June 14


USA:

Losing Count

THE Holocaust has always been marked by numbers. There was the numbering
of arms in death camps and the staggering death toll where the words six
million became both a body count and a synonym for an unspeakable crime.
After the Holocaust, Germany performed the necessary long division in
paying token reparations to survivors. More recently, Swiss banks and
European insurance companies have concealed bank account and policy
numbers belonging to dead Jews.

Only with the Holocaust have dehumanization and death been as much a moral
mystery as a tragic game of arithmetic. And the numbers continue, although
now largely in reverse.

After 60 years, Holocaust survivors are inching toward extinction.
According to Ira Sheskin, director of the Jewish Demography Project at the
University of Miami, fewer than 900,000 remain, residing primarily in the
United States, Israel and the former Soviet Union. Most are in their 80s
and 90s. Unless immediate measures are taken, many of those who survived
the Nazi evil will soon die without a proper measure of dignity.

According to Dr. Sheskins data, more than 87,000 American Holocaust
survivors roughly half the American total qualify as poor, meaning they
have annual incomes below $15,000. The United Jewish Communities, the
umbrella organization of the American Jewish Federations, determined that
25 percent of the American survivors live at or below the official federal
poverty line. (The poverty figure in New York City is even higher.) Many
are without sufficient food, shelter, heat, health care, medicine,
dentures, eyeglasses, even hearing aids.

Conditions worldwide are similar. Its a sad twist that the teenagers who
mastered the art of survival so long ago have been forced, in their old
age, to call on their survival instincts once again.

It doesnt have to be this way. Although the various global financial
settlements represent only a small fraction of the Jewish property that
was plundered during the Holocaust, they still amount to billions of
dollars. Which raises questions: Why arent the funds being used to care
for Holocaust survivors in whose name and for whose benefit these
restitution initiatives were undertaken? Why werent survivors permitted to
speak for themselves in the very negotiations that led to the recovery and
distribution of their stolen assets?

Take the Swiss bank settlement, for instance. A federal judge in Brooklyn
distributed 75 percent of the looted assets to survivors in the former
Soviet Union, leaving only 4 percent for destitute survivors in the United
States, even though roughly 20 percent of the worlds Holocaust survivors
live in America. Assets that had been stolen by the Swiss were once again
diverted, this time by the charitable inclinations of a judge who,
ignoring the voices of survivors, severed the connection between the
victims of the theft and the proceeds of the recovery.

On the matter of insurance, a federal judge in Manhattan recently approved
a settlement in which fewer than 5 percent of the life insurance policies
that had been sold to Jews would be restituted, allowing the Italian
insurer, Generali, to escape with more than $2 billion in unjust
enrichment. By not requiring Generali to disclose the names of
policyholders, the settlement amounts to a cover-up. Tens of thousands of
Holocaust survivors are being kept from the truth and will likely be
foreclosed from bringing individual claims against the corporation that
defrauded them.

The Jewish Claims Conference, an organization established in the 1950s to
recover and distribute Jewish property, has assets under its care
estimated at $1.3 billion to $3 billion, which includes a vast inventory
of cash, real estate and artwork. Despite the urgency of human suffering,
the conference insists that it cannot respond to the unmet needs of
Holocaust survivors.

Meanwhile, it spent about $32 million last year on programs dedicated to
research, documentation and education. Some of those millions went to a
program that paid $700,000 to a consultant a friend of the organizations
president who, in an interview with The Jewish Week, couldnt recall what
he had been asked to consult on. While the conference supports many worthy
projects, it is controlled not by survivors but by surrogates, and
operates with limited oversight and financial accountability.

The Holocaust, so large an atrocity, has a way of overshadowing
everything, including its survivors. In focusing on the past in order to
prevent history from repeating itself, we have forgotten those who are the
direct casualties of this crime. Amid all the Holocaust hoopla the
survivors have become secondary.

This neglect is widespread. Even the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum has regarded itself as primarily a home for historians and a
monument to history, but not as an institution that places survivors
first. Yet without their anguished presence the museum would not exist.

