June 10



GERMANY:

Hitler's bunker: Plaque finally marks the spot


In Berlin, the site of Adolf Hitler's bunker was marked publicly for the
first time Thursday by a historical group trying to demystify one of the
Third Reich's most burdened places.

The bunker's buried ruins lie below a parking lot, playground and adjacent
apartment building. The Berlin Underworlds Association unveiled its new
marker -- a sign bearing graphics, photos and a chronology of events in
both German and English -- at the edge of a sidewalk alongside the
tree-dotted parking lot.

"This is one of the most symbolic places in Berlin for the crimes the
Nazis committed, and we want to make sure people know the whole truth
about it," said Sven Felix Kellerhoff, an expert who works with the
private group and wrote the book "The Fuehrer Bunker: Hitler's Last
Refuge."

Former SS Staff Sgt. Rochus Misch, a Hitler bodyguard throughout the war,
attended the unveiling and recalled his experiences.

"During the last 12 days of the war, I was down here with Hitler and the
other bodyguards all the time," said Misch, 88, pointing to the place
where Hitler killed himself on April 30, 1945, as Soviet troops closed in.

In an earlier interview with The Associated Press, Misch, one of the last
surviving witnesses of Hitler's final days, lamented that there was no
indication anymore of where the bunker was located in the heart of Berlin.

"History can be good or bad, but even if it's about a devil, people must
be informed of history," he said.

Berlin officials had been hesitant about pointing out the location because
they feared that neo-Nazis could turn the site into a place of pilgrimage.

But Kellerhoff said city guides often stop at the site of the bunker and
tell tourists myths about it, and that it was important to make the truth
known. One of the incorrect stories claims that the bunker had 12 floors
and an underground highway that Hitler used to cruise the city
underground.

"That's all complete nonsense," said Kellerhoff, explaining that the
bunker built in 1935 contained several rooms and was fortified by walls
nearly 14 feet thick.

Hitler, 56, shot himself in the head inside the bunker located 30 feet
underground. Next to him was found his longtime mistress, Eva Braun, whom
he had wed two nights before and who committed suicide by taking cyanide.

Today, not much is left of the old bunker, which was attached to Hitler's
chancellery. After the war, Soviet soldiers blew up most of the bunker and
in the 1980s the remaining foundation and walls were filled with rubble,
making it inaccessible.

Under the East German government in the 1980s, the apartments were built
and the site was paved over.

The association conducts historical research and tours of Berlin's many
bunkers and tunnels.

Not everyone was happy with the idea of marking the spot, just a stone's
throw from the Holocaust Memorial down the block. Edna Hohenfeld, an
Israeli tour guide watching the unveiling ceremony, said the sign made her
uncomfortable.

"Why do they have to draw attention to this awful place? I am afraid that
neo-Nazis will now come here to celebrate Hitler," she said.

(source: Associated Press)


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

Holocaust survivor elected as German Jewish leader


A "straight-talking" Holocaust survivor was elected Wednesday as the new
leader of Germany's main Jewish organization, representing about 100,000
Jews living in the country, sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Charlotte Knobloch, who is 73, was overwhelmingly elected to the
high-profile presidency of the Central Council of German Jews, the sources
said.

Knobloch, who until now was vice-president of the group, is well-known as
head of Munich's Jewish community and for her role in steering plans for a
new Jewish community centre, synagogue and museum in the Bavarian capital.

She also played a major role in helping integrate thousands of Russian
Jews who arrived in Germany after after the 1990 German reunification.

A Holocaust survior, Knobloch narrowly escaped death during the Nazi era
by hiding at a farm in northern Bavaria. Her grandmother was murdered at
Auschwitz and her father, who was made a slave labourer, barely survived
the Third Reich.

Knobloch has been outspoken with calls to ban the far-right National
Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). A ban passed by the previous German
government was struck down by Germany's highest court.

She has also criticized Germany's Protestant and Catholic churches for
what she view as their passive reaction to right-wingers.

"A straight-talking woman," was how the German-Jewish weekly Juedische
Allgemeine described Knobloch.

