Feb. 2

TEXAS:

Bat-mitzvah booklet honors those who hid Jews in WWII


During the Holocaust, gentiles Roman and Julian Bilecki literally took to
higher ground to help bring food to Jews hiding on their property. The
Bilecki cousins risked their lives by jumping from tree to tree so as to
not leave footprints in the snow.


With the help of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, 12-year-old
Rachel Siegel will publish the World War II stories of gentiles who
rescued Jews during the Holocaust. Stories of Moral Courage in the Face of
Evil is to be released this spring. Their story touched Rachel Siegel and
inspired her to compile their bravery and that of others in a booklet,
Stories of Moral Courage in the Face of Evil.

Rachel, 12, chose 36 stories to highlight in the booklet that honors
non-Jews for saving Jews during World War II. The booklet, a bat-mitzvah
project due out sometime this spring, is being published by the Jewish
Foundation for the Righteous, which is based in New York.

"Their stories really struck me," said Rachel, a student at Akiba Academy.

Rachel sifted through nearly 1,400 profiles in choosing her subjects. The
Jewish Foundation for the Righteous is an organization that provides
monthly financial support for non-Jewish rescuers of the Holocaust, such
as the Bileckis.

"The Bileckis showed the Jews where to build a bunker in the woods and for
almost a year provided them food," Rachel said.

That winter the snows were so deep that to keep the Germans from finding
the bunker where they were hidden, she said, the duo scaled trees to get
to their hideaways.

The Bilecki family of Poland is credited with saving the lives of 23
Jewish men, women and children.

"People need to know that other faiths cared. These people not only had
the courage to care but they had the courage to act," said Stanlee Stahl,
executive vice president of the foundation. "Within that nightmare there
were these little lights of hope."

Rachel chose 36 profiles because the number signifies the Jewish belief
that 36 righteous Jews inhabit the Earth at all times. They are considered
"hidden" saints.

"I realized there aren't just survivors but there are people who made them
survivors," Rachel said. "I wanted to be a part of acknowledging them."

The JFR has named Rachel a junior ambassador. While many Jewish children
go through the organization when applying for their bar or bat mitzvah,
Rachel went above the requirements.

"It's important for the next generation to continue their legacy in
choosing to make a difference," said Ms. Stahl. "Rachel is truly a future
leader."

Annually JFR hosts a fundraiser dinner to honor a rescuer and survivor.
The foundation invited Rachel to New York in November for its Recognition
of Goodness award dinner.

Rachel and her mother, Lisa, were overwhelmed by the event, during which
Rachel was introduced to the honoree, a Lithuanian rescuer.

The dinner raised $1 million. Those funds, along with sales from Rachel's
booklet, will continue to provide financial support to aging rescuers in
28 countries.

"This is important because we need young people to carry the torch so
these people are not forgotten," Lisa Siegel said.

(source: Dallas Morning News)






GERMANY:

'NAZI LOOTED ART'
New Handbook Helps Descendents Reclaim Nazi Loot

The Nazis were masters at stealing art from Jewish collectors and dealers.
Recently, many works have finally been returned -- but the legal path can
be tricky. A new manual entitled "Nazi Looted Art" aims to make
restitution easier.

In the painting, the grande dame of impartiality embodies the unbiased
rule of law: eyes bound, flowing robe, scale dangling from her left hand.
But Carl Spitzweg's masterpiece "Fiat Justitia," which forms part of the
German president's art collection, is anything but a symbol of justice --
quite the contrary.


The piece was sold at a cut-rate price by its Jewish owner in the
mid-1930s to finance his escape attempt from Nazi Germany. Seven decades
later, his descendants have still not been compensated for its loss.

But that may soon change. In recent years there have been growing efforts
to find and compensate families of art collectors disappropriated by the
Nazis during World War II. And an important new contribution to that
project was revealed in Berlin Tuesday: a new book called "Nazi Looted
Art: A Handbook to Art Restitution Worldwide" -- with Spitzweg's
"Justitia" gracing the cover.

Over 500 pages long, the encyclopaedic tome is filled with case studies of
valuable artworks either being taken from their owners by the Nazis, or
sold at below-market prices to finance escapes. But more than that, the
book provides a detailed, country-by-country look at the laws in place
intended to help descendants get their art back -- in effect, an
instruction manual for those dispossessed by the Nazis.

