NAHOS



NAHOS

DECEMBER 5, 2008

8 KISLEV 5769

Volume 12; No:15

Dear Members & Friends:

CHUTZPAH

According to a Wall Street Journal article of October 25th, the U.S. “Treasury Department is considering buying equity stakes in insurance companies” in addition to examining bail-out requests from other industries such as automakers, State governments, transit agencies, etc… Insurance companies normally raise capital by selling shares, but now they are unwilling to sell common stock because their share prices have lost so much in value.

The ‘Financial Services Roundtable’ is a Washington, D.C. trade group, representing some 94 of the largest financial and insurance companies. On October 24th, the ‘Financial Services Roundtable’ sent a letter to the Interim Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability, the Honorable Neel Kashkari, asking him to expand the criteria of companies eligible to participate in the $700 billion Rescue Plan by including foreign-controlled insurance companies and financial institutions. Here is part of what they wrote:

“This is a global crisis and not to recognize the U.S. firms controlled by foreign banks or companies would create further impediment to the market’s recovery. Further, the institutions that are excluded play a vital role in the U.S. economy by providing liquidity to the market. The Roundtable would strongly urge that you permit such institutions to participate in the Program and as such, extend the deadline for application to participate, so those entities not currently included can adequately evaluate the opportunity.”

As soon as we became aware of this request, HSF-USA, the Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation-USA (the national alliance of grassroots survivors’ organizations) sent the following letter to the Interim Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability:

“The Honorable Neel Kashkari,

US Treasury Department, Washington, D.C. 20020.

Dear Mr. Assistant Secretary,

As elected leaders of Holocaust survivor groups from throughout the United States, we are dismayed by the recent proposal from the Financial Services Roundtable to subsidize foreign-owned or foreign-controlled insurance companies and financial institutions with American taxpayers’ funds from the $700 billion fund created by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. It would be a disgrace to the country and an insult to decency, for the Government to acquiesce in this request.

It is undisputed that the international insurance industry, including parent companies and affiliates of members of the Financial Services Roundtable who seek U.S .taxpayer subsidies, looted billions of dollars of insurance proceeds purchased in good faith by our parents and grandparents, and hundreds of thousands of other Holocaust victims families. After WWII, the insurers demanded death certificates that we could not produce for our murdered loved ones, and insisted on original policies none of us had after surviving death camps and ghettos.

These companies, such as the

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OUR NEXT MEETINGS

Where: Park East Synagogue

164 East 68 Street, NYC

When: Sunday December 14th

1 PM – 2PM: Social Hour

2PM – 4.30PM: Presentation

Speaker: Mr. Edwin Black.

Mr. Black is a multiple awards-winning New York Times and International investigative author of 60 best-selling editions in fourteen languages and sixty-one countries in leading publications of the United States, Europe and Israel. With a million books in print, his work focuses on genocide and hate, corporate criminality and corruption, governmental misconduct, academic fraud, philanthropy abuse, oil addiction, alternative energy and historical investigation. Editors have submitted his work ten times for Pulitzer Prize nomination. Black has been interviewed on hundreds of networks broadcasts from Oprah, the Today Show, CNN Wolf Blitzer and NBC Dateline and leading networks in Europe and Latin America.

Topic: “The Plan” how to rescue society from a looming energy Pearl Harbor. Mr. Black will also answer questions about Bad Arolsen, IBM, Carnegie, ICHEIC, General Motors, and Rockefeller Ford Foundation.

Refreshments will be served

All are welcome.

Members: $5.oo

Non-members: $8.oo

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Our Subsequent Meeting:

Sunday, January 25th; 2009; 1PM

Topic: The renowned film-documentary: “In the Name of the Victims”, by award-winning producer Ilan Zev

German Insurer Allianz, parent of Roundtable member Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, grew to astronomical size in the post-war years due to the money they withheld from our families. In 2007, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee cited a minimum estimate of the unpaid value of these policies today at $17 billion.

Ironically, last month Allianz tried to purchase the naming rights to the future New York Jets and New York Giants Meadowlands stadium. An intrepid New York Times sports reporter exposed not only that Allianz continues to owe billions in unpaid policies, but was deeply involved with the Nazi regime. Allianz insured Auschwitz and other Nazi extermination camps, and its president Kurt Schmitt was Hitler’s first Minister of Economics. Fortunately, this exposure caused the teams to end negotiations with Allianz.

We cannot believe our Government would even consider giving our hard-earned tax-dollars to such a rapacious and unrepentant corporate pirate as Allianz or its affiliates, or any of the other insurers or affiliates owned or controlled by Holocaust profiteers such as AXA, Generali, Munich Re, Swiss Re, Swiss Life, Winterthur, Zurich, and others.

