Sept. 24



SERBIA:

Serbs probe suspected Nazi war criminal -- Case lodged against 94-year-old
Hungarian citizen Sandor Kepiro

Accused of taking part in the killings of at least 2,000 Jews and Serbs

Worst killings took place in 1942 when hundreds were murdered in city of


Serbia's war crimes prosecutors formally launched proceedings Wednesday
against a World War II veteran accused of participating in mass killings
of Jews and Serbs during the Nazi occupation.

Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal center has urged Serbia
to seek the extradition of Sandor Kepiro.

Prosecutors said they lodged a request for an investigation against
Hungarian citizen Sandor Kepiro with the Belgrade war crimes court. The
move is the first step toward an indictment and a trial.

Prosecutors also urged the court to seek Kepiro's extradition to Serbia.

The prosecutors' statement said Kepiro, now 94, is suspected of acts of
genocide during World War II. It says that he "in full conscience and of
free will" took part in the killings of at least 2,000 Jews and Serbs.

The worst killings took place during the so-called Great Raid of 1942,
when about 800 Jews and 400 Serbs were rounded up, shot and drowned in the
freezing Danube river in the northern city of Novi Sad, the statement
said.

The civilians were stripped naked and all their personal belongings were
taken away, the statement added.

Last week, leading Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff, head of the Israeli branch
of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, visited Serbia and urged the authorities
to seek the extradition of Kepiro and two other WWII suspects.

War crimes prosecutors acknowledged in the statement that the initial
probe against Kepiro was carried out with help from the Simon Wiesenthal
Center.

Kepiro had emigrated to Argentina after the war but returned to Hungary in
1996. Hungarian authorities have launched an investigation against Kepiro
upon requests from the Wiesenthal center, but he was never punished for
his role in the killings in Serbia.

(source: Associated Press)






USA:

Dear Friends,

I wanted to forward the following statement I made today in support of the
passage of House Concurrent Resolution 371, a bi-partisan resolution I
introduced calling on Central and Eastern European governments to enact
property restitution legislation that would enable Holocaust survivors and
other individuals to file claims on property once owned by themselves or
their ancestors. The resolution also highlights the positive steps taken
by some Central and Eastern European governments to enact property
restitution laws but also expresses deep concerns regarding Poland and
Lithuanias failure sixty years after the end of World War II to enact fair
property restitution or compensation legislation. You will be pleased to
know that this resolution passed unanimously in the House of
Representatives this afternoon.

--

HON. ROBERT WEXLER OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2008

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of House Concurrent Resolution
371, which supports the fair, comprehensive and immediate restitution of
property illegally confiscated during the last century by the Nazis,
Nazi-allied governments and Communist regimes.

As many of you know, Survivors are in the waning years of their lives, and
it is incumbent on Congress and the Administration to clearly articulate
our unequivocal support, as we have done in previous Congresses, for just
and immediate property restitution or compensation.

While there are some nations in Europe that have enacted legislation for
the restitution of or compensation for private and communal property,
there remain several that have not passed or implemented legislation.

Congress and the Administration must continue to work with and encourage
our European allies to rectify historical wrongs and bring a measure of
closure for Holocaust Survivors and those individuals who lived under the
deadly yoke of Communism.

Despite repeated promises by some governments, Holocaust survivors and
heirs have struggled and waited for over six decades to recover their
property or receive adequate compensation.

The resolution before us today simply calls on Central and European
countries, more specifically Poland and Lithuania, to enact fair,
comprehensive and just legislation to allow for restitution of properties
that were illegally taken away from citizens and communities during the
last century.

With respect to Poland, I want to commend Polish Prime Minister Tusk for
his public commitment to introduce property restitution legislation. As
the Polish government moves the legislative process forward, it is
essential that a claims process be created that is un-bureaucratic,
simple, transparent and easy for claimants to use. I urge the Bush
Administration to continue to directly engage the Polish government over
the coming months and to express their strong support for a claims process
that is fair and just for Survivors and other claimants.

I urge all of my colleagues to join me in support of this resolution and
in support of fair and just property restitution, which is long overdue.

With warm regards,
Congressman Robert Wexler


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


Bridgeport law firm comes to the aid of Holocaust survivors


Hungarian-born Sari Baron lives in Bridgeport. But she spent much of her
teen years at Auschwitz, where she was forced to make bombs.

Unable to walk after a bomb fell on her foot, she was left behind during
the liberation.

Now, more than 60 years later, Baron is finally set to receive some sort
of compensation for her work and for all she lost. She is among 25
southern Connecticut residents who performed work in European ghettos and
camps during the Holocaust who are taking advantage of the long-awaited
opportunity to claim reparations from their former homelands.

And they are doing so with the help of a leading Connecticut law firm.

The elderly survivors received free legal aid to file their applications
from 14 attorneys from the law firm of Cohen and Wolf, P.C., arranged by
the Jewish Family Services of Bridgeport and Aetna Life, at a special
gathering held on Sunday, Sept. 14 at the firms Bridgeport office.