"This book gives the victims the possibility to take legal action without
having to hire a lawyer," says Gunnar Schnabel, a Berlin property lawyer
who co-authored the book with Monika Tatzkow, a Berlin historian who
specializes in tracking down lost art.

"There have already been hundreds of pictures returned in recent years,"
he says. "But there are likely hundreds more in the basements of museums
in Germany, Austria, the US and elsewhere."

Hundreds of old masters

The book appears at a time when high profile art restitutions have been
grabbing more headlines than ever. In November last year, Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner's "Berlin Street Scene" was auctioned off by Christie's for $38.5
million after Berlin's Brcke Museum had returned it to its rightful
owners.


The new book "Nazi Looted Art" aims to make restitution easier.
Also in 2006, five paintings by Gustav Klimt were returned to the
descendents of his famous model Adele Bloch-Bauer, while last February
hundreds of important old masters were handed back to the descendents of
Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, who fled Amsterdam in May
1940 to escape advancing German troops.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the opening up of Eastern Europe, it
has become much easier to trace missing pieces that ended up in museums
there after the war. The so-called Washington Principles, an agreement
signed by 44 countries in 1998 on dealing with Nazi looted art, likewise
gave restitution efforts a boost.

But even as some valuable pieces have found their way back to their
rightful owners, many others continue to adorn the walls of museums around
the world. German museums alone fear that up to 50 masterpieces --
including a Franz Marc in Stuttgart, another Kirchner in Essen and a
painting by Iwan Puni in Berlin -- may soon vanish, leaving gaping holes
in their collections.

Then there are the cases of "Fiat Justitia" and another work owned by the
German state, Canalleto's "Zwingergraben," which hung until recently in
the German president's Berlin residence, Schloss Bellevue.

"For me it is incredible that a president has a collection that is made up
of works with an inhuman background turned over by US soldiers after World
War II," said Schnabel on Tuesday. "And nothing happens," he added. "That
is simply impossible to believe." The German government has begun looking
into the provenance of the two works, however.

Nazis as art collectors

That many of the families now seeking restitution are Jewish is hardly
surprising. Prior to World War II, a disproportionate number of art
dealers and collectors were Jewish. Following the rise of the Nazis to
power in 1933 and the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, many of them
were forced to sell their art below market value -- at so-called "Jewish
auctions" -- to raise money for their escape.

Leo Bendel, whose story is the first of the 109 case studies presented in
the new book, is just one example of how the Nazis exploited collectors.
Bendel was a small-time Berlin art collector who owned "Fiat Justitia" but
sold the painting on June 15, 1937 to a gallery in Munich for 16,000
reichsmarks to finance his family's escape from Germany. Just nine months
later, the painting was bought at the behest of Adolf Hitler for his
planned megalo-museum in Linz for 25,000 reichsmarks -- a clear indication
that Bendel's persecution by the Nazis was a factor in both the sale and
the low price he received.


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Bendel fled to Vienna where he was -- despite converting to Catholicism
-- rounded up by the Nazis after Austria was annexed in 1938. He was
deported to Buchenwald concentration camp where he died in the spring of
1940.

Other Jewish-owned collections were simply "Aryanized" -- essentially
stolen -- by the Nazis in their quest to put together the world's biggest
and best art collection. After the war, many of them were taken out of
Germany by Allied soldiers (many works were mistakenly believed to be
German state property) or otherwise sold abroad, and are now spread out in
museums and private collections across the world.

Authors Schnabel and Tatzkow are hoping their book, with its detailed look
at the legal framework each country has put in place to deal with the
return of Nazi looted art, will make it easier for descendants to regain
ownership of their family's works. It will also, no doubt, ratchet up the
already growing pressure on German museums to conduct extensive research
into their own works of art acquired since World War II.

Speculation and money

Indeed, one of the central accusations of "Nazi Looted Art" -- which will
appear in an English-language version some time in late spring or early
summer -- is that Germany has not done enough to trace pieces taken by the
Nazis. While the government has called on museums to check their
collections in accordance with the Washington Principles, it has done
little to help fund such research.

