April 6


GERMANY:

German high court bans demo in support of alleged Holocaust deniers


Germany's highest court on Thursday outlawed a planned demonstration in
support of far-right activists accused of denying the Holocaust.

The Federal Constitutional Court upheld a local court's decision to ban a
neo-Nazi group from marching Saturday in Mannheim, where far-right
publisher Ernst Zundel is on trial on incitement charges.

The lower court had cited concern that the demonstration could turn
violent and that the participants could commit hate crimes.

A group had applied for permission to demonstrate under the motto "Create
Freedom of Opinion," calling for the release of far-right figures
including David Irving, as well as Zundel.

Irving, a British historian, was convicted in February in Austria and
sentenced to three years in prison for denying the Holocaust, a crime in
Austria as well as in Germany.

Zundel, 66, who emigrated to Canada in 1958 and lived in Toronto and
Montreal until 2001, has been on trial since November on charges of years
of anti-Semitic activities, including denying the Holocaust, in documents
and on the Internet.

(source: Associated Press)


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German railway in row over Holocaust


Germany's national rail operator is refusing to allow its stations to be
used for an exhibition about Jewish children sent to their deaths by the
Nazis.

The exhibition organisers have said Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) is
"morally obliged" to host it, as direct successors of Reichsbahn, the
railway network that enabled the mass deportation of Jews, including more
than 11,000 children.

Deutsche Bahn said it acknowledged the "darker side of our company's
history" but the 150 portraits could not be shown because of security
reasons, the dangers of overcrowding and a lack of funds.

It has offered space in its museum in Nuremberg or support for displays
"close to stations" with schoolchildren being offered "affordable" tickets
to visit.

Beate Klarsfeld, a Nazi-hunter and one of the organisers, accused Deutsche
Bahn of "failing to live up to its moral responsibility".

"For us the train stations are everything," she said.

"We want to make the connection between the place where the photos are
seen and the transportation of the children through these train stations
on their way to Auschwitz."

Germany's Central Council of Jews accused the head of Deutsche Bahn,
Hartmut Mehdorn, of "lacking the willingness to come to terms with Nazi
crimes".

The transport minister, Wolfgang Tiefensee, said Deutsche Bahn should
review its position.

(source: The Telegraph)


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German Firm to Build Vienna's Holocaust Memorial


Stuttgart-based firm Fischer, Naumann and Partners and artist Kirstin
Arndt have won an international competition to build Vienna's "Memorial
for the Deported Neighbors," to commemorate the suffering of the Jewish
community during the Second World War.

The memorial will be located in a park that will be part of Sir Norman
Foster's redevelopment plan for the area around the demolished Aspang
Railway Station. The design calls for a 98-foot-long by seven-foot-wide
trench cutting through the park. Engraved in the sunken stainless-steel
walls of the 16-foot-deep trench will be the names of thousands of
deportees. Visitors will wear a path on the ground up to and around the
memorial that FNP partner Martin Naumann says will have, "poetic value."

In a statement responding to critics who have argued that the memorial
will diminish the value of names displayed in the Seitenstettengasse
Synagogue, Naumann says: "The fact that we propose to list the names,
again, is not about diminishing the value of any other listing. The
murdered people should be remembered as individuals, not only by vast
numbers."

Completion of the approximately $490,000 memorial is set for 2008,
although this could be delayed because Foster's masterplan is currently on
hold.

(source: Architectural Record)







USA//FLORIDA:

Survivor lauds books as library Holocaust collection opens


While Jacksonville's upper crust rubbed elbows at the downtown library and
dined on appetizers like grilled asparagus with Boursin cheese crepes,
Holocaust survivor and guest of honor Gerda Weissmann Klein sat still and
quiet in the room caterers were using to prepare their dishes.

Waiting to deliver the keynote address for the opening of the library's
new Holocaust collection, Klein, 81, of Scottsdale, Ariz., and
granddaughter Alysa Ullman appeared not to mind the boxes of bottled water
and used serving trays sharing space with them in Conference Room G1.