What is even more appalling is that these very companies spent millions of dollars this past year lobbying Congress to defeat bipartisan legislation that would have allowed us, as survivors, and our children and grandchildren, to obtain the truth about our families’ policies. The legislation (HR 1746), co-sponsored by nearly fifty House members led by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Tom Lantos, and Robert Wexler, would have required companies doing business in the U.S., directly or through affiliates, to publish information about their handling of our families’ policies, and [would have] guaranteed Holocaust survivors access to courts to recover what is truly owed.

Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, passed the bill unanimously in his Foreign Affairs Committee. After Mr. Lantos passed away, and after an avalanche of industry lobbying money was dumped on Congress, the House Financial Services Committee (led by Barney Frank) effectively killed the legislation this summer.

It is a disgrace that these insurance companies looted funds from the Jewish customers who trusted them at a perilous time, and then lied to survivors and heirs and covered up their theft and greed when we survivors were trying to rebuild our lives. It is even worse that with tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors in this country living in poverty today, and the insurers having stolen billions from so many families, they managed to find the dollars to subvert democracy and bury legislation to force disclosure of the truth and disgorgement of their ill-gotten gains.

Fortunately, we are not in need. But we are taxpayers who revere the United States of America, and we expect and demand decency and honor from our Government. Until the culpable insurance companies all disgorge their records and their unjust profits from the Holocaust, we believe it would offend basic notions of justice and integrity for Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars to subsidize their rapacious and immoral behavior.

Respectfully, David Schaecter

HSF-USA President

Agreed by the Executive Committee:

I. Arbeiter, Boston, MA

N. Godin, Washington, DC

D. Mermelstein, Miami, FL

A. Moskovic, Hobe Sound, FL

L. Rechter, Queens, NY

J. Rubin, Boynton Beach, FL

H. Schuster, Las Vegas, NV

F. Taucher, Seattle, WA

E. Widman, Brooklyn, NY

cc: President George Busch

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

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Editor: As of to date, we have not seen any similar objections to the Assistant Secretary - against subsidizing foreign insurance companies – by the Claims Conference, the organization that ought to defend the interests of survivors. They seem to be more concerned on how to block insurance legislation HR 1746, proposed by HSF-USA, that could finally provide some justice to former policyholders and heirs.

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Shalom U’Bracha L.R.

JUSTICE FOR HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

(The following article by Herbert Karliner was published in the Miami Herald of November 26th and is hereby re-published with the author’s permission)

“Earlier this month, the world observed the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the infamous night of broken glass, symbolically marking the beginning of the Holocaust. I was a small child that day, when we awoke to the news that my father’s store and most other Jewish-owned businesses had been set on fire. Within hours, the Gestapo arrived and took my father, Joseph Karliner, to Buchenwald.

My father was released after a few weeks; we were able to book passage and some time after we looked helplessly from the deck of the St. Louis towards the coveted lights of Miami Beach. But we were turned away by this great country, dooming my father, my mother, my two sisters and hundreds of others to death at the hands of the Nazis. I was lucky to survive with my brother and to make a home in the United States.

Our father had told us about a life insurance policy that he had bought from Allianz, in case something were to happen to him. He was killed in 1942. When we approached Allianz after the war, they said this policy had been paid out to an “unknown person.”

For decades, insurers like Allianz grew fat on Holocaust profits. Conservative estimates show that the current value of unpaid policies sold to Holocaust victims by Allianz, Generali and other insurers is more than $18 billion.

In the late 1990s, Florida and other states passed laws to help survivors recover their policies. To evade that obligation, the industry set up the International Commission for Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, a Swiss-chartered, industry-funded body. Despite skepticism, many survivors applied, hoping to learn the truth about their families’ policies and to retrieve their rightful due. My brother and I were among the hopeful who applied. Allianz again refused payment, saying the funds had been “paid out to the policy holder in 1938.”

Years later, I managed to obtain the “repurchase” document. It was dated Nov.9, 1938 – Kristallnacht. Neither Allianz nor ICHEIC gave me this document at the time I had applied. If they had, I would have told them that I doubted my father stopped by the Allianz office on his way to Buchenwald to cash in his life insurance policy on that day.

Congress had a chance to fix this problem with legislation sponsored by the late Tom Lantos, Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Robert Wexler and others. It would have required insurers doing business in the United States to publish policy-holder names and would have guaranteed court access to survivors and heirs.

