March 3



FRANCE:

France Is Sued Over Holocaust Property Losses


A lawsuit filed Thursday seeks damages from the French government for
property lost by 75,000 Jews and others who were sent to Nazi death camps
during World War II.

The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court by Holocaust victims and
their heirs. It said France established and ran holding camps where Jews
and others were forced to turn over their property, including bank
accounts, insurance policies, artwork and other valuables.

The plaintiffs are seeking an accounting of the property and repayment of
money allegedly earned through fraudulent means. They are also seeking
restitution and compensatory and punitive damages.

The lawsuit names as defendants the French government and its national
railroad, which it said ran the trains that transported the victims.

A third defendant, the national public depository of France, accepted and
held the plaintiffs' property, the lawsuit said.

A French Embassy spokesman in Washington said she had not seen the
lawsuit.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Holocaust Victims Sue French Government, Railway Over Thefts


France's state-owned railway and a pension manager for French civil
servants stole cash, jewelry and other property from 75,000 Jews and tens
of thousands of ``other undesirables'' deported to Nazi concentration
camps, ex-prisoners and their relatives claim in a lawsuit filed in New
York.

The plaintiffs are seeking damages from the French national railway,
Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer; and pension manager Caisse des
Depots et Consignations. The government of France is also a defendant. The
complaint was filed on behalf of Holocaust victims detained in French
holding camps or transported to Nazi concentration camps on SNCF trains.
Plaintiffs include family members of former detainees and prisoners.

``France wrongfully took money and other assets from plaintiffs when they
were interned at Drancy and other holding and transit camps while those
camps were under the control of the French government,'' the suit says.
``The taking of property at the camps was organized and systematic.''

The suit, filed today in Manhattan federal court, is the latest to be
brought on behalf of Holocaust victims and their relatives. In earlier
litigation, German companies including Siemens AG and DaimlerChrysler AG
pledged to help finance a 10 billion deutsche-mark fund for Nazi-era
slave-laborers.

A telephone call to Agnes Von Der Muhll, the deputy press secretary at the
French embassy in Washington, wasn't immediately returned.

The suit was filed by 26 individual plaintiffs, including an American man
now living in Maryland who was shipped to Auschwitz from the French camps
and a French man whose mother was deported from a camp. ``Everything she
had with her was taken,'' the suit says.

`Ran the Trains'

The thefts often took place as deportees were loaded onto trains or at
holding camps, such as Drancy, that France operated, according to the
suit. The Nazis took control of Drancy in July 1943, the suit says.

``SNCF assembled and ran the trains,'' the complaint says. Caisse des
Depots ``accepted, held, and is holding today property consisting of money
taken from the plaintiffs.''

Set up in 1816 to restore public finances after the Napoleonic wars,
Caisse des Depots is a public custodian for tax-exempt savings funds
collected mostly by the post office and local savings banks. Caisse des
Depots isn't publicly traded.

Caisse des Depots also is the largest shareholder in Cie de Saint-Gobain
SA, Europe's No. 1 distributor of building materials, and the
second-largest in Accor SA, the world's No. 4 hotelier. It owns a stake in
Belgian financial services company Dexia SA.

The suit is Freund v. Republic of France, 06-CV-1637, Southern District of
New York.

(source: Bloomberg News)


USA//OHIO:

"Nazi hunter" speaks at Case School of Law

Eli Rosenbaum, the "Nazi Hunter," spoke last Wednesday at the Case Law
School about the changes that have come about in the world since WWII.
Rosenbaum is a prosecuting lawyer out of Washington D.C. Since becoming
director of Office of Special Investigations (OSI), his career has made
him famous for the deportation and prosecution of many Nazis hiding in
America and dozens of other countries. Recently, his group tried the
infamous Klaus Barbie. So far, OSI has won 106 cases against Nazi and
Imperial Japanese war criminals.

Students and senior citizens alike sat silently as Rosenbaum recalled
truly tragic cases. He told of a case in Lithuania, which was the first
country to try war criminals in post-communist Europe. In his account,
many Lithuanian Jews were killed on steep cliff on the edge of a ditch.
One of the victims who he researched was a six-year-old girl who was
murdered and then thrown into the ditch with the rest of her people.
Rosenbaum stopped and said, "I can't understand the murder of children and
innocent individuals. I just can't understand it."

The trials Rosenbaum cited are very different from other criminal trials.
There is only one judge and no jury, and the burden of proof is
astronomical. OSI doesn't have fingerprints, nor dead bodies, nor any
other evidence that most prosecutors have the luxury of possessing. They
try to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt by using eyewitnesses. Since
the Germans burned a large amount of documents at the end of the war, OSI
relies heavily on the testimonies of survivors. As Rosenbaum puts it,
"Death is an occupational hazard."

OSI, in a way, works backwards. Instead of starting with a crime and
looking for a criminal, OSI has goes from the criminal to the crime. Its
staff of historians, without the FBI, does all research in-house. Cases
are very complex because they try high-profile individuals.