She succeeds Paul Spiegel who died after a long illness on April 30.

About 100,000 Jews now live in Germany.

Russian Jewish immigrants, who have been admitted to Germany under a
directive by former chancellor Helmut Kohl since 1990, have provided a big
boost to the community. Prior to 1990 there were only about 30,000 Jews
resident in Germany.

Before the Holocaust about 600,000 Jews lived in Germany.

(source: Deutsche Presse-Agentur)





USA//TEXAS:

Holocaust survivor becomes philanthropic leader in HoustonALLAN TURNER


Money can do many things. It can buy a palatial home, furnish it
with French antiques and marble statuary, put fountains in the yard and a
Rolls-Royce in the drive. But it can't buy you the love of a good dog.

Houston real estate tycoon Bernard Aptaker, a millionaire many times over,
knows that well.

Since arriving in New York almost six decades ago, Aptaker - struggling to
overcome the trauma of years spent in a series of Nazi concentration camps
- worked his way to riches. From his first job as a deli hand, through
stints as a dance instructor to dizzying peaks in the Houston apartment
business, Aptaker never forgot the value of a dollar.

Now, at age 80, Aptaker is giving much of his wealth away. And first on
his list of beneficiaries are homeless horses, down-on-their-luck cows and
other large abandoned or abused animals in need of a little comfort.

For Aptaker, a lifelong bachelor soured on humanity by his wartime
experiences, the late-life gift is an opportunity to do something special
for animals, some of whom have been among his best friends.

Houston's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals recently
announced that the businessman had given the group 60 acres near George
Bush Intercontinental Airport for creation of the Freedom Farm refuge.
Basic infrastructure work has begun at the site, and the group soon plans
to launch a capital campaign to build barns, corrals and other support
structures.

"We were pretty jam-packed around here," SPCA executive director Patricia
Mercer said of the group's Portway Street shelter complex. That five-acre
site, home to the organization since 1994, houses 35 horses as well as
chickens, pigs and hundreds of cats, dogs and rabbits.

As many as 1,000 horses may be housed at Freedom Farm, which, when
completed, also will provide facilities for long-term care of orphaned
pets, a caretaker's cottage and meeting areas for animal-oriented youth
camps.

"This," Mercer said, "is a dream come true."

Aptaker, who also has established a foundation to promote understanding
among ethnic and religious groups, vowed that his first gift will be
followed by "many more."

"I love every kind of animal," Aptaker said. "It's the opposite of my
experience with people. My experience with people was so horrible."

Born in the largely Jewish village of Zakrzowek, not far from Lublin,
Aptaker was only 13 when the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939. His
mother, Sarah, and brother, Moshe, died in Nazi gas chambers. Aptaker, his
father, Murray and another brother, Stanley, were interned in the Budzin,
Wieliczka, Flossenburg and, finally, Dachau concentration camps.

Aptaker clearly recalls the arrival of German troops and their Polish
collaborators at the family home.

"They knocked on all the doors and took people away," he said. "They took
away all the people who could lead or spark an uprising. The police, the
mayor - they took them to the forest and executed them. ... Two German
soldiers came and knocked on our door, and with them were three Polish
firemen - they were showing the Germans where the Jews lived.

"I had a small dog, and she had three puppies. The dog barked at them and
grew more agitated. The little dog tried to defend me. A German finally
pulled his Luger and shot it. The Polish firemen - they wanted to kiss up
- they stomped the puppies. They kicked me and then left. My father was
not at home."

Later, in the Budzin concentration camp, Aptaker's father, a Polish
veteran of World War I who had supported his family by dealing in
groceries, was forced to watch helplessly as a guard beat his son with a
lead-filled whip.

"I stood at attention and the guard said in German that he'd get me dirty,
a dirty Jew," Aptaker recalled. "He gave me a good lashing. Blood was
running. I still have a little bit of scars. My father stood right in
front, hateful tears coming out of his eyes."

Aptaker said the experience was key to his decision not to father
children.

"I could not see giving life to children after I witnessed the torture my
father was forced to endure as he saw me flogged."