The lawyers helped the survivors navigate a complicated and, at times,
personally painful application that covers everything from where the
applicants lived during their time of persecution to providing a synopsis
of the work they performed while living in a German controlled ghetto.
Successful applicants can expect to receive about $3000 in compensation
from Germany. The reparations are being made available through the Ghetto
Labor Act, which was passed in 2002 to compensate "voluntary laborers,"
most of them Jewish, who toiled in German-controlled ghettos both before
and during World War II. Virtually all the applicants say they are not
doing this for the money itself, but rather for a sense of accountability
by Germany for all the Nazis took from their lives.

(source: Jewish Ledger)




ISRAEL:

Christian charity to give $11 million to needy Holocaust survivors


A Christian charity is donating $11 million to 28,000 destitute Holocaust
survivors in Israel and around the world ahead of the upcoming Jewish New
Year holiday, the organization announced Tuesday.

The Chicago-based International Fellowship of Christians and Jews said it
will give 11,000 Holocaust survivors in Israel a NIS 1,800 holiday gift
each, while 17,000 survivors residing abroad will receive NIS 1,050 each.

250,000 Holocaust survivors are living in Israel.

About one-third of them - primarily new immigrants from the former Soivet
Union - live in poverty, recent Israeli welfare reports have found,
prompting a recent landmark government accord to increase their state
stipends.

"The reports of the dire circumstances Holocaust survivors find themselves
in have helped us reach the decision that we must lend a hand and help
those who survived the most difficult period in human history," said Rabbi
Yechiel Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians
and Jews.

(source: Jerusalem Post)


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


Jerusalem concert features violins saved from Nazis


Sixteen violins used by Jewish Holocaust victims -- including an
instrument whose case was used to smuggle explosives that blew up a Nazi
base -- will be played Wednesday in a concert in Jerusalem.

"Each violin has its own story," said Amnon Weinstein, 69, who together
with his son has spent over a decade restoring the violins collected from
across Europe.

Weinstein, a violin maker, said he received the instruments in various
states of disrepair, many of them decorated with stars of David, a
testimony to their former Jewish owners.

"By restoring their violins, their legacy is born again," said Weinstein,
who lost most of his family in the Holocaust.

They will be played together for the first time Wednesday in a concert
entitled "Violins of Hope" by members of Israel's Raanana Symphonette and
the Philharmonia Istanbul Orchestra. World-renowned Israeli virtuoso
Shlomo Mintz will play one.

One of the featured instruments, called Motele's Violin, belonged to a
12-year-old Jewish boy who played it for Nazi officers from Hitler's SS in
Belarus in 1944.

Motele, with his violin, had joined other anti-Nazi partisans in a village
near the border with Ukraine and managed to infiltrate a Nazi building
there.

"The German officers heard him play in the streets one day and later
brought him to perform every night in their compound in town," said Sefi
Hanegbi, whose father played alongside Motele in a partisan camp in a
forest during World War Two.

After each performance, Motele hid his violin in the building and walked
out with an empty case. He would return with the violin case full of
explosives, stuffing them into cracks in the walls, and eventually setting
them off, Hanegbi said.

Motele was later killed in a German ambush, and Hanegbi's family brought
his violin to Israel where it sat in a closet for decades. Weinstein first
restored it about eight years ago.

The oldest violin in the collection, Weinstein said, had been donated to
the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra by revered 19th-century Norwegian
violinist Ole Bull.

Ernst Glaser, a Jewish musician, was set to perform with that violin in
the German-occupied Norwegian city of Bergen in 1941, but the concert was
interrupted when local pro-Nazi youth began rioting and threatened to
lynch Glaser for "befouling" the famed instrument.

Only when the conductor instructed the orchestra to play the Norwegian
national anthem, prompting the rioting youth to stand at attention, was
Glaser able to escape, Weinstein said.

"The violin was our savior," said Helen Livnat, 68, who donated the
instrument her father used to earn food for her starving family in a
ghetto in Ukraine in the early 1940s.

"It's an honor knowing the violins that were once played in a time of
hunger and suffering will be heard again with pride in the country that we
love," she said.

(source: Reuters)





GERMANY:

91-year-old Nazi tried for robbing store in protest of war crimes trial


A 91-year-old convicted German war criminal held up a Belgian pharmacy
shop with a toy gun, a prosecutor told a German court Wednesday.

The defendant had been convicted in 1968 of murdering six Jews in Gorlice,
Poland during World War II and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He
served 22 years and was then freed on grounds of age.

He has now been indicted in Recklinghausen, Germany for extortion for the
purpose of robbery in Eupen, Belgium.

The court heard how he took a train from Recklinghausen to Eupen in March
2007, walked into a pharmacy and pointed the lifelike toy gun at the
pharmacist, 49, saying, "Give me all your money. This is no joke."

But when a woman customer walked in, he departed with no booty.