The concentration camp survivor instead was ready to celebrate the victory
she said the new collection represents. With a smile she noted the irony
of how books were being used to remind current and future generations
about the Nazi regime that burned books on its way to murdering millions
of Jews and other "undesirables" during World War II.

Even in the Internet age, she said, it is books that preserve history.

"I think books are immortality," she said. "Like the Bible, which the
Jewish people gave to the world."

Klein knows something about books. Her celebrated memoir, All But My Life,
was retold in a documentary that won an Academy Award in 1995.

Despite her age, Klein keeps a breathless travel and speaking schedule,
Ullman said. Recent engagements include the United Nations and U.S. Air
Force Academy.

Leslie Lewis Kirkwood, chairman of the Remembering for the Future
Committee, which co-hosted Monday's opening, said the new Holocaust
collection includes books, films, photographs and video testimonials of
Holocaust survivors produced by Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation.

The first 300 titles of what will be a continually growing collection are
already arriving at the library and will be stored initially in the corner
of its grand reading room, Kirkwood said. Private fundraising, grants and
an endowment at the Jacksonville Jewish Community Foundation will finance
the collection.

Organizers said approximately 400, including a dozen Holocaust survivors,
attended the opening.

(source: Florida Times-Union)





ISRAEL:

Holocaust survivors reunited in Israel after 66 years


Two Jewish women here have been miraculously reunited with their cousin
66 years after all three survived the Holocaust.

Ella Friedvald, 82, and her sister Lila, 79, were sure that their cousin
Krystyna had been killed in the Holocaust , but fate had other plans,
locking them in a deep embrace after six decades at the Ben-Gurion airport
yesterday, 'The Jerusalem Post' reported.

The reunion took place thanks largely to a faded postcard sent from a
German labour camp and the determination of one of the survivors to claim
her family's life insurance benefits.

The three women were separated as teenagers when the Germans invaded
Poland. After a tormenting war experience, Ella and Lila settled in Israel
while Krystyna settled in the US, all having failed to find traces of
their respective parents, the report said.

"I was positive they (Ella and Lila) were dead and they were sure I was
killed with the rest of the Jews of Poland," Krystyna told the daily.

While she was still at the labour camp, Krystyna had sent out postcards to
various places in Poland in search of family members and friends, which
were sent back to the camp with no addressee found.

Five years ago, her cousin Ella began to make inquiries about possible
remuneration from the Generali company for life insurance taken out by her
family members before the Second World War.

The Polish offices of the company did not find any policies for her
parents or grandparents but did find one for her cousin's father.

(source: The Hindu News)





USA/UKRAINE:

Spielberg, Pinchuk make Ukrainian Holocaust film


Ukrainian film director Serhiy Bukovsky, who is filming a U.S.-Ukrainian
documentary on Ukraines Holocaust on location, which will premier on the
65th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre, edits the film at a studio in
Kyiv

Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation for Visual History and Education has
joined forces with Ukrainian tycoon and outgoing lawmaker Viktor Pinchuk
to make what they hope will be an exceptionally powerful and emotional
documentary on the Holocaust in Ukraine.

The premiere of the film is scheduled for this September, to coincide with
the 65th anniversary of the massacre at Babi Yar, a large ravine near
Kyiv, where approximately 34,000 Jews were murdered by the German SS over
the course of two days, beginning on Sept. 28, 1941. Uncovered at this
site was a mass grave, where 100,000 Jews and others were killed by the
Nazis from 1941 to 1943.

The film will draw primarily on video testimonies of Ukrainian Holocaust
survivors found in the digital archives of the Shoah Foundation.

The documentary will address the tragedy of Babi Yar and the larger
history of the Holocaust in Ukraine, said Douglas Greenberg, chief
executive of the Los Angeles-based Shoah Foundation, at a private meeting
with Ukrainian journalists during his visit to Ukraine on March 28.

Greenberg said the project is the product of a dream shared by Spielberg
and Pinchuk, who met a year-and-a-half ago in the United States.