As German fortunes waned in the spring of 1945, roughly 17,000 inmates of
Flossenburg, including Aptaker and his father and brother, were marched 50
miles to Dachau.

"The guards were sadists," he said. "They must have been taken out of
jails to be guards. Seventeen thousand started out; only 400 arrived. It
was a horror walking in April. The nights were cold. The days were hot.
People were drinking runoff from barns. Every few minutes you could hear
the machine-gun fire. We were walking corpses."

The Aptakers were freed as U.S. forces liberated Dachau in April 1945.

For two years, Aptaker worked with U.S. intelligence units in Europe to
capture German war criminals. He moved to New York City in 1947; his first
job was as a deli worker.

Before buying his first Houston apartments in 1974, he worked as a dance
instructor, operated dance studios in California and traded in precious
African gems.

Based in Houston, his RCA Holdings Ltd. owned apartments and properties
throughout the Southwest. Aptaker, whose Houston holdings alone approached
$100 million, began curbing his activities two years ago after a triple
heart bypass.

"I'm 80 years and five months," he said. "But I'm really 150. I look
complete, but I'm really bionic. I've had a heart bypass, a hip
replacement, shoulder operation, back operation, prostate cancer and I
need a knee operation. I'm a survivor. I've conquered everything, even the
German war machine."

Initially, Aptaker hoped to create a center for the care of the pets of
U.S. military personnel serving in Iraq.

"I was moved that a lot of Americans sent off to Iraq had major problems
with what to do with their pets," Aptaker said. "My main idea was that it
would be nationwide, and that I'd help with the money to set up places to
keep their pets near their homes."

Medical and business problems stalled the effort.

Earlier this year, Aptaker began negotiations with the SPCA to create the
Freedom Farm. And although the refuge's mission differs from his original
vision, Aptaker said he believes the complex, which will include a
monument to his parents, will provide desperately needed help for abused
or abandoned animals.

"I needed to do something interesting and meaningful to me," Aptaker said,
"and to me, this will do a lot of good. America has been so wonderful to
me."

(source: Houston Chronicle)


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


USA//FLORIDA:

Man Seeks Return Of Art Nazis Stole----Large collection of poster art now
sits in the basement of a German museum.


SARASOTA -- Collecting poster art was Hans Sachs' passion. The well-to-do
German dentist compiled 12,500 pieces he painstakingly cataloged and
displayed throughout his home in Berlin. He even published a magazine
dedicated to the art form.

Like many German Jews, Sachs lost almost everything to rampaging mobs of
Nazis during what became known as Kristallnacht -- "the night of broken
glass" -- on Nov. 9, 1938. The Gestapo arrested him and hauled away his
poster collection, which he never saw again.

Today, several thousand of the posters -- likely worth millions -- are
stored in a German history museum, and Sachs' son wants them back.

But the museum is refusing to hand them over. Officials there say Hans
Sachs was compensated by the German government for the loss of his
collection more than 40 years ago. His son, they say, is entitled to
nothing.

A legal battle seems to be on the horizon.

"His passion was to make this available to the world, to expose the world
to the art form," Sarasota resident Peter Sachs said of his father, who
died in 1974. "I don't think they should be languishing in a basement, nor
do I think the Germans have a right of ownership, considering the
circumstances under which they were stolen."

Peter Sachs, 67, hired New Jersey lawyer Gary Osen, a Holocaust
restitution specialist. Osen last year won a landmark case, getting back
land in downtown Berlin for a descendant of the Wertheim department store
family, whose fortune was lost under the Nazis.

Osen said talks with the German Historical Museum, which has the posters,
have not produced results. The government's culture ministry recently
offered arbitration before a committee that hears stolen art cases, but
Osen said he is prepared to sue the museum to force the issue.

"Obviously, it's ironic that the German museum of history doesn't have
much regard for history," he said.

Hans Josef Sachs was a teenager in the early part of the 20th century when
he began collecting the bright-hued placards, which in those days were a
primary medium to promote cultural events, advertise products and
disseminate political thought.