The Claims Conference, a non-survivor organization – joined by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the B’nai B’rith, the World Jewish Congress and Agudas Israel – took the insurers’ side against survivors. They falsely argued that Germany would reduce the meager financial assistance currently provided for poor survivors if the bill passed – a [deceitful] claim even the German embassy denied. In the words of David Mermelstein, president of the Florida Survivors’ Coalition, survivors are appalled that these groups – which do not represent survivors, never consulted with survivors and have done nothing to help survivors in need – would today oppose our rights to recover what was stolen from our families.

Despite the [sanctimonious] rhetoric about remembering the Holocaust, cruel indifference remains the rule. Recently, Allianz had the audacity to bid millions to name the new Jets-Giants Football stadium. Insurers and banks that plundered billions from the Holocaust are now asking that their affiliates get U.S. taxpayer money from the federal bailout. Last month the U.S. Justice Department sided with Generali in an important court case ,saying that survivors’ access to courts conflicts with “U.S. foreign policy.” For shame!.

So this year’s commemoration of the Kristallnacht is riddled with tragic irony. Tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors in the United States and the world, including thousand in Florida, are too poor to enjoy a decent quality of life. They lack adequate nutrition, housing, home care, prescriptions, dental care, medical care, eyeglasses and other basic services. As a volunteer for the Jewish Community Services in Miami, I can certify that far too many survivors are not getting the help they need to live in dignity.

Meanwhile, public officials and community leaders, who gather and intone about the need to confront evil, have coalesced to dishonor the actual victims of the Holocaust.

Maybe this 70th Kristallnacht observance will bring, at long last, a commitment to ensuring that we survivors will obtain the truth about our families’ legacies, including a full accounting from all corporate profiteers. And, maybe at long last, all survivors will be afforded the dignity they deserve in their last years. This will happen only if the public speaks out and demands justice and decency for victims of the Holocaust. This is what remembrance -- and justice – demand.

Herbert Karliner, Survivor

(from Peiskresham, Germany)

PERSISTENCE

(RECENT ACTIVITIES)

I: On November 9th, at the WFJCHS Conference in Alexandria, VA, we participated on a panel and debated Roman Kent on the issues of:

a) the Claims Conference’s shortcomings, and on:

b) the potential advantages and disadvantages of the insurance bill HR 1746.

On the issue of the Claims Conference’s failings, Roman Kent conceded and essentially concurred with our observations (despite the fact that Kent is actually the official treasurer of that organization).

During the discussion on the insurance bill, a substantial amount of time was lost because of a fire-alarm and evacuation. We came prepared with a stack of documentary evidence six inches high, but did not have enough time left to get to each and every aspect.

Kent kept up with the “scare” tactic that a passage of the bill would make future negotiations with the Germans more difficult, although we have evidence that German government officials have expressed recognition of their responsibility towards Holocaust survivors and have stated that they would continue to honor their moral obligations.

Kent failed to recognize that there is a difference between the German government and German industry (the companies). German companies paid (reluctantly) their paltry compensations determined under the slave-labor agreement. They never expressed any willingness to enter voluntarily into any further negotiations. Kent cannot name a single company or industry that the Claims Conference was planning to engage in negotiations.

Judging from the subsequent questions and comments by the majority of the individuals in the audience, our presentation and reasoning carried the day.

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What is most despicable in our eyes is the comportment of the Claims Conference’s Board Member organizations and other institutions beholden to the Claims Conference (see Herbert Karliner’s letter), who wrote letters to congressional chairmen opposing HR 1746. It seems quite evident from reading some of these letters, that most did not even know the details of the proposed legislation and merely followed directives to write in opposition. Some of these organizations (which might have had a following and been significant in the 1930s) are barely existent at this time. One such ‘organization’ has never held membership meetings and issues no newsletters or bulletins. The individual claiming to be its president, is not skilled enough to write, on his own, such a letter as the one that was sent in his name to Congress.

Over a year ago, Congressman Wexler stated that he was amazed that the individuals in charge of all these organizations -- with ties to the Claims Conference – were able to sleep at night, given that they were standing in the way of Holocaust survivors trying to find out whether their parents had made sacrifices to take out life, dowry, property and/or other insurances and were not ashamed to obstruct survivors from getting access to Courts, like all other segments of American society.

Before the fire-alarm went off, during a discussion on the performance of ICHEIC, Kent stated that ICHEIC was supervised by insurance commissioners “who were no fools” and that commissioners had found no faults. That is simply not true! The offices of Garamendi (CA) and of Kreidler (WA) had criticized quite harshly the existing procedures, as did Albert Lewis, a former insurance commissioner and ICHEIC arbitrator.

