March 29


ENGLAND:

Britain eyes return of art stolen by Nazis


Holocaust survivors and their families should be given back works of art
stolen by the Nazis during World War II, a British lawmaker proposes.

Andrew Dismore, a member of the British Parliament, has proposed the
Holocaust Restitution Bill that would allow paintings and other artistic
works stolen by the German Nazis to be returned to their rightful owners,
The Daily Telegraph reported Saturday.

The proposed bill would focus on those works of art in national
collections in Britain.

"I hope it will close another chapter from the Holocaust," Dismore said.
"It means recognizing a right that has been denied for decades.

"I suspect many people would be prepared to allow their artwork to stay in
public collections but it's their right to decide what happens to it."

The Telegraph said among the items that could possibly be affected under
the proposal is the 1525 painting "Cupid Complaining to Venus." The work
by Lucas Cranach was once owned by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, but recently
has called the National Gallery its home.

(source: United Press International)






USA:

US group performs Nazi death camp orchestra music


A group of musicians is performing the music of a special orchestra from
the Holocaust: death camp prisoners - all women - who survived by playing
for the Nazis.

They were led by Gustav Mahler's niece, Alma Rose.

Now, the Ars Choralis orchestra and chorus is telling their story at
concerts entitled "Music in Desperate Times: Remembering The Women's
Orchestra of Birkenau."

It was part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland.

On Saturday, Ars Choralis will play at Manhattan's Cathedral Church of St.
John the Divine. Its Episcopal bishop spoke against the persecution of
Jews in Europe already in 1933.

The group will perform in April in Berlin and at the site of a nearby
camp.

____

On the Net: http://www.arschoralis.org

(source: Associated Press)




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


Holocaust survivors meet soldiers who saved them


During the Holocaust thousands of Jewish people on a train in Germany
were rescued from the Nazis. Now some of the survivors are meeting face
to face with the American soldiers who saved them.

Two thousand five hundred Jewish people were on a train to be exterminated
in a German concentration camp. But before it happened the German army
abandoned them.

"We intercepted this train and I played a very small part in it to gather
these people together, getting them onto vehicles," World War II veteran
Frank Towers said.

American soldiers brought the Jews to safety, and then continued fighting
in the war, while the American Government set the prisoners free. Now
those soldiers from the 30th Infantry Division are meeting face to face
with the Jews they saved.

"They're very grateful naturally, and they see April 18, 1945 the date of
the liberation as the date they were reborn," Matthew Rozell said.

Matthew Rozell is a high school teacher from New York and says these
liberators and former prisoners found each other through a holocaust
project by his students.

"Some of the survivors here today actually found themselves in those
photographs taken 64 years ago and they never knew they existed until my
students and I put them on our high school website," Rozell said.

Towers remembers the day he and fellow troops saw the prisoners. He says
they were nearly starving, infested with lice, and covered in feces from
being trapped on the train for five days.

"It was hard to believe that they were in the condition that they were,
that any human race could do this to any human race it was almost
unbelievable," Towers said.

Many of the Jewish refugees on the train had no homes to return to, and
they immigrated to countries including the US, Canada. and England.

(source: WCSC)




GREECE:

Greek neo-Nazi acquitted of Holocaust denial


An Athens appeals court acquitted a well-known Greek neo-Nazi of
Holocaust denial.

The five-member court on Friday found Kostas Plevris not guilty of
"incitement to racial hatred and violence against the Jews" over his
1,400-page book "Jews -- The Whole Truth," which denies the Holocaust and
is blatantly anti-Semitic.

Plevris had been convicted in December 2007 and sentenced to 14 months in
prison, as well as three years probation.

The Greek Jewish umbrella organization, the Central Board of Jewish
Communities in Greece, in a news release said the court's decision
"saddens, perplexes and causes concern among citizens of a modern
democratic society as a self-confessed promoter of Nazism and racism
remains unpunished though he not only distorts proven historical evidence,
but even worse, uses his pen to incite hatred and provoke discrimination
and violence against citizens of Greece and Europe."

In the book, Plevris calls Jews "sub-human" and writes, "I constantly
blame the German Nazis for not ridding our Europe of Jewish Zionism when
it was in their power to do so." He also urges his readers to "Free
yourselves from Jewish propaganda that deceives you with falsehoods about
concentration camps, gas chambers, 'ovens' and other fairy tales about the
pseudo-holocaust."

(source: JTA)






BRAZIL:

Brazilian bishop twists the Shoah


A Catholic archbishop in Brazil minimized the Holocaust and declared that
Jews dominate the world media.