Sachs -- widely credited with elevating commercial graphics to an
internationally recognized art form during the first decades of the last
century -- lost it all to the Nazis. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels
intended for the seized collection to be the basis of a museum exhibit on
the art of commerce, according to Hans Sachs' written account of the
seizure.

After 17 days in a concentration camp after Kristallnacht, Sachs was freed
and fled to America with his wife and son. He was certified to practice
dentistry, and the family thrived in Boston and then New York City.

Represented by the United Restitution Organization, a Jewish aid group,
Hans Sachs filed a claim and was compensated the equivalent of about
$50,000 for the collection in March 1961, according to Rudolf Trabold, a
spokesman for the German Historical Museum.

And when some of the posters resurfaced in an East German museum a few
years later, Sachs did not demand their return, Trabold said. So his heirs
have no claim.

Osen is arguing that whatever Hans Sachs was paid doesn't matter. He notes
that the German government has committed to returning property seized by
the Nazis to the heirs of the rightful owners, regardless of whether
restitution has been paid.

Peter Sachs said his parents never told him part of the collection still
existed. It was only last year, as he was trying to find original copies
of his father's poster art magazine, Das Plakat, that he learned 3,700
pieces were in the German museum.

(source: Associated Press)



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



USA//ALABAMA:

Holocaust denier draws 160,000 votes----Democrats call AG candidate's
strong showing 'embarrassing'


Larry Darby believes that Jews exaggerated the Holocaust, that the
country should be all-white and that illegal immigrants should be
shot on sight.

In Madison County, Darby received more votes Tuesday than his opponent for
attorney general in the Democratic primary, Mobile County District
Attorney John Tyson Jr.

Huntsville wasn't alone. Darby received more votes statewide than former
Chief Justice Roy Moore did in the Republican primary for governor.

Darby, a Montgomery lawyer, had 52 percent of the county's votes to
Tyson's 48 percent, though Tyson won the Democratic primary. In fact,
Huntsville was the only major metropolitan area that voted for Darby. And
he got more votes in Madison County, the third-largest county in Alabama,
than former Gov. Don Siegelman, who was running in the Democratic
gubernatorial primary.

State Rep. Randy Hinshaw, D-Meridianville, calls the Darby vote totals
"embarrassing."

Republicans are gloating.

"I think it is noteworthy that the Democratic Party had an atheist
candidate and avowed Holocaust denier get so many votes in their primary,"
said Tim Howe, executive director of the Alabama Republican Party.

Why did Madison County vote for Darby?

"I had a message," Darby said. "John Tyson Jr. had no message."

Election analysts said most voters probably had no idea of Darby's
message.

Limestone, Morgan and Lauderdale counties all voted for Darby over Tyson,
who nevertheless collected 56 percent of the vote statewide. Darby,
though, received more than 160,000 votes. Tyson will face Republican
Attorney General Troy King in the November general election.

Darby, 49, first drew media attention by providing an atheist counterpoint
to Moore's Ten Commandments fight in 2003. Darby steadily turned up his
rhetoric, making "pro-white" speeches and calling for the treatment of
illegal immigrants as prisoners of war.

He said about 140,000 Jews died in World War II - not the widely accepted
number of 6 million - and not as part of a Nazi plan.

Darby also believes groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, a
nonprofit group based in Montgomery that promotes racial diversity, have
led the state down the wrong path.

"The open-borders policy which has been advocated by the Jewish
supremacists at the Southern Poverty Law Center, they are responsible for
the browning of Alabama," he said. "They're trying to wipe out the white
race in Alabama."

Racist or random?

Darby had been embraced by the white supremacist movement, but most of
them turned on him after they discovered he is a single father of two
daughters, 17 and 14, who are partly of Chinese descent.

Dr. Jess Brown, a professor of political science at Athens State
University, said North Alabama voters probably did not know what Darby
stood for when they voted for him.

"Do I think it was a closet racist vote? No," Brown said. "A far more
plausible explanation is that (the race) had so low visibility it was
almost like a random draw."

Brown said neither Tyson nor Darby advertised much and, aside from Mobile
County where Tyson is the district attorney, not many people knew either
candidate. Because of that, Brown said, people may have been inclined to
vote for the first name on the ballot.