In our view it is quite amazing that any commissioner spoke up, given that – after a number of years (or less) – former insurance and other regulators seek employment in the same industries they previously had to supervise.

What Kent’s statement reveals is that he himself, who was an ICHEIC member charged to supervise the process, was relying on others (the commissioners) to do the proper supervision. We don’t know if he was insecure about his own qualifications, but if he was, then he should have stepped aside and let a professional insurance expert be appointed in his place, instead of trying – after the fact – to defend ICHEIC’s abysmal record.

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II: On November 20th, three NAHOS members, Ivar Segalowitz, Sello Fisch and your editor, traveled to Washington, DC, to confer with the legislators who had supported HR 1746. We were joined by a survivors’ group leader from Seattle Washington State, Fred Taucher, by a Second Generation group leader Esther Finder and by attorney Sam Dubbin of Miami.

We were brought up-to-date and spoke at length with the legislative staff of four congressional offices and conversed with three of the congressmen. We were assured of their ongoing endorsement and support.

KRISTALLNACHT

HAPPENINGS & COMMENTS:

I: In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of ‘Kristallnacht’, the USHM Museum in Washington, DC projected portraits of 63 survivors on its exterior walls as part of a slide show. The images were projected November 14th to 16th, from dusk to 10PM.

II: Dual or Duel? The German government and the Central Counsel of Jews in Germany sponsored a ceremony in one of the few synagogues that was not destroyed in the Rykestrasse in the former East Berlin.

Simultaneously, Berlin’s Jewish community held another memorial at the site of a synagogue that was demolished in the Fasanenstrasse.

III: Selected comments by Rabbi Marvin Hier: “Was there no Space in the World for Us?” Seventy years ago, while Jews in America gathered at the Algonquin Hotel and Waldorf Astoria at banquets in support of Jewish causes or in personal celebration of a Simcha, the most notorious pogrom was unleashed by Hitler’s Germany. On this day was born the Night of Broken Glass, Kristallnacht. The Nazis said it was in reaction to the killing of a German official in Paris, but as documents showed, it was a state organized pogrom involving the highest officials of Nazi Germany. As Reinhardt Heidrich instructed his SS underlings – synagogues are to be burned down but only when there is no danger to the surroundings… businesses and private apartments of the Jews may be destroyed but not looted. Jews, especially the rich, are to be arrested – as many as can be accommodated in our prisons. Upon arrest, concentration camps should be contacted immediately to arrange their confinement…”

“Of course there were heroes during the events of Kristallnacht and the Holocaust and we should do all in our power to make sure that their stories live on and are passed from generation to generation, but the other part of the tragedy must also be passed on – that there were more villains than saints – more experts at closing doors than those brave enough to open them…”

OBITUARIES

* We report with heartfelt sadness the passing of a dear friend and noble individual

Julius (Julek) Pfau

A quiet and retiring individual, Julek was one of the most considerate persons we ever met. He went out of his way to help others when needed, in a quiet, unassuming and dignified way. A Holocaust survivor and at a time member of the Israeli Defense Forces, Julek was also – after the liberation – part of the B’richa group which rescued Jewish children that had been hidden in non-Jewish homes and brought them to Palestine. Counting the rescued and their descendants, it can be said that thousands of individuals were recovered for the Jewish people, individuals that otherwise would have grown up in non-Jewish, often anti-Semitic surroundings.

Julek is survived by his wife Eva, their daughter Dana and husband Alec; grandchildren and great-grandchildren; his sister Ada Gams and her family, sister and brother in-laws Lilca and Alec and their children and grandchildren and families.

To the entire family we extend our heartfelt condolences. We are sharing your pain & sorrow; he will be sorely missed,

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* We report with great sorrow the passing of

Irmgard Breyer

of Tamarac, Florida, who passed away on October 24th, at the age of 79 years. As an 11 year-old child, she lost everything in the Holocaust including her family of over 200 relatives. Only she and her mother survived.

Upon arrival in the United States, speaking no English and under very difficult economic conditions, she raised two sons whom she loved dearly. She always enjoyed her Holocaust Survivors’ meetings and the friends she made there. She donated money to many causes even though she was not wealthy (i.e. Magen David Ambulances, Disabled Jewish War Veterans, US Disabled Veterans, Cancer Care for children, among others). She enjoyed Israeli music, loved reading, and meeting her friends at bible study.

Irmgard Breyer was a brave and compassionate soul. She was unafraid to die believing that she would be reunited with her family. She is survived be her two sons, Harry and Teddy, and three grandchildren, Elizabeth, Michelle and Keith.

