April 25



ISRAEL:

Holocaust Survivors Grow Poorer in Israel


When Gizela Burg arrived in Israel after making it out of 4 Nazi
concentration camps alive, she thought her problems of survival were
behind her. But now, at the age of 83, she can no longer afford to pay her
growing medical bills.

Burg is among about 90,000 Holocaust survivors -- a third of the total in
Israel -- who live in poverty, according to official figures. For the
childless widow, her inability to fix her television or afford a taxi
meant she was spending Israel's annual Holocaust remembrance day on Tuesday
alone and in silence.

Israelis marked the day, beginning at sunset Monday, by closing bars,
discos and other places of entertainment. Television and radio stations
broadcast the stories of survivors. Air raid sirens sounded at midmorning
Tuesday to mark a two-minute period of silence in memory of the 6 million
Jews killed during World War II.

Israeli officials warned in speeches that anti-Semitism has not yet been
eradicated in the world. Speaking at the opening ceremony Monday evening,
Israeli President Moshe Katsav called for vigilance.

"I call on the Western world not to stand silently in the face of the
nations that are trying to acquire nuclear weapons and preach for the
destruction of the state of Israel," Katsav said, without mentioning Iran by
name. Iran's president has called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the
earth, and Iran is widely believed to be trying to manufacture atomic bombs.

But at home, Israel is having trouble caring for aging Holocaust survivors,
as their medical bills grow each year.

An organization called the Holocaust Survivors' Welfare Fund distributes
government aid for medical costs, but its budget in recent years has not
grown in proportion to the need. Less than 10 percent of the fund's annual
$35 million budget comes from the government. Eighty-five percent of the
fund's money comes from a New-York based Claims Conference, which is
funded, in turn, by Germany and Austria.

The Israeli government has increased funding for the organization in recent
years, from $435,000 two years ago to $3 million slated for this year. But
most of the funds for 2006 have not yet come through.

About 10,000 survivors who are eligible for medical aid are not receiving
it, said the chairman of the fund, Zeev Factor, 80, and himself a
Holocaust survivor.

"These people are barely surviving, but the crisis begins when a real
sickness befalls them," Factor said. "The government of Israel has received
money from the German government ... but I think the government didn't use
enough for the survivors."

Like many others who survived the war and moved to Israel, Burg took a job
with a modest salary, as a doctor's assistant, and had even set some money
aside for retirement. Her husband, a car mechanic, died of cancer 22 years
ago. Her savings ran out after three eye operations.

Now she chooses to pay $1,300 for dental treatment instead of putting meat
on her table or fixing her television. The fund had hoped to pay for the
work on her teeth but couldn't, she said.

"I don't pay for medicine because I have to pay for electricity and for gas
and property taxes," Burg said by telephone from her apartment in the Tel
Aviv suburb of Holon. "TV was my entire life. I would watch Hungarian
channels and remember home."

(source: Los Angeles Times)

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On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Eitan recalls Eichmann capture


It was the appendectomy scar that gave the Holocaust mastermind away.

After grabbing Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960, former Mossad agent
turned parliamentarian Rafi Eitan was only certain he had the right man
when he rubbed the fugitive Nazi leader's stomach and felt the scar.

Eichmann, who was in charge of implementing the Nazi plan to exterminate
the Jews, was captured in 1960 and put on trial in Israel, where he was
executed two years later. Eichmann was the only person ever put to death
in Israel.

On Tuesday, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Eitan recounted holding Eichmann's
head in his lap after snatching him from his hideout and bundling him into
a waiting car.

"When we got him into the car, I rubbed his stomach and I found the crude
scar from his appendicitis and then I said to myself, 'This is the man,"'
Eitan, 79, newly elected to the Knesset, told Israel Radio. "I felt that
here, the Israeli nation is behind me, that I am representing the Israeli
nation after the Holocaust."

The operation to capture Eichmann began with an order from then-prime
minister David Ben-Gurion, who wanted a Nazi war criminal put on trial in
Israel to send the world a clear message that the Jewish people could now
defend themselves, Eitan said.