"There has always been speculation that if you're first on the ballot, you
would have a kind of edge," he said.

Joe Ritch, co-chair of the Huntsville Base Realignment and Closure
Commission committee and a University of Alabama trustee, said the vote
for Darby is not an accurate reflection of Madison County.

"People here are not the type of people who would support someone with
these outrageous views," said Ritch, who is working to convince federal
workers to move to Huntsville from northern Virginia during BRAC.

Ignored opponent

Tyson said he did little campaigning in the primary, instead "marshaling"
his resources.

"We decided to ignore" Darby, Tyson said.

Tyson said he didn't think Darby would do so well and blamed the close
race on Tyson's name being lower on the ballot and not advertising.

Some political observers weren't surprised, however.

Dr. David Lanoue, chairman of the political science department at the
University of Alabama, said primaries can yield strange results partly
because voters don't pay as much attention to primaries as they do the
general elections.

"Weird things happen in primaries," he said, "because of lack of
information."

(source: Huntsville Times)







ROMANIA:

Romania's hunt for Nazi criminals too slow--group


Romania is dragging its feet in investigating four suspected Romanian
Nazi war criminals discovered by the Simon Wiesenthal Center more than a
year ago, the prominent Jewish group said on Wednesday.

The four are among 18 Romanians who were the subject of research by the
Nazi-hunting group as part of its "Operation: Last Chance", which offers
financial rewards in an effort to catch the few perpetrators of the
Holocaust still alive.

"It would be a mockery of the memory of the victims of the Holocaust in
Romania if those responsible for their deaths were not held accountable
due to the failure of the Romanian judicial system to bring them to
trial," the group's chief Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff said in a letter to
Romanian prosecutors.

"The fact that the investigation of these cases still has not been
completed ... is a cause for grave concern," he said.

Romanian prosecutors were not immediately available to comment.

Romania, which shed communism in 1989, has only just started coming to
terms with its role in World War Two, admitting for the first time in 2003
that it played a role in the Nazi Holocaust.

Under pro-Nazi Marshal Ion Antonescu, Romania became a German ally in 1940
but switched sides shortly before the end of the war.

Schoolchildren were not taught about the Holocaust during the communist
era, and the subject was introduced only in 2004 after a row with Israel.

Between 280,000 and 380,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews were killed by
Romanian civilian and military authorities in Romania and territories it
controlled during World War Two, many of them slaughtered in pogroms or
murdered in labour camps or death trains.

A further 135,000 Romanian Jews living in Transylvania, then part of
Hungary, and 5,000 Romanian Jews living outside Romania were also killed.
Over 25,000 Romanian Roma were deported, of whom 11,000 died.

Romania is near the bottom of a list the Wiesenthal Center has drawn up
ranking countries' prosecution of war criminals by effort and results.

Romania, a poor Balkan state, is struggling to reform its judicial system
as part of its drive to join the European Union next year, but its efforts
are marred by crumbling infrastructure, poor training and endemic
corruption.

Recent reforms carried out by the centrist government have improved the
judiciary and won praise from Brussels, but many observers say the real
impact has yet to be seen.

Only 13,000 Jews now live in Romania, which was home to 750,000 before the
war.

(source: Reuters)





FRANCE:

French railway must pay for transporting family to Nazis


The French government and the country's railway operator SNCF must pay
compensation for their role in the deportation of a Jewish family during
the Second World War, a court has ordered.

European Green Party legislator Alain Lipietz and his sister Helene
launched the lawsuit against SNCF for transporting their father and three
other relatives to a transit camp at Drancy near Paris in May 1944. The
camp would then send Jews off to Nazi concentration camps.

Lipietz's relatives remained in Drancy for several months until the camp
was liberated in July 1944.

On Tuesday, the court in Toulouse, France ordered the government and the
railway to pay about $79,500 US to the family.

"It's a first in France, and we are obviously very satisfied," the
family's lawyer, Remi Rouquette, told the Associated Press. The court
allowed for the possibility of other similar suits in the coming months,
he said.

