Feb. 3




ENGLAND:

Kiwi who denied Holocaust teaches at Prince's college


New Zealand historian Joel Hayward - who caused a furore with a 1993
thesis that questioned the validity of Holocaust history - is now a senior
academic at the heart of the British defence Establishment.

Dr Hayward, 44, is now dean of the Royal Air Force College at Cranwell,
where Prince William is undergoing pilot training, the Jewish Chronicle
reported.

The London-based publication, the world's oldest Jewish paper, said Dr
Hayward was appointed last year after two years as head of the air power
studies division created by the RAF and King's College, London.

He has lived and worked in Britain since 2004, first teaching strategy at
the Joint Services Command and Staff College.

Dr Hayward was at the centre of a bitter controversy in 1993 when there
were public calls for Canterbury University to revoke his MA, based on a
thesis entitled "The Fate of Jews in German Hands: An Historical Inquiry
into the Development and Significance of Holocaust Revisionism".

The 360-page document, which won praise from Holocaust-denier David
Irving, alleged that there was never an official Nazi policy to
exterminate Jews in gas chambers and questioned whether six million Jews
were killed.

Irving, recently jailed in Austria over Holocaust-denial charges,
described Dr Hayward as "New Zealand's leading Holocaust historian".

The university ordered an official inquiry into the thesis, and in 2000
described it as "seriously flawed" and said its conclusions about the
Holocaust were "perverse and unjustified".

Dr Hayward apologised and withdrew his conclusions.

King's College vice-principal and war studies professor Sir Lawrence
Freedman said: "I would be the last person to have an active Holocaust
denier on my staff, but this is about a man who, when he was young, wrote
a master's thesis which he has now recanted."

Dr Hayward said: "It was so long ago. Life is a learning process and one
learns from one's mistakes as a young man."

(source: New Zealand Herald)





GERMANY:

Germany introduces Holocaust studies in curricula


Schools across Germany will include a new Holocaust comic book in its
history curricula to teach children about the sufferings endured by
Jews during the Nazi era, Islam Online reported.

The book is titled The Search and will be used alongside worksheets in
history classes at secondary schools in Berlin for six months.

Instating the book in the school curricula is aimed at reducing the rise
in attacks on Jews in Germany and is already available in several European
languages.

The 61-page book illustrates the suffering and humiliation that Jews
endured during their time spent in Nazi Germany.

(source: MENAFN)





CANADA:

New trial ordered for Ahenakew


Canada's Saskatchewan province has ordered a second hate crimes trial
against former native chief David Ahenakew.

Ahenakew, 74, who called Jews a "disease" and justified the Holocaust
during a 2002 newspaper interview, was convicted three years later of
willfully promoting hatred against Jews. Last month, a higher court upheld
his appeal and ordered a new trial.

The Canadian Jewish Congress said in a statement last Friday it would have
preferred that the appeals decision be made in the Supreme Court of Canada
but added that it welcomes a new trial.

(source: JTA)






BRAZIL:

Controversy over Holocaust float at Rio Carnival goes on


Carnival celebrations get fully under way in the Brazilian city of Rio de
Janeiro this weekend, with around 700,000 tourists joining the party, but
the event preparations have been dogged by a damaging controversy.

A float created by Viradouro, one of the best known samba schools, which
portrayed the bodies of naked victims of the Holocaust was banned on
Thursday after the Jewish community of Rio said it found the entry
"inappropriate," and launched a legal action against it.

"The float itself was disagreable but legal. But taken together with
someone dressed up as Hitler close to the 'bodies' of Jews, that made it
illegal," a spokesman for the Jewish community said.

The judge said the float trivialized the Holocaust. He added that the
samba school would be fined 200,000 reals (76,800 euros or 114,000
dollars) if it refused to comply with the order, and 50,000 reals (18,850
euros or 28,000 dollars) if the Hitler disguise was used.

It was not the only controversy to surround the carnival this year.

A few weeks earlier, one of the city's famous samba schools was at the
centre of a damaging controversy over alleged links to drug traffickers.

Each year the schools choose a theme, often a major social or historical
issue, that is illustrated in their floats, costumes and samba songs.

After a judge agreed to ban the float, it was dismantled, as an emotional
designer Paulo Barros looked on. "I think it is very sad," he said, with
tears in his eyes. "We were trying to make a serious work, and people
think we are trying to demean this or make it seem trivial.

On Brazilian tv he insisted the entry was "very respectful and was meant
to represent the Holocaust so that that never happens again. It's a shame
people didn't understand."