"We've always wanted to make a documentary film about the Holocaust in
Ukraine, because its such an important chapter [in the history of the
Holocaust]," said Greenberg.

"And on the other side, there was Mr. Pinchuk, who was also interested in
the subject," he added.

Spielberg established the Shoah Foundation in 1994 after finishing work on
his Oscar-winning 'Shindler's List.' The aim of the foundation was to
videotape and preserve testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other
witnesses before it was too late, said Greenberg. The Foundation has since
collected 52,000 video testimonies from Holocaust survivors in 56
countries and in 32 languages, including 3,200 testimonies from Ukraine.

According to Greenberg, the organization is now working on ways to bring
these testimonies back to the countries where they were collected for
educational purposes, by creating educational programs and documentaries,
for example.

The Ukrainian project will be the Foundation's seventh documentary on the
Holocaust in a language other than English, according to Greenberg.

Revealing personal interest in the success of the film, the Foundation's
director noted that both his and Spielberg's families hail from Ukraine.
For Pinchuk, who is one of the richest men in Ukraine, there is a personal
element to his involvement in the project as well.

The powerful businessman was raised in a Jewish family in Dnipropetrovsk
and is currently known for his support of the Jewish community in his
native city.

For Mr. Pinchuk, the project is, first and foremost, a desire to take part
in something that would eventually benefit the wider world community,
commented Frenchman Thomas Eymond-Laritaz, head of Pinchuks staff.

But it is also a sign of respect to the Jewish community of Ukraine, he
said.

However, the film's producers are not willing to discuss either the
projects total budget or the Ukrainian-Jewish businessmans exact
contribution.

All I can say is that the funding from the Foundations side came from many
donors in the Unites States, who helped to collect the testimonies to
begin with, while Pinchuk provided immediate production funds in Ukraine,
said Greenberg.

The documentary, which will be about 70 minutes long, is being filmed in
Ukraine and is directed by the Ukrainian director Serhiy Bukovsky. The
45-year-old, who is not Jewish, has more than 20 years of experience in
documentary filmmaking and has won awards at a variety of film festivals
in Ukraine and abroad.

Greenberg said they had no intentions of recruiting an American director,
as he would not be able to make an appropriate picture of Ukrainian
history.

Although the majority of the materials used in the documentary will be
from the video archives of the Shoah Foundation, Greenberg said that
approximately one-fifth of the film will feature fresh footage taken in
Ukraine in the last year. Among other things, this includes interviews
with elderly Ukrainian Jews, who still remember what the Jewish community
was like before the Holocaust, said Greenberg.

Film director Bukovsky said he shot footage at a number of locations
mostly towns in western and central Ukraine, where there were large Jewish
settlements to provide the cultural and historical background for the
film.

Because there are no video chronicles of the Holocaust, we are looking for
other solutions to avoid having just talking heads, said Bukovsky.

It is not the kind of film where you can do much creative directing, but I
am trying to make it as engaging as possible, he added.

Greenberg said that unlike the Foundations projects in other countries,
the Ukrainian documentary will also feature testimonies by Ukrainians who
helped Jews during the Nazi occupation.

For Bukovsky, avoiding moralizing in the documentary has been the toughest
part of his work on the project.

The biggest challenge for me has been finding a balance between educating
and moralizing in the film, said Bukovsky, adding that his task as a
director is to spur people on to make their own conclusions, rather than
to sermonize.

The producers say they did not reach a final agreement regarding how and
where the documentary would be distributed, but the plans conceived are
rather grand.

We do expect [the film] to be broadcast on Ukrainian television, and we
also hope to release in Ukrainian theaters, commented Greenberg.

According to him, the film will be released in both Ukrainian and Russian,
the languages spoken in Ukraine, and will also be subtitled in English for
viewings in the Unites States, Europe and Israel.

The story of the Holocaust in Ukraine is different from its story in other
parts of Europe, and we think that it needs to be told in other parts of
the world as well, said Greenberg.

Greenberg said he hoped the film would eventually be distributed in
Ukrainian schools, as well. The Foundation is in the process of creating a
teachers guide that will help Ukrainian teachers make better use of the
documentary in their lessons on the Holocaust, he said.