Our sincere condolences to all who knew her!

SURVIVORS’ VIDEO TESTIMONIES

Between 1994 and 200, Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation collected over 52,000 filmed testimonies by Holocaust Survivors and other witnesses. Subsequently, the collection was entrusted to the USC- University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute.

Recently, copies of the entire archive, consisting of over 200,000 hours of video testimonies, collected in 56 different countries and in 32 different languages, have been transferred to the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem. They will supplement Yad Vashem’s existing collection of over 10,000 survivor testimonies and of 5,000 Holocaust related films, produced from 1945 until today.

Both collections have now been made easily accessible to the public at Yad Vashem’s Visual Center through a simple computer search which accesses and cross-references the entire collection of over 200,000 hours of video via VOD (video on Demand). The entire Visual Center collection of video testimonies is digitally formatted for immediate viewing. Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev commented:

“The testimony of the survivors who personally experienced the horrors of the Shoah are the legacy that they impart to us. Now this easy access to personal testimonies will allow the public, and especially the younger generation, to be exposed to these materials and deepen their knowledge of the Holocaust. This is essential in an era where the generation of Holocaust survivors is dwindling and the demand for knowledge in these areas is growing.”

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Preservation of Tapes:

(Of interest to all Survivors who were interviewed and/or their heirs)

“Videotapes can begin to show deterioration after about 20 years. The USC Shoah Foundation in Los Angeles has begun digitizing the tapes into Motion JPEG 2000 files.

The project will allow the Institute to share the testimonies with the largest possible audience worldwide. The entire archive will be stored on servers at USC, so the Institute will be able to process requests to access testimony much more quickly than in the past. And at the same time that the MJPEG 2000 files are made, five additional copies of each testimony are generated in formats that can be played on any commercial video player or personal computer. The testimonies will be available in a number of commonly used formats, which means more people will be able to view them. In addition to preservation, this project will make the archive a more flexible, and much more accessible, educational resource.

(Editor: The USHM Museum in Washington DC ought to take example from the cooperative attitude of the USC Foundation, which strives for widespread dissemination of material of interest to Survivors, heirs and researchers.)

“ Institutions in Manitoba Canada; Krakow, Poland; and Brookline, Massachusetts now offer access to testimony from the USC archive”.

For more information, contact:

USC Shoah Foundation Institute

University of Southern California

Leavey Library

650 West 35th Street; Suite 114

Los Angeles, CA 90089

Tel: 213-740-6001

DOES NOT ADD UP!

In our September issue, we called upon the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (once again) to stop restricting access to the data they received so far from Bad Arolsen’s ITS- International Tracing Services.

All sides recognize that survivors, who are now in their 70s, 80s, or 90+, do not have enough years left to wait for a perfectly organized, easily searchable data-base, that would please discriminating researchers tastes.

Whatever data is currently available in the USHM Museum’s data-base ought to be transferred, without undue delays, and on ongoing basis, to local institutions and libraries nationwide that are willing to train researchers to assist inquirers in their searches.

The USHM Museum is asking survivors, heirs and other inquirers to either:

a) come to the Museum in Washington, DC, and sit down with a trained researcher (potentially for hours or days); or to:

b) fill out inquiry-forms and send them to the Museum to be processed by researchers.

Because of different spellings of names and faulty memories, the ensuing correspondence – back and forth – could easily take months or more; if not dropped by frustrated researchers or inquirers,

In the Museum’s defense, director Michael H. Goldman posted a letter in the “Forward” of October 31st, 2008. In it, he states:

“The Museum has always responded to requests submitted remotely by survivors and their families. No survivor has ever had to travel to Washington, D.C. to receive information from ITS or the millions of other pages of documentation at the museum. Concerning online access, the museum is receiving a copy of the ITS archive in a format that does not allow its pages to be searched using an Internet search engine such as Google. The copies being received are digital pictures of documents. Making the data searchable online would take years.” And later:

“…at this juncture the best way to get them the information they need is for trained researchers to work with them, in person or remotely, and to search the archive on their behalf. Every other institution receiving the material has reached the same conclusion.”

Well now; that statement reveals the following:

1) Other institution were able to get the data, so there is no impediment to further distribution;

2) The data seems to be searchable; perhaps not with Google but searchable nevertheless, or else why the recommendation to contact the Museum’s researchers? What can they do if the data is not searchable? The data – in whatever format it is currently available – can and must be forwarded to any institution willing to accept it.

Researchers can be trained anywhere; Washington D.C. does not have a monopoly on brainpower (as recent events have proven).