The controversy has gone on, with a public debate being sparked over
censorship and perceived bad taste -- and the school deciding to change
the float to now be an ironic tribute to "freedom of expression".

(source: European Jewish Press)




ISRAEL:

Restitution group to give NIS 100m. to needy survivors


The Israeli Organization for the Restitution of Assets for Holocaust
Victims will distribute NIS 100 million to needy survivors, the group said
this week.

The organization, which was established by the Knesset in 2006 to identify
and return the assets of Holocaust victims to their rightful heirs, will
allocate NIS 75m. in unclaimed assets to impoverished survivors, and pay
NIS 25m. to groups that help them.

One-time payments of NIS 6,000 will be paid in April to around 12,000
elderly survivors, said Ishai Amrami, director-general of the restitution
organization.

"On a personal level as a Holocaust survivor, I feel that transferring
this funding to needy survivors is closing a circle and righting a
historic injustice," said Avraham Roet, the head of the organization.

The organization, which has faced criticism for delays and bureaucracy,
made the decision last week following a recent High Court of Justice
petition by survivors demanding that the group use some of its assets to
immediately help elderly survivors instead of waiting to find heirs to the
property.

The group has about NIS 700m. in assets, but more than half consists of
property belonging to Holocaust victims previously held by the state that
cannot be sold for up to seven years to give heirs a chance to claim them,
Amrami said.

Last year, the group published the first list of assets of Holocaust
victims located in Israel.

Assets of Holocaust victims valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars
have been held by various Israeli state institutions for dozens of years,
and have only recently begun to been transferred to heirs.

To date, the restitution organization has transferred NIS 2.5m. to 15
heirs whose assets were previously held by the state.

By law, unclaimed property will be used to help elderly Holocaust
survivors.

About 250,000 Holocaust survivors live in Israel, nearly one-third in
poverty, according to social welfare reports.

(source: Jerusalem Post)




SWITZERLAND:

Holocaust payout close to $1 billion

Nearly $1 billion (SFr1.08 billion) in restitution from Swiss banks had
been disbursed to Holocaust victims by the end of 2007, according to a
United States court.

The fund was established after Jewish groups launched legal action against
Swiss banks in the 1990s, alleging complicity in Nazi-era war crimes.

The country's two largest banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, agreed to a
settlement in 1998 and paid $1.25 billion.

The fund is overseen by a court in New York.

Almost half of the settlement is for the owners of dormant Holocaust-era
accounts and their heirs.

In total, there are 432,750 people eligible to receive restitution.

(source: SwissInfo.com)




SPAIN:

First-Ever Anne Frank Musical Stirs Debate Before Premiere


Frank's diary has been translated into dozens of languages and read the
world over

Those charged with protecting Anne Frank's legacy are divided on a new
Spanish musical that tells her tragic story. The director says it'll reach
young people better than a dry exhibit or book.

At first glance, the story of a young girl who is forced to live in hiding
for two years before finally meeting her death in a Nazi concentration
camp doesn't necessarily seem to lend itself to a musical format.

But it's an idea that came to Spanish director Rafael Alvero ten years ago
when he was working in Amsterdam and had a chance to visit the house where
Anne Frank hid with her family from the Nazis.

"I felt I would one day bring the feelings, which the place and the story
evoke, to the public through something I do with ease, which is produce
music," Alvero told the AFP news agency.

History vs. entertainment

The diary isn't quoted directly in the musical

He said he sees the musical -- entitled "The Diary of Anne Frank: A Song
to Life" -- as more of a tragic opera. It is set to premiere on Feb. 28 in
Madrid's Haagen-Dazs Calderon Theater.

Anne Frank's oldest living relative, her 82-year-old cousin Buddy Elias,
is fiercely opposed to the idea of the Jewish girl's story being presented
as entertainment. He heads the Swiss-based Anne Frank Fonds, which holds
exclusive publishing rights to her diary. However, the organization cannot
take legal action against Alvero because the diary is not directly quoted
in the musical.

Until his death in 1980, Anne Frank's father, Otto Frank, had refused to
allow any artistic adaptations of his daughter's diary.

The Anne Frank Foundation, which runs the museum in Amsterdam, has,
according to Otto Frank's wishes, typically been cautious about backing
artistic productions based on the girl's story.

Serious issues not new to musicals

However, after its initial scepticism, the foundation has thrown its full
support behind Alvero and worked closely with him to ensure historical
accuracy. The director convinced the foundation with "his quality of work
and high standards," Jan Erik Dubbelman, the international director, told
Spiegel Online.