He confirmed his war crimes Wednesday, saying, "They were vile acts, and I
did do them." Some of the murders occurred in the street, with the German
shooting people in the head at point-blank range.

However he contended that his trial in Nuremberg for the war crimes had
been unfair because no weight was given to orders from above.

He said the Belgium robbery had been an act of protest to attract public
attention to his point of view.

"I didn't care about the money," he asserted.

(source: DPA)


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


German denies Nazi war crimes


Scheungraber is accused of ordering the killing of 14 civilians in 1944
[AFP]

A 90-year-old German has pleaded not guilty to commiting war crimes under
the Nazis in what will be one of the last trials of its kind.

Josef Scheungraber, the former commander of a German mountain infantry
battalion, was accused in a German court of ordering the killing of 14
civilians in the Tuscan village of Falzano on June 26, 1944.

Documents found in the 1990s pointed to Scheungraber's alleged involvement
in the killings and he was sentenced in absentia in September 2006 to life
imprisonment by an Italian military tribunal in La Spezia.

The massacre was allegedly in retaliation for an attack by Italian
partisans that left two German soldiers dead.

More than six decades on, the trial in the southern city of Munich marks
the end of a prolonged legal odyssey that has provoked outrage among Nazi
victims' groups.

'Mass murderer'

The Munich daily newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung said on Monday that
Scheungraber's prosecution in Germany "is possibly... the last major trial
for crimes committed under the Nazis".

A handful of protesters gathered outside the courtroom holding a placard
reading: "Mass murderer here! Give the murdered a name."

The defendant, dressed in a traditional Bavarian suit, appeared to be in
good health and alert as he walked with a cane to his seat in the
courtroom.

Scheungraber faces 14 counts of murder and one of attempted murder. He
followed the proceedings with headphones due to his poor hearing.

The accused "completely and thoroughly denies the accusations in the
charge sheet," said a statement read in court by Christian Stuenkel, one
of his two lawyers.

At the start of proceedings, the prosecution's opening arguments described
an account of the day of June 26, 1944.

The German troops are alleged to have first shot dead a 74-year-old woman
and three men in the street before placing 11 others into the ground floor
of a farmhouse which they then blew up.

Gino Massetti, a 15-year-old boy, survived seriously injured, and
testified during the Italian trial.

Massetti, now 79, has told the German press he has no desire to exact
vengeance.

"I just want to forget those horrible moments," he said.

Free man

Scheungraber has lived for decades as a free man in Ottobrunn outside
Munich, where he has served on the town council and run a furniture shop.

He regularly attended marches with fellow wartime veterans and recently
received an award for municipal service.

A lawyer for Italian relatives of the victims, who are co-plaintiffs in
the trial, said her clients wanted Scheungraber to finally take
responsibility for the killings.

"They have waited 64 years for someone to atone for their loved ones'
deaths," she told the court.

The defendant said in his statement that he had not given an order for the
killings and was not at the scene of the crime.

His defence team said prosecutors had no witness who could testify to
Scheungraber's involvement.

Scheungraber was not jailed pending his trial as prosecutors said there
was little risk he would flee the country.

Due to his age, he will only be asked to sit in court for a few hours at a
time.

The military tribunal at La Spezia has tried several former Nazis for
crimes committed in Italy during World War II but none of the defendants
have been brought to justice.

Scheungraber's trial will resume September 29.

(source: Al Jazeera)


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


Jewish Museum in Berlin Traces Art Stolen by Nazis


Jewish-owned art seized by the Nazis from 1933 onwards is featured at a
new exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Meanwhile, Germany's
culture minister has called for the "fair" return of Jewish art.

Opening on Friday, Sept. 19, the exhibition consists of 15 artworks along
with documents describing their seizure or forced sale, later changes in
ownership and ultimate restitution.

Valuable porcelain and book collections from Dresden's intellectual von
Klemperer family are included in the show. The Gestapo confiscated the
family's collection in 1938, placing it in Dresden's municipal art
collection and the Saxony state library.

Before the Second World War, Nazi Germany made it illegal for Jews to own
art treasures, forcing them to sell them. Later during the Holocaust,
Jewish property throughout eastern Europe was seized by Nazi officials.

Exhibition organizers said Thursday that many of the confiscated paintings
and other treasures had still not been recovered by the lawful heirs of
the original owners.

Taking responsibility for stolen art

Michael Blumenthal, director of the museum, charged that German art
collectors, dealers and museums had all profited by being able to purchase
art at reduced prices.

He praised Germany's current efforts to give back the art, but said he was
disappointed that heirs had no absolute legal right to reclaim the
artworks.

At a ceremony on Thursday evening, Minister of Culture Bernd Neumann
called for "fair and just" solutions in returning the work stolen by Nazi
officials.

"More than 60 years after the war's end, Germany is unrestrained in its
moral responsibility for the restitution of art looted by the Nazis," he
said.

(source: Deutsche Welle)