Sunday 30 June 2013

Yad Vashem Officials Race to Record the Memories of Elderly Holocaust Survivors Before Their Stories Are Lost Forever

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

With a hand on her chest, 82-year-old Rivka Fringeru battled back tears as she reeled off a list of names she has rarely voiced in the past 70 years: Her father, Moshe, then her mother, Hava, and finally her two older brothers, Michael and Yisrael.

All perished in the Holocaust after the Harabju family from Dorohoi, Romania, was rounded up in 1944 and sent to ghettos and camps. Only Rivka and her brother Marco survived, and like many others, they spent the rest of their lives trying to move on and forget. 
 
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U.S. Media Outlet Accused of Reinforcing Antisemitic Stereotypes with Crossword Puzzle

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Friday called on the editors of Tribune Media Services to apologize for a crossword puzzle that used the clue “Shylock, e.g.” to elicit a three-letter response, with the correct answer being “Jew.” 

The crossword puzzle, which was syndicated, appeared last week in several newspapers across the United States.

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Friday 28 June 2013

Court in Germany Rules Against Newspaper's Request to Reveal Classified Intelligence Documents on Eichmann

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

A German court has prevented the publication of secret intelligence documents regarding the senior Nazi official Adolf Eichmann, the British paper The Daily Mail has reported.

Assessments believe that the documents reveal that the West Germany's intelligence knew of the Nazi officer's post-war whereabouts, and had in the passed blocked the publication possibly fearing embarrassing senior German officials' secret Nazi past.

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New Memorial Complex to be Built at Babi Yar

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

A model of the new memorial site to be built at Babi Yar in Ukraine, where an estimated 50,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, was presented Sunday for the first time by Alexander Levin, president of the World Forum of Russian-speaking Jews (WFRJ) and head of the Jewish community in Kiev.

Levin spoke at a gala in Kiev, sponsored by the WFRJ, in honor of the gathering of the Governing Board of the Jewish Agency that convenes in Kiev this week. 
 
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Thursday 27 June 2013

OSCE Conference Addresses Growing Antisemitism in Europe

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Security, whether we like it or not, is something that all of us have got to take seriously nowadays. For people visiting a synagogue in the center of Berlin, and for other Jewish people just walking around, the possibility of a hate crime is a real threat.

An expert conference has convened in Berlin to try to confront and work out solutions to what is perceived as a rise in anti-Semitic types of violence, verbal and physical abuse against Jewish communities, not just in Germany, but all over the world.
 
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Wednesday 26 June 2013

Jews Express Concern Over Sainthood for WWII-Era Pope Pius XII

FSWC Reports:

From Reuters:

A Jewish leader expressed concern to Pope Francis on Monday over attempts to make a saint of World War Two-era Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust.

Francis made no mention of his wartime predecessor during his talks with members of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), but the pontiff repeated the Roman Catholic Church's condemnation of anti-Semitism.

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Tuesday 25 June 2013

Vatican Contests Study on "Italian Schindler" As Nazi Collaborator

FSWC Reports:

From Reuters:

The Vatican newspaper said on Saturday a decision by scholars to brand a wartime Italian previously praised for saving Jews as a Nazi collaborator was part of an attempt to smear the Catholic Church during the papacy of Pope Pius XII.

An article, titled "To Strike at the Church of Pius XII" and written by historian Anna Foa, said the decision to re-classify Giovanni Palatucci, a Catholic, as a collaborator was at best hasty and more study was needed.
 
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Monday 24 June 2013

Jews and Muslims Celebrate Jewish Heritage Month in Ontario Together

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

May was Jewish History Month in the Canadian province of Ontario, proclaimed by an act of the provincial government one year ago. The month is dedicated to celebrating the achievements and contributions of Jews, Jewish organizations and the Jewish community to life in Ontario.

The government held a significant reception at Queen’s Park, home of the Legislature, on May 28, to acknowledge the many facets of Jewish life in Ontario over the past 200 years.
 
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Germany Begins Investigation of Commander of Nazi-led Unit in Ukraine

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

German prosecutors said Monday that they opened a formal preliminary investigation of a Minnesota man who was a commander of a Nazi-led unit during World War II, to determine whether there is enough evidence to bring charges and seek his extradition.

The Associated Press found that 94-year-old Michael Karkoc entered the US in 1949 by lying to American authorities about his role in the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion, which is accused of torching villages and killing civilians in Poland. AP's evidence indicates that Karkoc was in the area of the massacres, although no records link him directly to atrocities.

 
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Antisemitism in Europe Setting New Records, Encouraging Some European Jews to Emigrate

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

A troubling report presented to the government on Sunday verifies what many in Europe have been feeling in recent months – anti-Semitism in the continent is on the rise, and is breaking new records.

The anti-Semitism survey was conducted on behalf of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in nine countries in Europe. 
 
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Sunday 23 June 2013

New York Congressman Says New TV Show Promotes Negative Stereotypes About Jews

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

A suburban New York congressman, who represents the area where Bravo films its series "Princesses: Long Island," says the show is "the most objectionable thing I've ever seen on television" and promotes stereotyping of Jews.