Alvero himself has said that the stage adaption is an effective way to
share Anne Frank's tragic story. And since it's in Spanish, it can serve
as a vehicle to bring a piece of Holocaust history to Latin America.

He also pointed out that sombre topics have been addressed in musical
before, such as in "Les Miserables" and "Jesus Christ Superstar."

Lead actress also lived in hiding

Anne Frank began writing her diary on her 13th birthday in 1942.
Throughout the next two years she described everyday details of life in
hiding, giving later generations a unique personal window into the
Holocaust period.

She and her family were betrayed and arrested in 1944, when they were
deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Anne died of typhus
there in 1945. Since then, her diary has been published in nearly 70
languages.

Comparisons have been made between Anne Frank and the 13-year-old girl who
is to portray her on stage, Isabella Castillo. The latter fled Cuba with
her mother at a young age and the two hid for a time in Belize on their
way to the US. That's where the comparison stops, however.

(source: Deutsche Welle)




USA----TEXAS:

Holocaust museum re-opens in El Paso

At the reopening of the El Paso Holocaust Museum and Study Center,
90-year-old Sara Hauptman became teary-eyed as she recalled her painful
experience during the Holocaust.

"I'm doing OK ... I am alive," said Hauptman, who was taken to several
concentration camps and became a sterilization victim of Nazi doctor Josef
Mengele, also known as the "Nazis' Auschwitz Angel of Death."

Hauptman, her husband, Nathan, and their son moved to El Paso in 1951. The
couple were part of 75 survivors to relocate in El Paso after World War II
only 15 remain.

Last Sunday most of the 15 survivors were at the reopening of the museum
at 715 N. Oregon. The museum was paid for by $2 million worth of
donations, said Leslie Novick, museum director.

The museum was first founded by Henry Kellen, a Holocaust survivor who
resided in El Paso, in 1984. But in October 2001, an electrical
malfunction caused a fire that destroyed artifacts, exhibits and glass
displays.

"Over 80 percent of the artifacts were lost, but we've replaced all of
them," Novick said. "All the money (for the museum), except $150,000, came
from El Paso. That meant a lot because it meant people wanted this museum
to succeed."

Jan Wolfe, a museum educator, said the purpose of the museum is to
remember, honor and educate.

"There are only 12 free-standing Holocaust museums in the country and this
is one of them here in this community," she said. "This is to help people
remember and to learn to honor those who have saved the lives and who
lived through it."

For Hauptman, whose mother and three brothers died during the Holocaust,
her experience is one she tells when she speaks at high schools and
colleges.

"I tell them what I went through in the camps and I show them my number,"
she said as she looked at the blurred tattooed number on her left arm.


Make plans

-What: El Paso Holocaust Museum and Study Center

-Where: 715 N. Oregon

-Cost: Free.

-Hours: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday and
Sunday

-Information: (915) 351-0048 or visit www.elpasoholocaustmuseum.org

(source: Las Cruces Sun-News)


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

USA----ALABAMA:


Nancy Kenaston tells her story because of a high school textbook she saw
in Florida.

It wasn't what was in the book that compelled her to speak of her time in
Germany after World War II, it was what wasn't in it.

What was missing was a meaningful representation of the Nuremberg Nazi war
crimes trials, an event that Kenaston, who worked as a court reporter
during the trials, still remembers vividly, 63 years later.

"If I don't talk about it pretty soon there wont be anybody left that
can," Kenaston, 87, said.

Kenaston shared her experiences the horrors revealed in Nazi testimony,
the devastation of post-War Germany, and the struggles of everyday life in
a military camp to an audience at Temple Emanu-El in Dothan Saturday.

Kenaston ended up in Nuremberg by chance. While working in the British
Army's women's reserve, Kenaston was chosen to accompany the military into
Germany because of her experience as a newspaper reporter and her 280-word
per minute proficiency at shorthand. Kenaston took handwritten notes of
depositions, testimony and court proceedings related to her through an
interpreter.

Kenaston said her first experience in hearing about the terrors committed
by the Nazis nearly drove her to return home. Kenaston's first assignment
in Nuremberg was to record the testimony of a German doctor as he told of
experiments the Nazis conducted on Polish prisoners to determine the
effectiveness of captured samples of a sulfur compound the Allies were
using as an antibiotic. The Nazis intentionally wounded their prisoners,
cutting into their flesh to simulate war wounds, and treated some of the
prisoners with the compound and left some others without treatment.