As we wrote in our September issue: “Survivors are sick and tired of filling out more forms. Many have already experienced that this procedure is anything but smooth. It takes repeated attempts, back and forth, sometimes for weeks or months until the searched-for information is found, if ever.

Furthermore, the assertion -- that to make the current data-base searchable “would take years” -- is contradicted by other computer experts. One California Company of Internet specialists, wrote the following:

“ Dear Mr….

We are familiar with the work and research you have conducted regarding the vast information that has recently been transferred from the ITS via the Red Cross to the USHMM. Whereas we have been puzzled for quite some time at the USHMM’s reluctance to approach the process of enabling access to the records in an open fashion, we understand that the suggestion has been made that there may be technical impediments to doing so.

Nothing could be further from the truth, Sir. In fact, the process of making the millions of records available via the Internet is perfectly straightforward and not at all something that poses insurmountable technical complexities.

While not wishing to speculate as to the USHMM’s motivation to restrict access,… it strikes us that the USHMM is being disingenuous at best in suggesting that such an endeavor would take years and cost many millions.

We believe that we could undertake this job and start having the records brought online within months, and certainly at a cost far more reasonable than what is being suggested by USHMM. Our technological record in dealing with millions of records has long been established, and we see this project as easily attainable. If ever it were true, this is THE project where time is of the essence. Should you and/or your associates wish to discuss this further, please feel free to contact me directly at …….

With Kind Regards,” K.B.

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The digitized data the USHM Museum has already received from Bad Arolsen contains information on concentration camps, slave and forced labor, employment records, imprisonments, incarcerations, insurance documents, patients’ files and registry cards from authorities.

On September 30th, the ITS newsletter informed us that they were able to reunite two more relatives, Maja Telegina and Katharina Lapuchin, who had been separated for over 63 years. Widely distributed data-banks of the ITS archive could make many more of these success stories possible.

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YOU CAN HELP !

Write a letter or gather signatures and send them to:

Mrs. Sara Bloomfield, Exec Director

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

100 Raoul Wallenberg Place

SW Washington, D.C. 20024

Or to: NAHOS-USHMM

P.O.Box 670125, Station C, Main Street, Flushing, New York 11367

Here is a sample:

To the Directorate of the USHMM

We, the undersigned – Holocaust Survivors who lost numerous relatives during the Nazi-era – note with satisfaction that the USHM Museum was one of the receiving institutions of the digitized copies of the ITS/BAD Arolsen archives.

We recognize and are appreciative of the Museum’s outstanding efforts that led to the eleven nations’ consent and the release of the data.

However, please note that the data is far more than a historical resource. It sheds light on the life, the fate and the deaths of our beloved relatives. It is bound to provide knowledge that we have been searching for, for many decades. It could provide solace and closure for tens of thousands of anguished souls. At a congressional hearing, representatives on Capitol Hill emphasized the Survivors’ need to get that information as rapidly as possible. The scholars’ long-time interest was hardly mentioned.

We learned with dismay that the Museum is restricting access to OUR murdered families DATA, to be made accessible only from USHMM’s on-site computers. We emphatically reject and oppose such a concept. We live in an era of advanced technological feasibilities that provide multiple remote access-systems. We respectfully demand that the data garnered from the transferred source material be made as easily and widely accessible – for us and our descendants – as modern science makes possible.

We’ve waited long enough; any delays caused by willful restrictions are unacceptable !

Name: City: Tel (option)

_______________________________________________________________________________________

JOSIA E. DUBOIS

( A Forgotten Whistle Blower Who Saved Jews From Hitler )

On September 21st, a sizable number of NAHOS members attended a public presentation of the DuBois story at the David S, Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, at Fordham Law School in New York City. Among the distinguiseh panel members were Dr. Rafael Medoff, Prof. David S. Wyman author of “The Abandonment Of The Jews”, Dr. Rebecca Kook, daughter of Holocaust rescue-activist Peter Bergson, philanthropist Richard Goodwin and others. Among the presenters were philanthropist Sigmund Rolat and moderator law professor Thane Rosenbaum.

Reportedly, Josia E. DuBois, who was working at the U.S. Treasury Department was instrumental in saving many Jews during WWII, yet never received the recognition he deserved. The following are excerpts from an elaborate, detailed and captivating essay by professor Rafael Medoff:

“ A native of Camden, New Jersey and a graduate of Penn Law School, Dubois began working at the Treasury Department’s Foreign Funds Control Division in the 1930s and it was there, quite by accident, that Dubois came face to face with the Holocaust. That happened because once World War II began, it was illegal for a U.S. citizen to send funds into enemy territory without special permission. Thus when the World Jewish Congress, in early 1943, sought to send funds to Europe to ransom Jewish refugees in France and Romania, it requested authorization from the State Department and the Treasury Department.

