust monument -- consisting of a field of
cement slabs -- to Europe's murdered Jews in downtown Berlin, the German
capital will in the future be the location to another memorial to Nazi
victims.

Designed by a Norwegian-Danish artist-duo, the memorial will remember the
tens of thousands of homosexuals persecuted and killed by Hitler's regime.

The 450,000 euro ($549,000) project funded by the federal government is to
be erected "as soon as possible" opposite the Holocaust memorial on the
margins of Berlin's vast Tiergarten park near the historic Brandenburg
Gate and the Reichstag parliament building.

"An endless kiss"

Norbert Radermacher, president of the jury that named Ingar Dragset and
Michael Elmgreen winners of the bidding competition, said the monument
would remember the victims in a "direct but subtle way."

The Holocaust monument in central Berlin is a popular site

The concrete sculpture takes its cue from the Holocaust monument designed
by star architect Peter Eisenman. It expands on the gray cement slab
theme, by turning it into a kind of house.

Radermacher, added that the structure, which appears cool and distant at
first glance actually conceals an intimate aspect -- it will have an
oblique window featuring a black and white video of "an endless kiss
between two men."

Persecution and killing during Nazi regime

The decision to go ahead with the project was taken three years after the
German parliament agreed to set up a memorial for murdered gays that would
also serve as a visible stand against intolerance and isolation.

Germany's lower house of parliament in 2000 formally apologized to gays
persecuted under the Nazi regime, which held power from 1933 to 1945.

Between 5,000 and 10,000 homosexuals were deported to concentration camps.
During its crackdown on homosexuals the Nazi regime began 100,000 legal
proceedings, followed by 45,000 sentences under a criminal law that
endured until 1969.

After the war, 44,231 sentences were handed down against gays in then West
Germany.

Legal discrimination of homosexual men ended in 1994, four years after
German unification. East Germany had abolished its anti-gay legislation in
1968.

Although there is no timeframe for the erection of the monument for
murdered homosexuals, gay rights groups have urged the government to act
speedily, emphasizing that the purging of gays between 1933 and 1945 was
without precedent in history.

(source: Deutsche Welle)

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

Gay Holocaust memorial design unveiled


The design of a memorial dedicated to the thousands of gay men killed in
the Holocaust was unveiled Thursday in Berlin.

The memorial, which is set to be built in the coming weeks, was revealed
on the eve of Friday's international Holocaust Memorial Day.

The design is the first time the German capital has an official memorial
to gay victims of Nazi persecution, although memorials are already
established in Amsterdam and San Francisco.

The German parliament approved the memorial in 2003 and a spokesperson
said the construction would begin "as soon as possible," according to
press reports.

The memorial is a concrete slab that will show a video inside. It is
likely to be situated close to the recently unveiled memorial to the
Jewish victims of Nazi persecution.

The theme of this year's Holocaust Memorial Day is to remember those who
helped rescue people from genocides, primarily in the Second World War,
but also in other mass genocides since.

The true number of gay men killed during the Nazi 'final solution' is not
known, since laws forbidding homosexuality were kept in Germany long after
WWII ended.

An estimated 15,000 gay men were sent to concentration camps during the
Nazi era, but some believe as many as 600,000 could have been killed.

Unlike other groups, the ongoing stigma facing survivors of the camps
meant few survivors came forward to tell their story. Those who did spoke
of torture, beatings and many of those convicted being mauled by dogs.

(source: PlanetOut Interactive Services)




CZECH REPUBLIC:

Drawings by Terezin kids displayed in UN on Holocaust Remembrance


Drawings, poems and stories by child inmates of the wartime Jewish getto
in Terezin (Theresienstadt), north Bohemia, have been displayed in the
U.N. headquarters to mark the U.N.'s Holocaust Remembrance Day on January
27.

January 27 is the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi- run
extermination camp in Oswiecim (Auschwitz) in 1945.

The collection of some forty children's drawings is kept in Prague's
Jewish Museum. The U.N. exhibition displays only their copies provided by
Petr Rafaelli, the Czech honorary consul in Philadelphia.

The exhibition also features English versions of literary works by the
Terezin children and photographs from the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency's
archive that were taken in the wartime Warsaw ghetto and in the first days
after the liberation of the Nazi extermination camps.

About 15,000 Jewish children from the Czech Lands, Slovakia, Austria,
Denmark, Germany, Hungary and the Netherlands were deported to the Terezin
ghetto in the first half of the 1940s. Most of them later perished in
extermination camps. Fewer than 200 smallest inmates lived to see Terezin
liberated on May 8, 1945.

Out of the estimated total of 150,000 Jews in the ghetto, fewer than
20,000 survived.

Jewish children's fates during World War Two are also commemorated by
another exhibition elsewhere in the U.N. headquarters.

Organised by Jerusalem's Yad Vashem museum of Holocaust, the exhibition
also recalls the story of Petr Ginz, a boy from Prague who was deported to
Terezin at the age of 14 and was later tortured to death in Oswiecim.

Ginz wanted to become a scientist or an artist and left behind a number of
stories, poems, diary entries and drawings. Three years ago, one of his
drawings was brought to space by Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon aboard the
Columbia space shuttle, which unfortunately had a fatal accident on return
to the Earth. Six million Jews, including 1.5 million children, perished
in the Holocaust, the Yad Vashem museum says.

(source: Romano Vod'i)




TURKEY:

Turkey commemorates Holocaust victims


The Holocaust during World War II, in which Nazis rounded up and killed
millions of Jews, was a "horrifying period with no match in history,"
Turkey's Foreign Ministry said Friday.

The statement was made to mark the United Nations' first international day
commemorating the victims of the Holocaust.

Turkey, which is 99 percent Muslim, is Israel's closest regional ally, but
is in a tricky geographical position bordering Muslim countries openly
hostile to the Jewish state, including Iran, whose president has denied
the Holocaust and called for Israel's elimination.

"On this meaningful day, we respectfully commemorate the deaths of all
people who died in the Holocaust in World War II. We hope all humanity
will learn the necessary lessons of this horrifying period with no match
in history, so that similar events will not be repeated," the Foreign
Ministry said.

Turkish Sultan Beyazid II accepted Jews into the Ottoman Empire, the
predecessor of modern Turkey, after they were expelled from Spain in 1492.
Turkey also aided Jews fleeing the Holocaust, including Turkish Jews
abroad, the Foreign Ministry statement said.

"The Jewish academics who took refuge in our country took positions at
universities and made important contributions to the education of our
children," the statement said.

There are an estimated 27,000 Jews in Turkey, according to figures from
the Jewish Community of Turkey.

(source: Associated Press)