One demonstration of its inattentiveness involves the imminent transfer to
the museum of electronic copies of Germanys Bad Arolsen archives, which
hold 50 million documents pertaining to the fate of more than 17.5 million
victims. Unfortunately, the museum has failed to commit to making the
archives accessible on the Internet so that they can be accessed as easily
by Holocaust survivors as by visiting scholars.

So what can be done to honor those who survived but who seem to have been
forgotten?

First, all traceable assets held by the claims conference and the
negotiated settlements with Swiss bankers and European insurance companies
must be returned to their owners, with the remainder used for survivor
needs.

Second, Congress should pass the proposed Holocaust Insurance
Accountability bill, which would require insurers to publish the names of
policyholders and allow survivors to resolve claims on fair and truthful
terms.

Third, all Holocaust documentation, like the Bad Arolsen archives and the
recently disclosed Austrian war records, must be made readily accessible.
Survivors and their families must have easy access so family histories can
be recovered and property claims verified. These archives cannot be just
the province of scholars.

Finally, if both the World Jewish Congress and the claims conference fail
to achieve transparency in their operations, then Congress or law
enforcement should publicly account for the funds that have been
controlled by institutions that survivors never elected and did not
authorize.

Surviving the Holocaust, which was against all odds, is still a numbers
game. The percentages are always against the survivors. Nearly murdered,
shamefully defrauded and with the clock ticking, they wait for justice,
accountability and, most of all, respect.

(source: Op-Ed; Thane Rosenbaum, a professor of law at Fordham, is the
author of The Myth of Moral Justice; New York Times)






BULGARIA----film

Beyond Hitler's Grasp A film by Nitzan Aviram


Based on the book "Beyond Hitler's Grasp" by Michael Bar-Zohar, this
documentary is a Holocaust film with a happy ending. It tells the story of
Bulgaria a small and somehow forgotten European country which managed to
protect its Jewish minority from annihilation.

THE ONLY COUNTRY IN EUROPE THAT SAID: NO!

The full-length documentary based on "Beyond Hitler's Grasp" was screened
at a world premiere at the United Nations in New York. The Bulgarian
premiere took place in the Parliament in Sofia, in the presence of the
President, the House Speaker, Cabinet ministers, Church notables and
Parliament members.

The film also premiered in Israel, with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres as
guest of honor, the Mayor of Tel-Aviv, members of the Knesset, scholars
and intellectuals, and at the United Nations Geneva Headquarters.

Beyond Hitler's Grasp, a 67 minute documentary film, is the fruit of
cooperation between the world-known writer and historian Dr. Michael
Bar-Zohar and the late Israeli film maker Nitzan Aviram. The film, a
Shindlers List type story, is based on the book by Bar-Zohar, which
describes the dramatic rescue of Bulgarian Jewry during World War II.

It describes how for more than three years, the Bulgarian people succeeded
to evade Nazi demands regarding the Bulgarian Jews; how the citizens of
the small town Kyustendil send their representatives to Parliament and
stopped the plan to deport Jews to death camps, how the Bulgarian Church
managed to stand up to a brutally inhumane and powerful regime. How simple
farmers, intellectuals, clergymen, merchants, laborers and union leaders
forced their King to protect the Jewish community.

(source: Magal Books)





AUSTRIA:

Ex-U.N. chief with dark past dies

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim dies at age 88----Waldheim
also served as Austrian president despite scandal over Nazi past U.S.
banned Waldheim after revelations linking him to wartime atrocities


Kurt Waldheim, whose legacy as U.N. secretary-general was overshadowed by
revelations that he belonged to a German army unit that committed
atrocities in the Balkans in World War II, died Thursday. He was 88.

Waldheim, who was hospitalized in Vienna last month with an infection,
died at home of heart failure, with his family at his bedside, state
broadcaster ORF reported.

Austrian President Heinz Fischer issued a statement expressing his
"deepest condolences," and officials lowered the flag outside his office
to half-staff.

"We have lost a great Austrian," Vice Chancellor Wilhelm Molterer said.

Waldheim, who served as U.N. chief from 1972-81, was first confronted with
purported evidence of his personal implication in wartime atrocities when
he ran for the Austrian presidency in 1986. He consistently denied
wrongdoing, defending himself against disclosures made by his main
accuser, the World Jewish Congress, and by foreign media.