At Treasury, the request came to DuBois’s desk. He immediately approved it and sent it over to the Sate Department. That’s when the trouble began. Weeks turned into months as State Department officials claimed to be examining the request, and the chances for the ransom plan to succeed quickly vanished.

DuBois, furious over the delays, began investigating the State Department’s actions. Documents surreptitiously provided to him by a friend in that governmental arm revealed the shocking truth about the State Department and the Holocaust. It turned out that senior State Department officials had been deliberately obstructing opportunities to rescue Jews, blocking the transmission of Holocaust-related information to the United States and trying to cover up evidence of their actions. The State Department was afraid that the rescue of large numbers of Jews would put pressure on the United States to take them in.

The more DuBois pressed for answers, the more enemies he made. He received anonymous threatening phone calls. Rumors spread that DuBois was secretly Jewish.

Dubois understood that going head-to-head with the State Department on such a sensitive issue could potentially even jeopardize his career. Despite the risks, he decided to blow the whistle. On Christmas Day 1943, DuBois sat down at his desk and proceeded to spend hour upon hour compiling an 18-page report to which he gave the explosive title “Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of Jews.” In careful, detailed, lawyerly language, the report exposed the State Department’s obstruction of rescue.

DuBois’s searing conclusion: State Department Officials, led by Assistant Secretary Breckinridge Long, “ Have been guilty not only of gross procrastination and willful failure to act, but even of willful attempts to prevent action from being taken to rescue Jews from Hitler. Unless remedial steps of a drastic nature are taken, and taken immediately to prevent the complete extermination of the Jews [in Hitler Europe] , this Government will have to share for all time responsibility for this extermination.”

“Dubois delivered the report to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., together with a warning: if Morgenthau did not bring this scandal directly to the attention of President Roosevelt, Dubois would resign from the Treasury Department in protest and hold a press conference at which he would publicly expose the State Department’s deeds.

Fortuitously, Congressional pressure for the rescue of refugees had been steadily building just at that time. The Emergency Committee to save the Jewish People of Europe (better known as the Bergson group) persuaded members of Congress to introduce a resolution urging creation of a U.S. government agency to rescue Jewish refugees. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously adopted the resolution.

Dubois’s report, combined with the pressure from Congress, convinced Morgenthau to take the matter to President Roosevelt. FDR may not have been aware of the details of the State Department’s actions, but he certainly knew of and approved the general thrust of the department’s actions, which were motivated by a desire to keep most Jewish refugees away from America’s shores.

But the report gave Morgenthau the leverage to convince the president that “…you have either got to move very fast, or the Congress of the United States will do it for you.” With a presidential election just ten months away, the last thing FDR wanted was a public scandal over the refugee issue. He pre-empted Congress by quickly issuing an executive order establishing the War Refugee Board (WRB). Dubois was named general counsel of the WRB, and his Treasury colleague John Pehle became its executive director. Despite receiving little government funding, DuBois and his colleagues advanced the cause of rescue with determination and creativity. They energetically employed unorthodox means of rescue, including bribery of border officials and the production of forged identification papers and other documents to protect refugees from the Nazis.

The WRB’s agents arranged for 48,000 Jews to be moved from Transnistria, where they would have been in the path of the retreating German army, to safe areas in Romania. About 15,000 Jewish refugees and about 20,000 non-Jewish refugees were evacuated from Axis-occupied territory, and at least 10,000 more were protected through various WRB-sponsored activities.

In response to the German deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, the WRB engineered a series of threats by world leaders which eventually succeeded in pressuring Hungary’s leaders to halt the deportations. As a result, some 120,000 Jews remained alive in Budapest. Many were sheltered by the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who, with financial and logistical backing from the WRB, organized a network of safe houses in the city.

Some of the WRB’s efforts were less successful. It sought to persuade Roosevelt to establish temporary shelters for refugees in the United States, but he agreed to just one token shelter for a group of 982 refugees in Oswego, New York. The WRB repeatedly asked the War Department to bomb the railroad lines leading to Auschwitz or the gas chambers and crematoria, but the requests were rejected. The State Department often refused or delayed cooperating with the WRB’s requests for assistance, and the British government likewise responded coldly to the Board’s efforts and sometimes even impeded them.