Museums themselves have likewise been reticent about handing over their
prized pieces to descendants who often just turn around and sell them for
a tidy profit. Martin Roth, general director of Dresden's Staatliche
Kunstsammlung (State Art Collection), complained to the German weekly
newspaper Die Zeit last summer that "lost art is currently being sought
out and politicians are being pressured until they cave in," adding, "it's
only about speculation and money." And with the art market booming, state
museums are realizing that they can no longer compete for the most
important works.

Such a position, Schnabel and Tatzkow made abundantly clear on Tuesday, is
contemptible. The point is not how much money the descendants end up
making from a sale. The point is the fates of collectors who were
persecuted and often murdered by the Nazis -- and who lost all of their
possessions along the way.

"We are primarily interested in what happened to the people and families
who lost their property because they were seen as Jewish, half Jewish, a
quarter Jewish, or otherwise an enemy of Nazi Germany," says Tatzkow.

"And my feeling that there will be a lot more cases in the future comes
from the fact that I know Jewish collections well -- and know that there
were paintings in those collections that have not yet been found and
returned."

"Nazi Looted Art: Handbuch Kunstrestitution Weltweit" by Gunnar Schnabel
and Monika Tatzkow, published by Proprietas-Verlag in Berlin, will be
available in German in February for 39.80. The English edition is planned
for June.

(source: Der Spiegel)






BRAZIL:

Brazilian President: We must never accept denial of the Holocaust


Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva joined Jewish leaders to
mark the 62nd anniversary of the liberation of Nazi death camps, saying
the Holocaust must never be denied and urging the world to prevent it from
ever happening again.

"In the 21st century we cannot accept the denial of the Holocaust as a
historical fact...nor can we accept those who deny that six million Jews
were massacred," Silva told some 500 people at the Sao Paulo Jewish
Congregation's synagogue on Friday.

"Each time we pay homage to the victims of the Holocaust, we strengthen
those forces that will prevent that same horror from repeating itself," he
said after praising the United Nation's General Assembly for last week's
approval of a resolution condemning the denial of the Holocaust.

Silva's remarks came at a ceremony held to commemorate the January 27,
1945 liberation and to mark the second International Holocaust Remembrance
Day.

He did not specifically mention Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but
the congregation's chief rabbi, Henry Sobel, said the Brazilian
president's presence at Friday's event represented a repudiation of
Ahmadinejad's insistence that the Holocaust was a myth.

Sobel also said he was concerned by what he called growing anti-Semitism
in Venezuela.

"President Hugo Chavez's rhetoric is anti-Semitic and he is a close ally
of the president of Iran, and both of them share a profound hatred of
Israel," Sobel said.

Chavez has cultivated friendly ties with Ahmadinejad and last year called
Israeli attacks in Lebanon during a conflict with Hezbollah militants a
new Holocaust. He has made other remarks criticized by some Jewish groups
as anti-Semitic, though he said his comments were misinterpreted.

At about 130,000 strong, Brazil's Jewish community is the second-largest
in South America after Argentina, which is home to an estimated 200,000
Jews.

(source: Associated Press)





GLOBAL:

In the Era of the Holocaust, 29 Who Made a Difference


The book is called Diplomat Heroes of the Holocaust, and perhaps the most
telling thing about it is that it is very slim.

Richard C. Holbrooke, former ambassador to the United Nations, made that
point during a ceremony, held Jan. 24 at Park East Synagogue on
Manhattan's East Side, to mark the books publication.

During the years of Nazi persecution and then mass murder of Jews, Mr.
Holbrooke noted, Europe's embassies and consulates were filled with
thousands of officials, but very few of them proved willing to toss aside
protocol and instructions to save the lives of people threatened with
death in the camps.

"Diplomat Heroes of the Holocaust" is a documentary record of 29
exceptions.

It was written by Mordecai Paldiel, director of the department at Yad
Vashem the main Holocaust memorial museum in Israel that designates
non-Jewish rescuers of Jews with the honorific title Righteous Among the
Nations.

Stationed in cities either already or about to be under the control of the
Third Reich, this small minority of determined and ingenious officials
issued passports giving Jewish refugees new citizenship status, sometimes
to unlikely places, like El Salvador.

"They issued exit and entry visas and letters of protection so that Jews
could pass to safer territories. They accepted fake documents or even
helped people procure them. They made up phony stamps and created new
documents to impress local officials and border guards. They bluffed and
they threatened and, in many cases, personally sheltered or hid Jews or
accompanied them to border crossings."