Yves Baudelot, a lawyer representing the railway company, told Reuters
that the court said the SNCF had never objected or protested against
conducting the transportations, and had put Jews in freight carriages
without food or minimal standards of hygiene.

The French state could not have been unaware that transportation to the
Drancy transit camp near Paris was a "prelude to deportation" to
concentration camps, Baudelot quoted the judges as saying.

But Baudelot told Reuters he was "amazed by the ruling. I can't understand
it."

He said the railway should not be held responsible because it was forced
to co-operate with the Germans.

"The SNCF had no liberty of manoeuvre. The [Nazis] told the SNCF by letter
that they had to do everything the German authorities wanted, and if
someone refused, they would be shot," he said.

(source: CBC News)


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


France guilty of Holocaust crime

THE French state and the national railway company, SNCF, have been found
guilty of colluding in the deportation of Jews during World War II and
ordered to pay compensation to the family of two victims.

European MP Alain Lipietz and his sister Helene brought the case on behalf
of their father, who was transported from Toulouse to the Drancy wartime
transit camp outside Paris.

It is the latest embarrassment for France, which for decades refused to
face up to accusations of collaboration in the Holocaust during the Nazi
occupation.

A tribunal in Toulouse ordered the state and SNCF to pay 62,000
($A107,000) to Mr Lipietz and his sister, for their late father, and to
their uncle over the brothers' transportation with their parents to Drancy
in 1944. The camp, which became known as the "antechamber of death", was a
transit prison from which about 67,000 Jews were sent to Nazi death camps.

In their ruling, the judges recognised the prejudice suffered by the
victims and their confinement at the camp. They said their transportation
amounted to an "act of negligence of the state's responsibilities" because
the state could not ignore the fact that transportation to Drancy normally
meant subsequent removal to a Nazi death camp.

The judges found SNCF never voiced "any objection" to transporting such
prisoners. Indeed, the company classified the journeys as being on
"third-class tariffs", despite prisoners being transported in cattle
trucks, and continued to ask for payment of the bills after France was
liberated from the Nazis.

The judges did not uphold the plaintiffs' charge that the actions of the
state and SNCF amounted to crimes against humanity.

Mr Lipietz described the tribunal's decision as historic. "It's the first
time in history that the state and the SNCF have, as such, been
condemned," he said.

A similar suit in 2003 failed when a Paris court ruled it could not
establish that SNCF was responsible for transporting Jews during the Nazi
occupation.

(source: The Guardian)








CANADA:

$10,000 reward offered for turning in Nazis


In Ottawa, an international organization focusing on the history of the
Holocaust has stepped up efforts to catch suspected Nazi war criminals
living in Canada.

The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center announced Tuesday that it will give
rewards of up to $10,000 for tips leading to convictions of Nazi war
criminals.

The strategy falls under a campaign known as Operation Last Chance, a
program formerly in use only in countries where Nazi crimes were
committed.

"Obviously, the name reflects the urgency of the situation," said Efraim
Zuroff, a director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

"We're almost at the last possible opportunity to bring these killers to
justice and we decided that we have to be a little more proactive."

A Justice Department representative said Canada is unwilling to be a safe
haven for war criminals, and that the government is willing to investigate
the tips collected by Operation Last Chance, as well as tips about anyone
suspected of committing atrocities.

"When the government receives allegations, the government has its own
vetting process and carries out its independent investigation on
allegations received from anybody," said Terry Beitner, director and
general counsel of the crimes against humanity and war crimes section.

Zuroff, who calls himself a Nazi hunter, said the Canadian legal system
makes it difficult to deport war criminals. The process involves revoking
citizenship as well as getting federal cabinet approval via an order in
council.

"In Canada, they've not succeeded in being able to finish the process.
It's like winning the faceoff but not being able to put the puck in the
net," said Zuroff.

Although Zuroff's organization is frustrated with the slow progress, a
Canadian legal expert explained that the system works that way for a
reason.

"It's taken ages to develop our system of laws," said Michel Drapeau, a
lecturer in the faculty of law at the University of Ottawa and an expert
in war crimes issues.