But his initial denial of serving in the German army unit -- and then
assertions that he and fellow Austrians were only doing their duty -- led
to international censure and a decision by Washington to place him on a
"watch list" of persons prohibited from visiting the United States. That
ban was never lifted.

Waldheim's ascendancy to the presidency led to a bruising controversy at
home, and it damaged Austria's reputation abroad. During Waldheim's tenure
from 1986-92, Austria was largely shunned by foreign leaders, and he never
honored his pledge to be a strong president.

In Austria, Waldheim's backers saw him as an innocent victim of a smear
campaign launched from abroad but triggered at home. But his opponents
kept clamoring for his resignation because of the huge loss of prestige
for the country caused by his election.

In February 1988, a government-appointed international commission of six
historians investigating his wartime service said it found no proof that
Waldheim himself committed war crimes. But it also made clear that his
record was far from unblemished.

The panel declared that Waldheim was in "direct proximity to criminal
actions."

Its report said that Waldheim knew about German army atrocities in the
Balkans and never undertook any action to prevent or oppose them. They
admitted later they dropped a reference to Waldheim's "moral guilt" for
fear of overstepping their mandate with a "judgmental" statement.

In April 1987, the Justice Department put Waldheim on a "watch list" of
undesirable aliens that barred him from entering the United States -- an
embarrassment no other Austrian public figure had ever experienced.

In his official biographies, Waldheim initially said he had been wounded
at the Russian front in 1941 and returned to Austria to continue his
studies.

Only under pressure did Waldheim gradually revise his official resume to
say that he was transferred to the Balkans in April 1942; went to Arsakli,
Greece, as an interpreter that summer; and, in April 1943, became an
assistant adjutant with Army Group E, Department I-C. Its commander, Gen.
Alexander Loehr, was later executed in Yugoslavia for war crimes.

The World Jewish Congress published documents showing that Waldheim's unit
killed partisans and civilians. Some of the papers bore Waldheim's
signature or initial. But he kept insisting that his job was merely to
verify their authenticity, not to act on the information or give orders.

As pressure mounted from all sides, Yugoslav newspapers published a
facsimile of a 1947 document showing Waldheim's name on a list of German
officers who took part in the infamous Mount Kozara operation. According
to some Yugoslav versions, 68,000 people -- including 23,000 children --
died in the offensive.

Waldheim originally declared he had been behind the lines near Kozara.
Later, he said he had confused the geography.

Former Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel called Waldheim "a great fighter for
peace and freedom in the world," but said he endured bitter personal
experiences that "unjustifiably moved him into the proximity of war
criminals."

Schuessel said he hoped Waldheim's critics would refrain from disparaging
him "at least in this hour."

Born December 21, 1918, in St. Andrae, a small town northwest of Vienna,
Waldheim studied law at Vienna University and attended the Consular
Academy, the nation's top diplomatic school. After the war, he entered the
diplomatic service. For three years, he worked in the office of Foreign
Minister Karl Gruber. In 1948, he was named first secretary of the
Austrian Embassy in France.

From 1951 to 1955, he worked in the Foreign Ministry, and he spent the
next two years as Austria's observer to the United Nations. He was
ambassador to Canada from 1958 to 1960 and then returned to the Foreign
Ministry.

From 1964 to 1968, he was Austria's representative to the United Nations,
then became foreign minister, a post he held for the next two years. After
starting another term as U.N. representative, he ran for the presidency of
Austria for the first time in 1971 and lost to Socialist Franz Jonas, the
popular mayor of Vienna.

He served two five-year terms as secretary-general of the United Nations,
but China vetoed his attempt at a third term. Although he traveled to many
crisis areas, including the Middle East, Waldheim never gained the
reputation of peacemaker enjoyed by other U.N. chiefs.

The current secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, learned "with sadness" of
Waldheim's death, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said at U.N.
headquarters in New York.

"The secretary-general extends his condolences to Mr. Waldheim's family,
as well as to the Austrian government and people," she said.

Waldheim is survived by his wife, Elisabeth, whom he married in 1944, and
their three children.