Dadeus Grings, the archbishop of Porto Alegre, declared that "more
Catholics than Jews have died in the Holocaust, but this is not usually
told because Jews own the world's propaganda."

In a six-page interview that appeared Friday in the Brazilian trade
magazine Press & Advertising, Grings went on to say, "How many millions of
Catholics were victims of the Holocaust? Twenty-two million? The Jews say
they were the major victims but the major victims were the Gypsies, who
were exterminated. And they don't mention this."

Porto Alegre is home to Brazil's third largest Jewish community, with some
12,000 Jews.

"It's not the first time Mr. Grings refers to the Holocaust in a twisted
way," said Henry Chmelnitsky, president of the Rio Grande do Sul Jewish
Federation. "Fewer Jews died in World War II because there were and there
still are fewer Jews in the world. Proportionally, the extermination
minimized by the archbishop meant the slaughter of most of a people that
was already small. By reproducing stereotypes created by the Nazis, Grings
positions himself on the wrong side of history."

Grings is the second Catholic bishop in recent months to publicly minimize
the Holocaust.

Richard Williams, who headed a seminary in Argentina, caused a furor over
his public denial that gas chambers were used to murder Jews during World
War II and over claims that no more than 300,000 Jews were killed by the
Nazis. His rehabilitation by Pope Benedict XVI in January after decades of
exclusion over his membership in an ultra-right traditionalist sect
sparked a rift in Catholic-Jewish ties.

(source: JTA)






FRANCE:

Jean-Marie Le Pen repeats Holocaust comments in European Parliament

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French far-Right leader, faced calls for his
prosecution after he repeated a claim that Nazi death camps were a "detail
of Second World War history".


MEPs have moved to prevent the 80-year-old French National Front leader
from presiding over the opening of the first session of the new European
Parliament on July 14 as the doyen of the house.

Officials have also indicated that he could face disciplinary action for
"bringing the parliament into disrepute" by using his immunity as an MEP
to avoid criminal prosecution for Holocaust denial.

Mr Le Pen on Wednesday caused a storm in the parliament by defiantly
hitting back at "inflammatory accusations" that he was a convicted
Holocaust denier who should be denied his right next year to become
"father" of the Parliament as the oldest sitting MEP. Mr Le Pen will
celebrate his 81st birthday following European elections in June, making
him the parliament's oldest member.

"I just said that the gas chambers were a detail of Second World War
history, which is clear," he told a sitting of the EU assembly.

Martin Schulz, a German Social Democrat and leader of the parliament's
Socialists, led the calls for Le Pen to be stripped of the privilege.

"As a German, I feel obliged to fight against all those who consider Nazi
crimes to be a 'detail of history'," he said.

But despite fines and convictions for making identical remarks twice in
the past, the French politician cannot be prosecuted for his comments on
Wednesday because he is protected by parliamentary immunity.

"He is exploiting immunity for his own squalid and evil ends. Disciplinary
action and the rule change preventing him from becoming father of the
house are certain now," said an official.

Mr Le Pen was convicted by a Munich court in 1999 for "minimising the
Holocaust" after telling a German far-right meeting that Nazi
concentration camps and the gas chambers are "what one calls a detail".

On that occasion, the EU assembly lifted his immunity because the comments
had been outside the parliament chamber.

Mr Le Pen also received a large fine of 1.2 million francs in France for
making identical claims in 1987.

He has had a string of other convictions for racism or inciting racial
hatred and was banned from being an MEP in 2003 following a physical
attack on a French Socialist MEP.

(source: The Telegraph)

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


New Web site aims to work against Holocaust denial


In Paris, a new Web site aimed at curbing Holocaust denial will include a
history of Muslim-Jewish relations in English, French, Arabic and Farsi,
the project's organizers said before the project's launch on Friday by
prominent figures from Europe and the Muslim world.

The initiative, called Project Aladdin, hinges on the Internet site, which
is also to carry a history of the Holocaust and offer online Arabic and
Farsi translations of books including "Anne Frank's Diary," the organizers
said.

Among those unveiling the project include Senegalese President Abdoulaye
Wade, former French President Jacques Chirac and Abdurrahman Wahid, former
president of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Auschwitz survivor Simone Veil, one of France's most influential woman
politicians, will also speak at the event.

Concerns about Holocaust denial captured headlines earlier this year when
the Vatican lifted the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop.
Holocaust-denying comments by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have
also sparked worldwide outrage in recent years.

Former US President Bill Clinton hailed Project Aladdin, which he said in
a letter "has the potential to play a vital role in countering denial with
facts and putting a human face on something that otherwise might seem too
terrible to believe."