After Mossad operative Zvi Aharoni came back with information that a man
by the name of Ricardo Klement was actually Eichmann, a scout was sent to
Argentina to find apartments and cars for the team, said Eitan, who headed
the operation.

The members of the team left Israel separately and arrived in Argentina
two weeks before the planned kidnapping to get to know Buenos Aires,
gather more information about Eichmann and set up a safehouse.

Once he was in the car, Eichmann was told in German not to talk or he
would be harmed. Eichmann answered "jawohl," or "yes, sir" in German,
making Eitan almost certain that he had the right man. Feeling the scar
drove it home.

This was followed by silence until Eichmann was in the safehouse, stripped
naked in a bright room and measured, Eitan said. Then, he was asked in
German for his name.

At first, Eichmann, said his name was Otto Elinger, the alias he used when
he escaped from a prisoners' camp in Germany. Then, he said his name was
Ricardo Klement, his name in Argentina.

Finally, Aharoni asked Eichmann for his number in the Nazi Party. After he
rattled it off, he admitted to his real name, Eitan said, recalling the
team's excitement over having fulfilled their mission.

"We the Jewish people, who suffered the Holocaust, who had six million of
its children murdered, is standing on its feet and doing its thing. And
then I thought that here, with this, we are vanquishing anti-Semitism," he
added.

(source: Associated Press)

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Israel Acknowledges Gays Killed In Holocaust


For the first time Israel's LGBT community was invited to participate in
Holocaust memorial services.

Two members of Jerusalem Open House placed a wreath in the name of the
GLBT community at the foot of the Warsaw Ghetto rebellion monument at Yad
Vashem the memorial to the millions who were exterminated by the Nazis.

"As a gay man and as the son of a family of holocaust survivors, I felt
that I was closing a circle by participating in the ceremony in the name
of the JOH, as a representative of the GLBT community," said Amir
Sumakai-Fink a member of the JOH board.

Fink and Yitschak Shnoor, another board member, joined the President, the
Prime Minister and other Israeli dignitaries.

Similar observances were held today at the LGBT Holocaust memorials in San
Francisco and in Europe.

The Nazi regime did not stop at the murder of millions of Jews in the
Holocaust. Among the other minorities that were pursued by the Nazis were
homosexuals, who were systematically persecuted.

The Nazis required "sexual deviants" to wear the pink triangle.

Under Paragraph 175 of the German penal code, which banned sexual intimacy
between members of the same gender, an untold number of gays and lesbians
were rounded up by the Nazis and send to concentration camps where they
were subjected to medical experiments including lobotomies, and forced to
work in labor camps.

The number of gays sent to the camps ranges from 5,000 to 15,000, many of
them sent to the gas chambers.

(source: 365Gay.com)




USA//CALIFORNIA:

600 Gather to Recall Lessons of the Holocaust
Villaraigosa and others speak at an event at Pan Pacific Park. Some
address current threats to Israel, others the conflict in Darfur.


For Jona Goldrich, even the most painful moments in human events have much
to teach future generations. And so this survivor of the Holocaust has
become a chronicler of the past, to ensure that the suffering of his
family and his people are never forgotten.

"I'm obsessed with the Holocaust," Goldrich says. "This is something that
happened only 66 years ago, and the next time it might not be the Jews."

On Sunday Goldrich, 78, and more than 600 others, many fellow survivors,
gathered at the Los Angeles Holocaust Monument in Pan Pacific Park to
remember and vow, "Never again."

The event was part of Holocaust Remembrance Day, held each year to honor the
more than 6 million Jewish men, women and children who perished in Europe at
the hands of the Nazis during World War II.

Under overcast skies, the ceremony featured prayers, songs and remarks by
several dignitaries, including former U.S. Ambassador Dennis Ross and Los
Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

The event's theme was the Nuremberg trials - the war crimes tribunals held
after the war ended.