Rosenbaum and OSI work tirelessly to convict the Nazi and Japanese war
criminals because, as Rosenbaum puts it, "Victims must not be forced to
share their home soil with their tormentors." Many other countries have
abdicated their responsibilities of bringing these people to justice.
Though most of the former Nazis are still in Europe, most convictions take
place in America and Canada. It has been 35 years since Austria has
prosecuted a single case. After the criminals are deported from America,
they are sent back to their countries of origin. Most of these countries
don't accept these people back.

It has been 60 years since the Nuremberg Trials began, but history is not
forgotten. Rosenbaum and OSI know that though decades have passed, the
crimes of yesterday are still crimes today.

Rosenbaum came to the law school for the annual Klatsky Seminar in Human
Rights at Frederick K. Cox International Law Center. He was this year's
invited speaker. The law school will be hosting more exciting lecturers in
the months to come. For more information go to
http://law.case.edu/lectures.

(source: The Observer)

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


Dayton woman who sheltered Jews from Nazis dies at 91

In Dayton, Johanna van Schagen, who helped Jews escape Nazis during
the Holocaust and later was honored by Israel, died Tuesday, her family
said. She was 91.

Johanna van Schagen, who had suffered a series of strokes, died at
Friendship Village in nearby Trotwood, where she lived.

Van Schagen and her husband, Cornelius, moved to the Dayton area in 1956.

She told the Dayton Daily News in 1994 that she and her husband sheltered
Jews out of anger toward Germans who were taking over their native
Netherlands.

"We were afraid many times ... there were lots of raids and if they had
found them in your home, you would be taken to concentration camps, too,"
she said.

Israel honored the couple in 1987.

Her funeral is scheduled for tomorrow at Polk Grove United Church of
Christ in Dayton, which sponsored the van Schagens when they moved to the
United States, said Jacob van Schagen, a son.

She is survived by four sons and a daughter.

(source: The Columbus Dispatch)






AUSTRIA:

Jailed British historian Irving questions Holocaust, again


Controversial British historian David Irving insisted Thursday there was
no evidence of a mass extermination of Jews during WWII, a week after he
was jailed in Austria for Holocaust denial.

"There is no evidence of an organised mass extermination," the 67-year-old
Irving said in an interview from his prison with the Austria Press Agency.

He denied that "a program against Jews" existed during Adolf Hitlers Third
Reich in Germany, saying it was "not purposefully against all Jews."

"If there had been a program, how come 200,000 Jews emigrated between 1933
and 1939," he said, suggesting Hitler and SS chief Heinrich Himmler would
have rather "exchanged Jews for foreign currency."

Last week Irving was jailed by a court here to three years for denying the
existence of gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp but insisted
at his trial that he no longer questioned those facts.

His comments, which echo similar remarks in a BBC interview, have sparked
a sharp retort from the public prosecutors office. "We must react. One
cannot ignore this," a spokesman said.

In his interview Thursday, Irving criticised the law under which he was
convicted, calling it ridiculous and absurd and comparing Austrias
behaviour to that of a Nazi state.

"I am locked up here, even though I only expressed my free opinion. You
should exercise vengeance on your own people, but not on foreigners," he
told APA.

Irving said last week after receiving his sentence that he had the "right
to be wrong" and vowed not to be silenced.

The Austrian justice ministry has criticised interviews with the
historian, saying late Wednesday that it was "not appropriate to put a
podium at Irving's disposal."

(source: European Jewish News)




CZECH REPUBLIC:

State attorney disagrees with Holocaust denier's sentence


The case of a 21-year-old Holocaust denier will be taken to the City
Court in Prague because state attorney Zdenka Galkova does not agree with
a 15-month sentence with a probation of 3.5 years, she told CTK today.

"I consider the punishment to be moderate. I do not propose imprisonment,
but the probation should be stricter," she said.

The man, Antonin Cermak, shouted "only, only" in reaction to a Nazism
critic who shouted "You destroyed 1.7 million Jewish children" during a
neo-Nazi demonstration outside the German embassy last October.

Some 70 neo-Nazis came to the embassy to support Holocaust denier Ernst
Zuendel, 66, who has been accused in Germany of having spread hatred
towards Jews via the internet.

He also claimed that there has never been the Holocaust, during which six
million Jews were murdered during World War Two.

Cermak told the court that he reacted to a remark about the number of
demonstrators, but three witnesses - policemen testified against him.

(source: Prague Daily Monitor)




ISRAEL:

Israel to double budget for Shoah survivors fund


The Finance Ministry announced this week that it would double the budget
for a charity dedicated to the welfare of Holocaust survivors. After the
adjustment, the budget was expected to reach NIS 14 million.

In January, the charity had to cease the aid it provided, due to a severe
shortage of money, Army Radio reported.

The welfare fund said that the added money would only be able to provide a
partial answer to the survivors' needs. The shortage in funds still
reaches NIS 45 million.

(source: Jerusalem Post)