The network should show a disclaimer before every episode to say there's nothing real about the nonfiction show, said Rep. Steve Israel, a New York Democrat.
 
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New Book by Alice Walker, Author of "The Colour Purple", Condemned as Antisemitic

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) says Alice Walker, author of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winning "The Color Purple," expresses several "fervently anti-Jewish ideas" in her latest novel, "The Cushion in the Road."

The ADL, an American Jewish organization whose mission is to "stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment for all citizens alike," says the novel dedicates over 80 pages to essays on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, which they say is "peppered with explicit comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany." 

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Friday 21 June 2013

Legacy of "Italian Schindler" Reconsidered After Historical Review

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

He has been called "the Italian Schindler," honored as a righteous gentile in Israel and declared a martyr by Pope John Paul II for helping save 5,000 during the Holocaust.

But the New York Times reported Thursday that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington has decided to remove Giovanni Palatucci's heroic tale from an exhibition after being informed that he was in fact an enthusiastic Nazi who collaborated with the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz. 
 
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Tuesday 18 June 2013

Decision to Name Washington Intersection After Righteous Gentile Causes Controversy

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

A seemingly standard decision that was supposed to be put into action smoothly and undetectable has galvanized a national outcry.

A former Washington civil official and local history buff, in conjunction with the Bulgarian Embassy, recently requested to name a street intersection in Washington for Dimitar Peshev, who served as vice president of Bulgaria's parliament during World War II and helped save the country's Jewish population during the Holocaust.
 
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Hungarian Man Charged With Committing War Crimes in WWII

FSWC Reports:

From Reuters:

Hungarian prosecutors on Tuesday charged a 98-year-old man who tops the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center's wanted list with war crimes, saying he had helped to deport Jews to Auschwitz in World War Two.

Laszlo Csatary was found guilty in absentia in 1948 of whipping or torturing Jews and helping to deport them to the death camp while serving as police commander in the Nazi-occupied eastern Slovak city of Kosice in 1944.
 
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Image of Israeli Finance Minister Dressed as Hitler Appears on the Web

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

The protests against Finance Minister Yair Lapid and against the State Budget Bill which was passed Monday have gone viral: Tuesday morning the country woke to find a picture of Lapid as Hitler, mustached and in Nazi uniform. Under the image, which also included dollar signs, a caption read, “Enemy of the Israeli economy.”

Members of Yesh Atid turned to the relevant Knesset authorities, following the image’s publication, and Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino ordered the head of investigations to look into the incident. 

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Sunday 16 June 2013

French Appeals Court Upholds Ruling that Twitter Must Identify Antisemitic Tweeters

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

The Paris Court of Appeals has upheld a January 24 ruling that ordered Twitter to provide information to France's Union of Jewish Students and four other human rights organizations that filed a complaint against the social networking giant last November for publishing anti-Semitic content.

The Court of Appeals upholding of the lower court ruling means that Twitter must now divulge details of the members who originated said comments.
 
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Friday 14 June 2013

Investigation Uncovers Former Ukrainian SS Commander Living in U.S.

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

A top commander of a Nazi SS-led unit accused of burning villages filled with women and children lied to American immigration officials to get into the United States and has been living in Minnesota since shortly after World War II, according to evidence uncovered by The Associated Press.

Michael Karkoc, 94, told American authorities in 1949 that he had performed no military service during World War II, concealing his work as an officer and founding member of the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion and later as an officer in the SS Galician Division, according to records obtained by the AP through a Freedom of Information Act request. The Galician Division and a Ukrainian nationalist organization he served in were both on a secret American government blacklist of organizations whose members were forbidden from entering the United States at the time.


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Thursday 13 June 2013

Memories of the Holocaust Expressed Through Art at New "Shoah" Exhibit at Auschwitz

FSWC Presents:

From ynetnews.com:

"It's an extremely new perception of an exhibition. It doesn't tell a story like in a history book. It's a very strong place for education, for conveying awareness of the Holocaust," says Piotr CywiÅ„ski, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, ahead of the opening of a permanent exhibition named "Shoah" in the death camp's Jewish block, which will be inaugurated Thursday in the presence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

In 1978, the Polish authorities decided to turn Block 27 in Auschwitz into an exhibition dedicated to the Jewish victims of the death and concentration camp. Although one million of the 1.2 million people murdered in the camp were Jewish, its communist liberators concealed that painful fact and the exhibition referred to all the murdered as victims of Fascism.

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Israeli Prime Minister Vows to Prevent Another Holocaust

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:
 
In a defiant speech coming from the place symbolizing the suffering of Jews during World War II, Israel's prime minister warned on Thursday that the Jewish state will do everything to prevent another Holocaust and to defend itself against any threat.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke during the inauguration of a new pavilion at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz that is to educate visitors about the Holocaust and Nazi’s quest to exterminate Jews. Auschwitz with adjacent Birkenau was the most notorious of a system of death camps that Nazi Germany built and operated in occupied Poland.