Defying their own government's policies against assisting refugees, and
especially Jewish refugees, was often as necessary as defying German
power. Feng Shan Ho, for example, Chinas consul general in Vienna after
Austria became part of the Nazi Reich, earned a reprimand and then loss of
his post for freely issuing visas to Shanghai. Approximately 18,000
Austrian Jews actually escaped to China, while others used their visas to
reach safety elsewhere.

Even stranger was the success of two diplomats in Lithuania, Jan
Zwartendijk, a businessman serving as honorary Dutch consul general in
Kaunas, and Chiune Sugihara, a consul general (and spy) for Japan there.
The two men issued thousands of documents providing for the entry of Jews
into the Dutch-controlled Caribbean island of Curaao and for passage
through the Soviet Union and Japan to get there. Needless to say, the
beneficiaries of this scheme neither had heard of Curaao nor ended up
there. They did, however, escape death in Eastern Europe.

The story of Raoul Wallenberg is now legendary. The charismatic young
envoy was sent from Sweden (with the backing of President Franklin D.
Roosevelt) to protect the Jews in Budapest who had survived the
annihilation, overseen by Adolf Eichmann, of half a million Hungarian Jews
in the course of 1944. With a staff of hundreds, most of them Jewish,
Wallenberg worked night and day distributing passports and providing safe
housing, food and medical care while the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross movement
committed anti-Semitic outrages and the Red Army closed in on the city.
Wallenberg was to disappear forever in the hands of the Soviet forces, his
exact fate debated for decades.

But the diplomat hero that Mr. Holbrooke highlighted in his remarks was
Aristides de Sousa Mendes, an aristocratic Portuguese consul general in
Bordeaux, France, from 1938 to July 1940. In May 1940, he faced pitiable
crowds of refugees from the German invasion of France, many of them Jews
camped in the streets and parks and desperate for visas allowing escape
into Spain and Portugal.

He also faced an absolute prohibition by Portugal's dictator, Antnio de
Oliveira Salazar, against issuing transit visas to refugees and especially
to Jews.

In mid-June, the consul general agonized for several days, cut himself off
from the world, at one moment agitated, at the next despondent. Suddenly
he proceeded to his office and announced: Im giving everyone visas. There
will be no more nationalities, races or religions.

The next days were frenzied. All day and into the night, visas were
issued. Fees were waived. No one filled in names. Sousa Mendes traveled to
the Spanish border to make certain that refugees were able to cross. He
confronted Spanish border guards when needed and continued to sign visas.

Lisbon was upset and on June 23 stripped him of his authority. Returning
to his property in Portugal the next month, he only disturbed the
authorities more by acknowledging his deeds and defending them
straightforwardly on humanitarian and religious grounds. Dismissed from
the diplomatic service and with 12 children to support, he had to sell his
family estate and eventually died in poverty, supported by an allowance
from Lisbons Jewish community, where he ate at a soup kitchen.

"Diplomat Heroes of the Holocaust," with an introduction by Mr. Holbrooke,
is published by KTAV and the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Center for
International Affairs of Yeshiva University. Rabbi Schneier, senior rabbi
of Park East Synagogue and founder of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation,
has been active for decades on behalf of religious freedom and
interreligious dialogue.

The book relates its dramatic stories in relatively undramatic fashion.
Rather like a legal record, it quotes testimony given to Yad Vashem; the
names and words of people who were rescued come and go with only a quick
glimpse at who they are and what became of them later. And yet those names
are reminders of the preciousness of each woman, man and child in the
ranks of those caught up by the millions in this nightmare.

The book can refer only in passing to what motivated its diplomat heroes.
Some spoke of humanitarian duties, others of Christian beliefs; both
groups cited simple human feelings. Our father told us that he had heard a
voice, that of his conscience or of God, recalled a son of Aristides de
Sousa Mendes.

The book also recognizes that the inherent tension between a diplomatic
profession resting on following instructions and the moral demands arising
from unforeseen and overwhelming human suffering has not gone away. In his
introduction to the book, Mr. Holbrooke mentions refugees from Vietnam and
Darfur.

What does it mean, however, that this was not the particular moral
quandary preoccupying those present at Park East Synagogue? When Mr.
Holbrooke entertained questions, they were all about Iraq.

(source: New York Times)