Villaraigosa noted that those tried were the heads of the Nazi Party, that
they plotted the occupation of other countries, established slave labor
camps and articulated an ideology of racial hatred.

Twelve were sentenced to death.

Many had offered the defense that they were just following orders, and
therefore not liable for the death and torment their actions engendered.

"The ultimate justice in the verdicts at Nuremberg lies in the rejection of
this defense and in the affirmation of the idea that we all, each and every
one of us, is accountable as human beings," Villaraigosa told the crowd, to
applause.

Ehud Danoch, the Israeli consul general in Los Angeles, spoke of the
survivors and the difficulties of understanding their pain.

"There are no adequate words in the language to describe the attempted
annihilation of an entire people," Danoch said. "All of us here are humbled
by their presence. They are living proof that the Jewish spirit is
invincible."

Several speakers addressed modern-day threats to Israel.

Others raised more recent atrocities, such as the current conflict in the
Darfur region of Sudan, where as many as 400,000 people are believed to have
died in ethnic strife.

"The only way to truly honor the victims of the Holocaust is to act to stop
what is happening in Darfur," said state Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-West
Hollywood), who has sponsored legislation to prohibit investment of state
pension money in Sudan. "We must take personal responsibility about this
tragedy by talking to our family and friends and contacting our
representatives."

After the remarks, participants gathered at the Holocaust Monument in the
park, made up of six 18-foot-high triangular columns of polished black
granite, meant to evoke a crematorium, inscribed with information about the
Holocaust era. Here they lighted a "flame of memory."

This week, thousands of schoolchildren will descend on the site to take part
in Holocaust services, said Goldrich, who is chairman of the monument
organization.

Originally from eastern Poland, in what is now Ukraine, he lost almost his
entire family, his village, the friends he went to school with, during the
Holocaust.

At 14, he and a younger brother fled to Hungary before eventually
immigrating to the United States.

For Goldrich, sharing the voices and stories from the past with children is
his most important mission.

"We're not teaching enough in the schools," he said. "The only way to
preserve this legacy is to have it taught as a part of history in
schools."

(source: Los Angeles Times)




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USA//NEW YORK:

At Holocaust remembrance in NYC, U.S., Israeli officials warn of Iran
threat


Israel's consul general in New York said Sunday that the world needs to
take a tougher stance with Iran and warned that a "strong" and "determined"
Israel will never allow another Jewish Holocaust.

"It's important that the world understands that this is not an Israeli
issue, it's a world problem, and the world must stop Iran," Arye Mekel
said. "At this time, we would hope that the Security Council of the United
Nations would impose economic and political sanctions against Iran. Let's
be clear: That country cannot, cannot have nuclear weapons."

Mekel delivered his remarks at Hunter College during the Annual Gathering
of Remembrance, which commemorates the deaths of the Jews at the hands of
the Nazis in the Holocaust.

Joining Mekel was New York Sen. Charles Schumer and U.N. Ambassador
John Bolton, who also warned about the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Israeli officials believe Iran could be just a few years away from
obtaining the capability to make nuclear weapons, and they view Iran as a
gathering threat.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims his country's nuclear program
is for peaceful purposes, but he also has said Israel should be wiped off
the map and the Holocaust didn't happen.

Mekel said Israel will protect Jews from Iran or terrorist groups such as
Hamas or Hezbollah.

"We are strong and we are determined, and our youth is as strong as ever
in this noble idea of defending the Jewish people and the Jewish state,"
Mekel said.

Bolton told the crowd of several hundred that Iran gives fresh meaning to
the Holocaust and its survivors, many of whom attended Sunday's event with
their families.

"When a country like Iran seeks a nuclear weapons capability under the
leadership of a man who denies the Holocaust, it is the reason why this
prospect of the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass
destruction weighs so heavily on the president as he contemplates the risk
to the United States and all of its friends and allies but in particular
the risk of a second, a nuclear, holocaust," Bolton said.

Schumer also had strong words for Iran, calling Ahmadinejad a "madman."
But he warned against other threats to Jews.