 
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Wednesday 12 June 2013

Volkwagen Donates One Million Euros to Auschwitz Site

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

German auto giant Volkswagen said Tuesday it was donating €1 million (about $1.3 million) to the Auschwitz International Youth Meeting Center, an educational site situated next to the World War II Nazi death camp in today's Poland.

"With this donation, Volkswagen intends to make a long-term contribution to safeguarding the high quality of educational work and the modernizations required at the center," the carmaker said in a statement.

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Tuesday 11 June 2013

Israeli Air Force Bases Play Host to Holocaust Survivors

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Air Force bases held an event in honor of Holocaust survivors Tuesday, hosting some 10,000 survivors in 12 bases nationwide.

The project is held for the first time in the IDF in collaboration with the Center for Holocaust-Survivor Organizations in Israel, Yad Vashem and JDC in Israel. 

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Monday 10 June 2013

Israeli Couple Set up Holocaust Remembrance Museum in Their Home

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

A prisoner's jacket from Auschwitz, a food bowl from Treblinka, metal pins worn by the Jewish ghetto police, hundreds of postcards from concentration camps and a yellow patch – these are just some of the items exhibited by Holocaust surviving couple Yaakov and Irena Wodzislawski, who have dedicated their lives and private home to the commemoration of the mass slaughter of Jews by the Nazis during World War II. 

The two were recently informed that they had won a lifetime achievement award on behalf of Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial museum and archive, but Yaakov died several days later and will not get to hold the prize in his hands. 

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Wednesday 5 June 2013

Iranians Now Living in Britain Meet Holocaust Survivors in Israel

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Fifteen young men and women of Iranian descent who now live in Britain met on Tuesday in Haifa with Holocaust survivors and heard, for the first time in their lives, stories about life in the concentration camps and life in the ghettos.

The young members of the Church of Light were born mostly Muslims and converted after moving to England. Many of them still have relatives who live in Iran. According to them, their meeting with Holocaust survivors via the Yad Ezer La Haver organization was one of the highlights of their two-week visit to Israel. 

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German Finance Ministry Examines Its Nazi Past

FSWC Reports:

From Reuters:

Many low-level tax inspectors in Germany's Nazi-era finance ministry were oblivious to the Holocaust and dutifully tried to contact murdered Jews whose wealth was being plundered by the ministry's top officials, according to a new book.

Germans have publicly atoned for Nazi crimes in a myriad of ways over six decades, providing scores of billions of dollars in reparations to Holocaust victims, their descendants and the state of Israel. But only recently have leading government ministries come clean on their own particular Nazi past.
 
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Monday 3 June 2013

Berlin Jewish Museum Displays Drawings and Sketches Hidden From Nazis

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Secret drawings and sketches that a Czech artist produced and kept hidden from his Nazi captors inside a World War II concentration camp went on display at the Jewish Museum in Berlin last month.

Bedrich Fritta was 35 years old when he was imprisoned with his wife and baby son at the Theresienstadt Ghetto near Prague, which the Hitler propaganda machine vaunted as a "model camp" by hiding the true fate of Europe's Jews.

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Senator Instrumental In Bringing Soviet Jews to U.S. Passes Away

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Democrat Frank Raleigh Lautenberg of New Jersey, the oldest member of the US Senate, died Monday morning from pneumonia, at the age of 89. Lautenberg was a multimillionaire businessman born to poor Jewish immigrant parents from Poland and Russia.

In regards to the Jewish people, the highlight of his 30-year Senate service was the promotion of the law allowing the mass immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union to the US. He was the last WWII veteran serving in the Senate. 


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Amazon Pulls "Jewish Baby Bibs" After Complaints

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

 Shoppers have been outraged recently over the discovery of an Amazon seller’s newest line of baby apparel: Jewish baby bibs.

The bibs may be in possible violation of the online giant’s policy prohibiting products that “glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance." Following the criticism, Amazon pulled several variations of the product, the U-T San Diego website reported. 
 
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Sunday 2 June 2013

Last Vestiges of Lithuania's Jewish Heritage at Risk

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Lithuania's wooden synagogues, the vestiges of a Jewish presence which was wiped out in the Holocaust, are falling into ruin from a lack of funding and support.

Hidden behind a row of houses, the wooden synagogue in the eastern town of Alanta looks more like a barn than a former house of worship.

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Saturday 1 June 2013

Memories of the Holocaust Endure Through Tatoos Resembling Those of the Victims

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

As a symbol of their enduring struggle and as a sign of remembrance, relatives of Holocaust survivors in Israel are getting tattoos which closely replicate the brandings that the Nazi Party forced upon Jews. 

The numbers which the Nazis tattooed on prisoners during their time in labor camps such as Auschwitz were indelible, so the imprints left on those surviving were noted by their families following their release – leading to dozens of children and grandchildren getting tattoos to keep the memory alive.

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