Meanwhile, Kyivs Jewish community is looking forward to the films premiere
and has high expectations.

There have been quite a few documentaries about the Holocaust made in
Ukraine, but the good ones were few, said Leonid Finberg, head of the Kyiv
Institute of Jewish Studies.

Finberg, who has assisted Bukovsky with use of the Institutes archives,
expects the film to be original and moving.

This is a story that isnt Ukrainian or American, Polish or German, echoed
Greenberg.

Its a human story, and from this point of view, the fact that its going to
be told about Ukrainians and in the languages that Ukrainians speak makes
it very important for your country, he said.

(source: Kyiv Post)




(in) CANADA:

Auschwitz escapee who alerted the world about Holocaust dies


Rudolph Vrba, one of five Jews who escaped Auschwitz and delivered the
first report to the West about the workings of the Nazi death camp, died
in Vancouver this week at the age of 82, a Canadian newspaper reported
Friday.

Vrba had been suffering from cancer, according to the daily Globe and
Mail.

Born in Slovakia in 1924, Vrba was arrested by the Nazis when he was 18
years old and was soon transferred to the Auschwitz camp. He managed to
escape past Nazi guards in April 1944 with his compatriot Alfred Wetzler.

They then delivered a detailed, eyewitness account about Auschwitz that is
considered the first document to have alerted the outside world and Jewish
leaders about the shocking reality of the death camps.

The report initially was given to Hungarian Jewish leaders and was in the
hands of the Allies by June 1944.

"There are very few stories from those that were actually there, ... (and)
his story was breathtaking," Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish
Congress, told the Globe and Mail.

"He had whats been described as a photographic memory," Farber said.

Following Vrbas remarkable escape, he fought with a partisan unit, and
after the war, in 1967, he eventually emigrated to Canada, where he became
a professor of pharmacology.




SWITZERLAND:

Agency: Thousands of Roma Holocaust Survivors Face Bleak Future


The Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM) warns tens
of thousands of Roma or Gypsy Holocaust survivors living in 17 Central and
Eastern European countries are facing a desperate future and possible
death. The International Organization for Migration says a compensation
fund that had been assisting them now has run dry.

Nearly 74,000 elderly and impoverished Roma Holocaust victims have been
receiving compensation for their suffering from the proceeds of two funds,
the Swiss Banks Settlement in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern
district of New York and the German Foundation.

But International Organization for Migration spokeswoman Jemini Pandya
says the $36 million that has been used to support the tens of thousands
of Roma are now exhausted. She says her agency is concerned about what
will happen to these people in the future.

"They are living in extreme poverty, but it could get much worse and it
probably will," she noted. "The safety network that was provided by their
former communist regimes in which they were living have now gone and so
there is no web basically to support them. Many of them are also having,
for your information, to support three generations on these measly
pensions in one household as younger members of the Roma family have had
to leave in search for work in other countries. And, who then do not have
money to send back."

Pandya says these tens of thousands of Roma Holocaust survivors are
elderly and frail. She says many live in appalling squalor, in shacks
that are outside towns, that have no proper heating, running water and
toilets. She says these people live on state pensions ranging between $8
and $120 a month.

Over the past four years, she says IOM has provided the Roma with food,
clothing, firewood, coal and other forms of assistance.

"It is not an exaggeration to say that this assistance has helped to keep
them alive," she added. "Many times we have had people come to us and say
that without, for example, the coal and wood during the winter, we would
have literally frozen to death. This winter was particularly bad. We
felt it here. We know of many Roma people, elderly Roma who are outside
of our assistance program who did freeze to death."

The International Organization for Migration says the Roma are the largest
and most discriminated against ethnic minority in Europe. For centuries,
it notes they have been denied access to education, housing, health care,
and employment.

Pandya says many European countries are making efforts to address the
discrimination against the Roma. But she says these elderly Roma
Holocaust survivors do not have time to wait.

(source: Voice of America News)