"Even with this exhaustive appeal system we have made mistakes over the
years. So fortunately if you're innocent, there's always the next appeal.

"Justice is sometimes inconvenient and sometimes takes time, but I think
we should carry on as we do it because it meets our Canadian needs and
values and ultimately it serves us reasonably well.''

(source: Canada Citizen)





POLAND:

Restored Holocaust diary stirs emotions----Traveling exhibit shares teen's
chilling remembrances


"I am waiting for a normal human being, but none such appeared, only the
dark night." ----from a young Jewish girl's diary written during the
Holocaust



With black ink on blue-lined paper, a teenage girl writes about her
horrific experience hiding from the Nazis in Poland's Warsaw Ghetto in
early 1943. The diary includes a description of the Jewish girl's
discovery of her dead mother on a kitchen floor, killed by drunken Nazis.

Though the recently restored writings of the girl known as Debora are not
as complete or celebrated as The Diary of Anne Frank, her work is just as
powerful and poignant.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., presented
an exhibition Wednesday in North Dallas titled "Out of the Ashes: A
Holocaust Diary Revealed."

The exhibit, at the Classic Residence by Hyatt senior living community,
detailed the diary's story.

A friend of Debora's recovered the diary in Warsaw in 1945 and donated it
to the museum in 2002. It was charred, torn and fused together in many
places.

Sentence fragments such as "mothers and children thrown" made Emily
Jacobson, a conservator at museum, want to learn more. She took on the
challenge of reconstructing the diary and, through painstaking efforts,
was able to restore nine of 20 pages.

"This gives only a small glimpse of the horror of the Holocaust," said Ms.
Jacobson, who gave Wednesday's presentation.

Debora, whose last name is unknown, died in the Polish uprising in August
1944.

Sara Eigenberg, a museum associate, told the group of seniors who were
gathered that having the exhibit in Dallas was meaningful because of the
city's large survivor community. According to the Dallas Holocaust Museum,
about 200 Dallas residents are Holocaust survivors.

Among those attending was 87-year-old William Paul Schiff, who has lived
in Dallas since 1949. For several years, he endured life in the Plaszow
and Auschwitz camps.

"I lived through it each day," he said, "and each day I expected to die."

U.S. forces freed Mr. Schiff from Auschwitz in 1945. Since then, he and
his 83-year-old wife, Rosalie, who also survived the camps, have been
raising awareness about the Holocaust. Their son, Michael, is former
president of the Dallas Holocaust Museum, where the Schiffs often speak.

Wilbur Stein, an 88-year-old resident of Classic Residence, never knew his
non-immediate family because they died in the Holocaust. Mr. Stein, a
first-generation American, said Debora's diary is "a story that needs to
be told."

But it's a difficult story to hear.

The diary recounts days hiding in shelters, nights spent with corpses. It
describes unspeakable atrocities and life in a burning ghetto.

But at its core, it's a story about Debora's search for her mother.

I no longer hear mother's footsteps, I do not know what happened to her, I
am suffocating...

Eventually she makes an awful discovery.

By the way, I looked in the kitchen. Horrors, on the floor lies the cold
corpse of my mother, shot through her mouth from which a thin ribbon of
blood flows, that formed a small puddle.

I can not believe that she is no longer alive.

After learning how her mother died, Debora and her family took the body
home. To avoid burying her in a communal grave set up by Nazis, the family
bribed authorities and received a funeral permit 10 days later.

The day of the so called funeral, I found brother sitting near mother and
conversing with her as if she were alive. What are you doing? I asked. He
replied. I am talking with mother, the reason she left, so she could be
able to continue to take care of us.

At the close of Wednesday's presentation, Ms. Eigenberg and Ms. Jacobson
encouraged the audience to donate Holocaust materials they may have in
order to preserve the memories of survivors.

"Emotionally, this is very important to me," Ms. Jacobson said. "These
personal stories are ways for people to connect to the past."

(source: Dallas Morning News)






ISRAEL:

Online Holocaust course launched

Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies in Israel
launched its first online course in English.