The initiative, which was to be launched at UNESCO's Paris headquarters,
is partially sponsored by France's Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah.

Organizers said that more than 200 people, many prominent public figures
from across the Muslim world, have joined the project's so-called
"conscience committee." Jordan's Prince El Hassan Ben Talal and former
German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder are among the project's sponsors,
organizers said in a statement ahead of the launch.

(source: GMA News)







March 24



GERMANY:

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS----Germany Agrees to Raise Compensation for Nazi
Victims


Long negotiations with the US-based Claims Conference have led to 60
million more in compensation payments to Holocaust survivors -- mainly
aimed at poor and elderly victims from Eastern Europe.

Eastern European victims of the Holocaust will receive more money from the
German government according to a deal reached on Thursday with the New
York-based Claims Conference. Some survivors will see their monthly
stipends rise, while others who have failed to win compensation from the
so-called Hardship Fund will be allowed to apply again.

More help is on the way for some Holocaust survivors in Eastern Europe.
The re-application agreement will bring about 33 million ($42 million) in
additional money over the next decade to the Hardship Fund, intended for
Eastern Bloc victims of Nazism. It could affect as many as 13,000
survivors of German concentration camps now living in 36 nations,
including Israel, the US, Germany, Australia and Canada. They can apply
for one-time payments of about 2,500 each.

Until now, victims who had already applied for restitution from the
Hardship Fund, but whose applications were rejected, could not file a
second time. That rule has now been reversed.

The German government also agreed to pay more in benefits to elderly Jews
in Eastern Europe. As of January 2010 the monthly stipend for elderly
survivors will go up to 240. For victims in poor eastern countries like
Ukraine, this represents a rise of some 35 percent, from 178. For
survivors in wealthier EU member states, like Poland, it's a more modest
increase -- they now receive around 216 per month.

Stuart Eizenstat, a Claims Conference negotiator who served as US Deputy
Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, said the latest agreement
shows "there's no Holocaust fatigue among the German leadership. Even 60
years later, with a different generation of Germans, there's still a
sensitivity to their responsibility for the Holocaust and their
responsibility to try to compensate people, imperfectly to be sure, during
their declining years," he said, as quoted by the Jerusalem Post.

(source: Spiegel Online)






SWITZERLAND:

Swiss watchdog warns of rising anti-German hatred



The Swiss government's racism watchdog issued an unusual warning Friday
about rising animosity toward German immigrants being stereotyped as
boorish, domineering or even Nazis.

Swiss racism laws forbid spreading hateful ideologies or discrimination
against groups because of their race, ethnicity or religion. The rules
cover denying the Holocaust or the World War I-era genocide of Armenians
in Turkey. But they have never been invoked or needed to protect
Germans.

Anti-German sentiment has risen, however, as Switzerland has opened its
borders and labor market to its European neighbors. Germans have taken the
greatest advantage, with over 220,000 now living permanently in the
neighboring country.

German citizens have come to dominate Swiss universities, hospitals and
highly trained professional work in recent years. The president of the
Federal Commission against Racism, Georg Kreis, said the economic crisis
and rising unemployment was making people increasingly see Germans as
unwanted competitors. He also referred to recent tension between the Swiss
and German governments over tax evasion and banking secrecy.

The racism commission criticized newspapers headlines such as "The Germans
are coming" and "How many Germans can Switzerland stomach?"

It also cited open letters and Internet platforms for spreading
caricatures of the "ugly German," evoking the negative stereotype of an
arrogant, loud and culture-less cousin that offends the sensitivities of
the discreet Swiss.

Kreis noted that the German-Swiss banking dispute has caused an
"escalation" in hateful language from some politicians and media in
Switzerland.

Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz said last week it was in his country's
interest to refrain from unhelpful insults, urging calm on the 7.7 million
Swiss, who sometimes see their neighbor to the north, with 82 million
people, as domineering.

But other politicians have been less restrained, such as center-right
legislator Thomas Mueller, who recently said German Finance Minister Peer
Steinbrueck reminded him of "that generation of Germans who 60 years ago
marched through the streets wearing leather coats, boots and armbands."

"Nazi!" read the front page of mass circulation daily Blick with a picture
of Steinbrueck to lead into its story on the Mueller speech.

"Germans of today's generation have the right not to be associated with
Naziism," said Kreis.

Such a caricature can carry over into everyday life, affecting relations
between Swiss and Germans at the workplace, home and class or in trams,
buses and restaurants, the commission warned.

"Collective exclusion hurts the people who live here and disturbs the
peace of the community," Kreis said.

(source: Associated Press)