Nov. 2




IRAN:

Iran gives Holocaust cartoon prize


Ignoring widespread condemnation, Iran awarded the top prize in a
Holocaust cartoon contest to a Moroccan artist for his depiction of
Israel's security wall with a picture of the Auschwitz concentration camp
on it.

The organizers of the exhibit -- meant as a response to the Danish
cartoons of Islam's Prophet Mohammed that enraged many Muslims -- awarded
Abdollah Derkaoui $12,000 Wednesday for his work depicting an Israeli
crane piling large cement blocks on Israel's security wall and gradually
obscuring Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. A picture of Auschwitz appears on
the wall.

The mosque is Islam's third-holiest site.

Iranian officials said they wanted to emphasize that Palestinians were the
indirect victims of the Nazi's killing of 6 million Jews in Europe during
World War II.

"Palestinians have been victim of a deceptive history by Zionists,"
Iranian Culture Minister Hossein Saffar Harandi was quoted as saying by
the conservative daily Kayhan. "The cartoonists expressed their hate
against oppressors and their love toward (Palestinian) victims in their
works."

The contest generated little coverage in the Iranian press and many
ordinary Iranians expressed little interest, or criticized the exhibit as
unnecessarily provocative.

Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, however, has called for
Israel to be destroyed, and Tehran has several times announced plans to
host a conference to examine the scientific evidence supporting the
Holocaust, dismissing it as exaggerated.

"The Iranian regime has unfortunately joined the obscene chorus of
Holocaust denial," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said
Thursday. "It is surely a historic tragedy that the leadership of a
country has adopted such a hateful agenda."

He said that till now, only neo-Nazi groups had been denying the existence
of the Holocaust.

The U.S. State Department has slammed the exhibit at Tehran's Museum of
Contemporary Arts, calling it an outrageous attempt to "denigrate the
horror that was the holocaust."

The display in Tehran, comprising 204 entries from Iran and abroad, opened
in August. Carlos Latuff of Brazil and A. Chard of France jointly won the
second prize of $8,000, and Iran's Shahram Rezai received $5,000 for third
place, the organizers said.

The Tehran daily Hamshahri, a co-sponsor of the exhibition, said it wanted
to test the West's tolerance for drawings about the Holocaust. The entries
on display came from nations including United States, Indonesia and
Turkey.

The exhibit drew few crowds, apart from students in state-run schools who
were brought by their teachers.

Iranian media didn't comment on the competition Thursday apart from
reporting its outcome. None reproduced the winning cartoons.

"The exhibition had no remarkable impact on public opinion," said Gohar
Dashti, a professor at the Soureh Art University in Tehran. "It was
neither a concern of students nor of the media."

Some people on the streets of Tehran voiced skepticism about the contest.

"Drawing cartoons ... isn't a good way to solve real and old problems,"
said Ahmad Nasiri, a 23-year-old student. "Denying the Holocaust through
cartoons doesn't contribute to humanity."

The exhibit curator, Masoud Shojai, said, however, that the contest will
be an annual event.

"Actually, we will continue until the destruction of Israel," he said. The
museum is next to the Palestinian Embassy, which was the Israeli
diplomatic mission before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

(source: Associated Press)




FRANCE:

U.S. author's Holocaust novel splits French critics


The fictional memoirs of a Nazi SS officer written in French by an
American are in line to win the top French literary prize but critics are
split over whether the novel is a new War and Peace or a piece of
tasteless historical voyeurism.

"Les Bienveillantes" ("The Kindly Ones") by Jonathan Littell has been
hailed as "the phenomenon of the literary season," selling over 200,000
copies and attracting the kind of reviews that most writers can only dream
of.

Littell, 39, has been compared to the great Russian writers Tolstoy and
Vassily Grossmann by critics weary of the minimalist style of many French
novels and praised for an epic sweep not seen since the days of Victor
Hugo.

"Les Bienveillantes" tells the story of Maximilian Aue, a former SS
official who recounts his career at the heart of the Nazi Holocaust in a
tone of philosophical detachment that contrasts sharply with the horrors
he was involved in.

"I regret nothing. I did my job, that's all," he says.

In a comment typical of many, Le Point current affairs weekly wrote that
he had "exploded onto the dreary plain of the literary autumn like a
meteor."

Le Nouvel Observateur called the book a masterpiece.

But not all the treatment has been favorable. One critic dismissed the
book as a "long piece of docu-fiction" and several have remarked with
distaste on the novel's fascination with death, obscenity and degradation.

Others have also commented on the implausibility of its main figure, a
Plato-loving homosexual who sleeps with his twin sister, murders his
mother and manages, Forrest Gump-like, to meet some of the chief figures
of his time as he moves from Paris, Stalingrad and Auschwitz to Hitler's
bunker in Berlin.

PRIX GONCOURT

The skeptics have had little impact on sales, however, and his publishers
Gallimard have struggled to keep up with demand, diverting paper intended
for the latest Harry Potter and putting three printers on to turning out
the 900-page bestseller.

The novel, whose title refers to the Furies of ancient Greek mythology,
has already won the prestigious Grand Prix du roman de l'Academie
Francaise and is favorite to win the Prix Goncourt, France's top book
prize, on Monday.

The author, a youthful looking figure who grew up in France and professes
a love of French literature and a distaste for the United States has
attracted as much attention as the novel.

Le Figaro said he had "cool nerves and the face of an angel, although a
rather worrying one."

Even those who don't like the book acknowledge its meticulous research,
which provides copious detail on subjects ranging from the murderous Nazi
"Einsatzgruppen" (task forces) in eastern Europe to Auschwitz and the
battle of Stalingrad.

Littell, who worked for humanitarian groups in trouble spots ranging from
Chechnya to Africa, also has an eye for the brutalities of war which comes
out clearly in his battle scenes.

He has said he wanted to get inside the skin of the perpetrators of the
Holocaust, inspired in part by his Jewish family history and in part by
works such as "Shoah" the austere and monumental documentary by French
filmmaker Claude Lanzmann.

Lanzmann himself has reacted skeptically. While granting the novel's firm
basis in research and descriptive power, he said he was put off by its mix
of sexual perversion, metaphysical reflection and piled up detail.

(source: Reuters)






USA//MISSOURI:

Jazz District event to commemorate Holocaust's beginnings


Next week Kansas City will remember the night that when some say the
Holocaust began.

The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education in conjunction with the
American Jazz Museum will hold the commemoration at the Gem Theater in the
Historic 18th & Vine Jazz District. Called Kristallnacht, or the Night of
Broken Glass, it marks the two November nights in 1938 when the Germans
launched an anti-Jewish strike on synagogues and businesses.

A reception will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday at the jazz museum. Then the
remembrance will move at 6:45 p.m. to the theater, where Kansas City jazz
pianist and vocalist Luqman Hamza will perform pieces banned by the Nazis.
At 7:15, four local scholars will discuss German life in the 1930s.

The event is free and open to the public. To make reservations call (913)
327-8196. For more information, go to www.mchekc.org or
www.americanjazzmuseum.org.

(source: Kansas City Star)