"I was glad I was so busy writing because I couldn't look at him," she
said.

Most of the Nazi war criminals took the trials for a trivial exercise and
were completely candid about the atrocities they committed and even joked
during the proceedings. They were convinced that they were going to be
executed anyway, and couldn't fathom why the Allies would bother trying
them.

"They couldn't understand why we were wasting all this money on a trial
when they would have drug Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin out and shot
them," she said. ..."They thought we were crazy for doing this."

According to Kenaston, postwar Nuremberg was a ruin. The once beautiful
city had been levelled by Allied bombs.

"There were piles of bodies where buildings had stood before and they were
several stories high, just an unbelievable pile of rubbish," she said.

Not all of Kenaston's story is bleakness and desolation. Interspersed
throughout her tale were humorous asides about life among the military,
many of which involved alcohol.

"I don't want you to think we were drunkards, but there wasn't anything
else to do," she said.

Although it has its light points, Kenastons purpose in telling her tale is
serious. To keep people from forgetting the past, and as a result, making
the same mistakes again.

"Nobody remembers anymore about Nuremberg, and it's said that he who
doesn't study history is compelled to repeat it," she said.

(source: Dothan Eagle)



AUSTRIA:

Austria to reopen case against Nazi concentration camp guard


In a dramatic about-face, Austrian authorities have agreed to reopen the
case of a long-sought suspected Nazi criminal who served as a guard at the
Majdanek concentration camp, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center
said Sunday.

Erna Wallisch, 85, who ranks fourth on the Wiesenthal Center's list of
most-wanted Nazi war criminals, has been living in a small apartment on
the bank of the Danube in Vienna with her name printed on the door.

Austrian authorities had previously refused to prosecute her due to the
statute of limitations, the organization's chief Nazi hunter and Israel
Director Dr. Efraim Zuroff said.

The Austrians agreed to reopen the case after the Polish Institute of
National Remembrance uncovered five new witnesses, following lobbying
efforts by the Wiesenthal Center to have the case reopened, he said.

"This is a typical example of the lack of political will up until now to
prosecute someone who was actively involved in the crimes of the
Holocaust," Zuroff said. "It is high time that the case be taken
seriously, as we are dealing with someone whose hands are full of [the]
blood of innocent victims." About 360,000 people perished at Majdanek,
which is located in a suburb of Lublin, Poland.

Meanwhile, the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on
Sunday, coinciding with the day Auschwitz was liberated.

"Naturally, each of us will be preoccupied with his or her thoughts and
with questions that, to this day, have not received answers that it is
possible to live with," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at the start of
the weekly cabinet meeting.

"Each one of us asks himself what US President George W. Bush asked when
he visited Yad Vashem with us two weeks ago: Why weren't the railways
bombed? Why wasn't existing international strength used to slow the pace
of destruction?" At Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, a group of
120 teens from 62 countries around the world began a three-day youth
conference about the Holocaust.

The participants, who ranged in age from 17 to 19, included Christians,
Jews, Muslims and Buddhists.

On Monday, the European Parliament will hold an official event in Brussels
commemorating the victims of the Holocaust.

The event will include addresses by European Parliament President
Hans-Gert Pottering, European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor and
European Council for Israel chairman Helmut Specht.

In New York on Sunday, Ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman said that for
the third year, the UN was keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust.

"This year will be very emotional, since Zubin Mehta will be conducting a
90-member Israeli orchestra in the very same hall where Zionism was
equated with racism, where Israel has been condemned and vilified. This is
very important and significant and sends a clear message to the world that
the UN and the international community [are] committed to the memory of
the Holocaust. It is especially important [at a time] when a member state
denies the Holocaust. This sends a very clear message to Iran that the
world has not forgotten and it won't happen again."

In Washington, meanwhile, US President George W. Bush issued a statement
saying he had been deeply moved by his recent visit to Yad Vashem during
his stay in Israel.

"Sixty-three years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must continue to
educate ourselves about the lessons of the Holocaust and honor those whose
lives were taken as a result of a totalitarian ideology that embraced a
national policy of violent hatred, bigotry and extermination. It is also
our responsibility to honor the survivors and those courageous souls who
refused to be bystanders, and instead risked their own lives to try to
save the Nazis' intended victims," he said.

"Remembering the victims, heroes and lessons of the Holocaust remains
important today. We must continue to condemn the resurgence of
anti-Semitism, that same virulent intolerance that led to the Holocaust,
and we must combat bigotry and hatred in all forms, in America and
abroad."

(sourcve: Jerusalem Post)