July 8



GERMANY:

Jewish leader: Germans must study Nazis


A Holocaust survivor who now serves as president of Germany's Jewish
community, wants more emphasis on the Nazi era in the high school history
curriculum.

Charlotte Knobloch said that Nazi history should be a separate compulsory
subject, The Times of London reported.

"We urgently need to overhaul the way history is taught because far too
little attention is paid to National Socialism," she said.

Knobloch survived the Holocaust because she was hidden and cared for by a
family servant, a Christian. But other relatives died, including her
grandmother, who was sent to Auschwitz.

Teachers and education officials argue that German children are already
exposed to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

"No other era of German history is studied as intensively in German
schools as National Socialism," Josef Kraus, the head of the country's
biggest teachers union.

Richard Schroeder, a theologian and politician, suggested that increasing
the time devoted to the Nazi era would simply play into the hands of
neo-Nazis.

(source: United Press International)





USA//ILLINOIS:

Holocaust Museum construction begins


Nearly 700 guests and speakers braved rain in Skokie June 22 to witness an
official start to the new Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.

The music-filled ceremony inspired tears and joy, Illinois Holocaust
Foundation President Sam Harris said Monday.

"Everyone came away with great, great excitement" about the Stanley
Tigerman-designed project, Harris said.

Skies cleared before the end of the ceremony, at which Gov. Rod
Blagojevich and Israeli Consul General Barukh Binah spoke. Harris, museum
campaign director J.B. Pritzker and Skokie Mayor George Van Dusen also
addressed the audience.

As part of the sod-turning, organizers buried a milk can containing
memories of about 30 Chicago-area Holocaust survivors on the site. That
replicated an operation, code-named Oyneg Shabbos, or "Joy of Sabbath," by
Polish Jews during World War II in which a group led by Emanuel Ringelblum
buried three milk cans containing papers chronicling Jewish life during
the Holocaust in a Warsaw ghetto. Ringelblum was executed in 1944, but two
of the cans were discovered years later.

Reuven Frankel, founding rabbi of Congregation B'nai Tikvah in Deerfield,
sang an invocation for the ceremony. Victor Aitay, concertmaster emeritus
for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, performed a violin piece, and the Soul
Children of Chicago choir concluded the Thursday event.

Harris said actual construction on the $25 million project should start
within two months. The 64,000-square-foot museum, at 9603 Woods Drive,
just west of the Edens Expressway, near Golf Road, is scheduled to open in
June 2008.

The new building will replace the foundation's current cramped 6,000
square-foot building on Main Street in Skokie. The new edifice will have
roughly 43,000 square feet on a 2-acre site and will include exhibit
space, classrooms and a 270-seat auditorium.

Conceived seven years ago, the museum was initially delayed by zoning
issues and neighborhood complaints, before intense negotiations among
Skokie, the Foundation, the state and Cook County culminated in the
project moving to its current north Skokie site.

"Eventually, we claimed victory from the jaws of defeat," said Richard
Hirschhaut, Foundation executive director and project director.

The state contributed $5 million, with the rest of the $25 million price
tag coming from private donations, said Hirschhaut. Harris said this week
that roughly $20 million in donations have been pledged to date, but
Foundation officials hope to raise a total of $35 million (including the
state grant), which will include a $10 million endowment.

Among artifacts scheduled to be displayed when the new building opens are
a Torah scroll rescued from a burning synagogue on Kristallnacht, a forged
ID card from a member of the Jewish Underground and a blanket used to hide
a child smuggled out of a ghetto.

Other artifacts include:


Yellow star, required to be worn by all Jews.


Uniform worn by a concentration camp inmate.


Brick from a gas chamber at Auschwitz.

Foundation officials expect the new site to attract 132,000 student
visitors annually, 110,000 more than the 22,000 who have visited the Main
Street museum annually.

Harris said the museum's educational importance extends beyond children
and students.

The reason for telling the Holocaust story is "as close as a Wisconsin
farmer," said Hirschhaut, referring to Ted Junker, 87, who last month
built a memorial to Hitler on his land near Millard, Wis. Junker has been
quoted as calling the Holocaust "the biggest lie in the history of
mankind."

(source: Niles Herald-Spectator)