"In Europe itself," he said, "we see a vehement double standard against
Israel and the Jewish people. We see countries recognizing a government,
Hamas, dedicated to killing Jewish women, children and men."

Schumer said there was little difference between the Nazis and Hamas.

Hamas might not use gas like the Nazis, he said, "but the result is the
same."

(source: Associated Press)


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USA//MASSACHUSETTS:

Fleeing Nazis, Some Found Refuge Here

But Harvard's effort to save Holocaust Jews called very small and very
late


As undergraduates today commemorate Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance
Day, they will follow in the footsteps of their predecessors who sponsored
refugees from Nazi Germany to complete an undergraduate education.

Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the 63rd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising, when captive Jews in Polands capital attempted a revolt.

As German forces marched through Europe and then attempted to exterminate
the continents Jews, student pressure here at Harvard eventually caused
the University to sponsor the full undergraduate educations of 14 refugees
by 1944.

Rahel Kestenberg, who fled from Prague, was the first Jewish refugee to
enroll in Radcliffe, The Crimson reported in February 1939.

Kurt M. Hertzfeld 41 was also sponsored by Harvard. Then an 18-year-old
refugee, Hertzfeld traveled from Austria in 1937 to avoid military
conscription.

Alone with no money, Hertzfeld said he saw a New York Times article about
special Harvard scholarships for refugees, applied, and was awarded a full
scholarship for his entire undergraduate career. Hertzfeld concentrated in
economics and went on to Harvard Business School for which he was again
awarded a full scholarship.

"I was a very fortunate person," he said in a phone interview from his
home in Amherst, Mass. yesterday. "I wanted to live in America like any
other American. Determined to change his life around," Hertzfeld said he
cut off ties with his German-speaking relatives and socialized mostly
with non-refugee students.

"My past is my past. My future is in America," he said of his thoughts at
the time.

Students planned a rally and a concert in Sanders Theatre to raise over
$10,000 that the University would then match for additional scholarships,
historian Morton Keller said yesterday.

Keller and his wife Phyllis are the authors of Making Harvard Modern: The
Rise of Americas University.

In 1938, the Harvard Corporation established 20 scholarships of $500 for
refugees who had fled Nazi Europe, according to the Kellers book.

Still, Morton Keller said, Harvard could have done more to help Jewish
refugees, who composed the majority of Europeans eventually awarded
scholarships.

"The University began in a small way, very small and very late," he said.
It doesn't really add up to that match."

Among the contributors to the Harvard Refugee Committees fundraising
efforts were House tutors and College parents, netting praise from
dignitaries such as Albert Einstein and Frances Farmer, The Crimson
reported.

"It wasn't much in the way of organized activity," Keller said. "But it is
kind of striking that the students were as active as anybody else," he
added.

Last night, Harvard Hillel sponsored a talk by Auschwitz survivor Rabbi
Ben-Zion Gold, director emeritus of Hillel, who spoke about his experience
in the Holocaust.

Members of Hillel will read names of the murdered from a microphone on the
steps of Widener Library from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m today. Hillel's Rabb Hall
will also be open for the lighting of remembrance candles and reflective
meditation.

(source: The Harvard Crimson)





CANADA:

Prime Minister honours victims of the Holocaust


Prime Minister Stephen Harper took part today in a ceremony on Parliament
Hill honouring the victims of the Holocaust.

"Today we gather here on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. Our thoughts
and prayers go out to the victims of perhaps the greatest crime of the
20th century. More than 60 years later, it is still difficult to believe a
plan of such scale and such evil as the Holocaust was conceived and
carried out - but it was."

The Prime Minister went on to say, "in a free and democratic society like
Canada, it is important for us to respect the rights and freedoms of all
our citizens, and to defend our way of life."

The Prime Minister urged vigilance and for people to learn the lessons of
the past - to never just stand by and ignore signs of trouble. For "it is
only in our vigilance and in our actions that we will honour those who
died in places like Auschwitz and Dachau."

(source: Judeoscope News)