The course, launched this week, has a flexible schedule which allows easy
access from home, school or work and allows participants to work at their
own pace. It covers five major topics about the Holocaust. New lessons
will be uploaded every two weeks. Topics covered include Jewish life in
Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries; Germany 1918-1939; Jewish life in
the ghettos; The Final Solution; and Commemoration and Remembrance. In
addition to the lessons, there will be a discussion forum where
participants can exchange ideas. The course is open to the public at
large, and its graduates will receive a certificate for the completion of
the course. For more information see http://www1.yadvashem.org/education/
department/english/course.html.

(source: Cleveland Jewish News)






GLOBAL:

Website aims to get Nazi-looted art back to owners


A new website aims to reunite Holocaust survivors or their heirs with art
looted by the Nazis.

Swift-Find, an online registry of valuables, has created a database where
families who have lost art can post information, and auction houses or
museums that question the provenance of a work can check it out.

Its Looted Art Project is led by Shauna Isaac, who has worked with
governments and agencies to create a database of looted art.

When the Nazis controlled Europe, they looted cultural objects from every
country they occupied.

The Allies collected plundered works in Munich after the war and returned
most artworks to the country of origin of the artist. Many countries
placed unclaimed works into museums.

The Swift-Find website estimates as many as 100,000 objects may not yet
have been returned to their rightful owners.

Suspicion that work might be looted is still affecting art markets today.
In the past year, Austria has had to return five Klimts to the American
heirs of a Jewish art dealer and Britain has agreed to compensate a Czech
family for art that made its way into the British Museum.

U.K.-based firm Swift-Find worked with Sotheby's Auction House, which
itself has a formal archive of looted war art, to create the website.

The project has an archive of works that contains 25,000 pieces that have
yet to be recovered by their rightful owners.

Claimants are invited to register works they might be searching for.
Museums, galleries, dealers and collectors have been invited to browse the
site to check that works they are acquiring are not listed.

(source: CBC News)






AUSTRIA:

Austria will let Klimt paintings go


Austria will honour an arbitration court decision that five Gustav Klimt
paintings, valued at $150 million, should be returned to a California
woman.

Culture Minister Elizabeth Gehrer announced Tuesday that Austria would
return the paintings, a day after the court ruled they are the property of
Maria Altmann.

Altmann, 89, is the niece of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Jewish sugar
merchant who was forced to give up the paintings in 1938 when the Nazis
took over Austria.

Altmann says she wants the most famous works, including two portraits of
her aunt Adele Bloch-Bauer, to stay in Austria. Klimt's work and
especially the famous painting of Adele encrusted with gold leaf, is
considered a national treasure.

"I would like the portraits to remain in Austria," Altmann told Austrian
state television late on Monday, adding she wanted the landscapes to
remain in museums.

Vienna says it can't afford to buy the paintings.

Adele Bloch-Bauer I, also called the Golden Adele, is estimated to be
worth between 70 million and 100 million euros ($98 million and $140
million). Some art experts say it is priceless.

"Seventy million euros amounts to the whole budget for all museums in
Austria all public museums," Gehrer told Austrian state radio.

"That means we are not financially able to make purchases here, but talks
will be held. Perhaps there are sponsors or the family itself is prepared
to make something available as a loan," Gehrer said.

Altmann's attorney, E. Randol Schoenberg, said it was too early to say
exactly what would happen to the paintings. Altmann has four siblings who
are also heirs with claims to the artwork.

The paintings have been on display in Austria's Belvedere Gallery since
1939.

Klimt was a founder of the Vienna Secession art movement and one of the
most prominent painters of the central European version of Art Nouveau.

He painted Adele in 1907 under a commission from her family. She died in
1925 and her husband fled to Switzerland to escape the Nazis.

Austria had claimed in court that Adele Bloch-Bauer left her paintings to
the state when she died. After years of legal wrangling, both parties had
agreed to abide by the arbitration court's ruling.

The loss of the Klimt paintings would be the costliest concession Austria
has made since a 1998 law that ordered all federal museums to review their
holdings to see if they included works seized by the Nazis.

(source: CBC News)