In one sense, the WRB’s efforts may be regarded as too little, too late, given the magnitude of the Nazi genocide. On the other hand, there can be no gainsaying the fact that DuBois and his colleagues played a major role in the rescue of more than 200,000 refugees during the final fifteen months of the war, despite numerous and daunting obstacles.

Bringing the Killers to Justice

Even after the war ended, DuBois’s work was not finished. In 1946, the Truman administration asked him to head the prosecution in one of the Nuremberg Trials: the case of twenty-four directors of I.G. Farben, the German chemical manufacturing conglomerate that used hundreds of thousands of Jewish slave laborers in its factories and supplied the Nazis with Zyklon B, the poison gas used in the gas chambers at the death camps. Over the course of nearly a year, Dubois and his team of prosecutors presented a strong case against the accused. But when the final verdict was handed down, in July 1948, it proved to be a bitter disappointment. Only thirteen of the defendants were convicted on any of the counts; the others were acquitted of all charges. To make matters worse, the sentences meted out to the guilty were, as DuBois put it, “light enough to please a chicken thief,…” The I.G. Farben directors received prison terms of between one and a half to eight years, five of them just two years or less.

Meanwhile, in the name of encouraging Germany to help the U.S. in the Cold War, the Truman administration was retreating from its original plan for a de-Nazification program in postwar Germany that would have included appropriate punishment for all Nazi was criminals. Instead, clemency became the order of the day. One of the officials who played a key role in this new U.S. policy was John J. McCloy. It was McCloy who, in 1944, authored the rejection letters in response to requests by the WRB and Jewish organizations to bomb Auschwitz or the railway lines leading to it. He claimed bombing Auschwitz “..might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans” (he did not explain what could be “more vindictive” than gassing to death 12,000 people each day). Appointed U.S. high commissioner for Germany in 1949, McCloy proceeded to grant clemency to numerous German industrialists convicted of war crimes. Of the thirteen I.G. Farben directors whom DuBois had put behind bars, eight had already completed their meager sentences, McCloy freed the remaining five. The McCloy pardons provided a cruel and ironic conclusion to DuBois’s work.”

Crumbling Of The Roosevelt Myth

For many years after World War II, the assumption of most Americans – and most American Jews – was that President Roosevelt must have done whatever was possible to help the Jews in Nazi Europe. In those years nobody could imagine that Roosevelt knowingly averted his eyes from the European Jewish tragedy, or that an unknown Treasury Department lawyer exposed the scandal of U.S. indifference and forced the president to change America’s wartime refugee policy,

It was not until 1968 that the first books critical of FDR’s response to Nazism and the Holocaust finally appeared. That year, David Wyman, a young Harvard trained historian, authored “Paper Walls’, which examined America’s refusal to accept more than a handful of Jewish refugees during the 1930s. That same year, Arthur Morse an investigative journalist for CBS-TV, wrote “While Six Million Died” which explored Roosevelt’s failure to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. Morse was the first to identify DuBois by name and credit him for writing “Report To The Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews.”

It was only with the publication, in 1984, of David Wyman’s bestseller “The Abandonment of the Jews” that the accomplishments of the War Refugee Board finally received appropriate attention. Yet to this day, most Holocaust museums still do not mention DuBois. Nor do the textbooks that are typically used to teach American and world history to the nation’s high school students.

The name of a genuine American hero of the Holocaust is almost completely unknown.

DuBois, of course, did not risk his life. But DuBois did risk his career, and he did play a crucial role in bringing about the rescue of many Jews from the Nazi inferno.

As an official of the United States government, DuBois embodied the noblest principles of his country and in particular its tradition of helping the oppressed. As a human being, DuBois recognized his moral obligation to help others. His life and achievements deserve the widest possible attention.

Dr. Rafael Medoff

BEST WISHES &

CONGRATULATIONS

Birthdays:

Glatt, Anna January 1

Gordon, Abraham January 1

Nudel, Rina January 1

Welles, Ceil January 1

Fishkin, Jacob January 2

Gelbart, Rose January 3

Gibrat, Therese January 3

Seiden, Jenny January 3

Horowitz, Hanna January 3

Polak, Ina January 3

Schachter, Harry January 3

Gruber, Fran January 5

Strauss, Berta January 5

Erlich, Anna January 6

Hayes, Nancy January 8

Fradkin, Rachel January 9

Pure, Joseph January 9

Badner, Sylvia January 10

Chass, Jacob January 10

Jacobs, Helen January 10

Haruvi, Rachel January 10

Kohane, Akiva January 10

Rosley, T. Marion January 10

Shulman, Zophia January 16

Schonberg, Ava January 18

Blatt, Anna January 18

Dazzo, Marianne January 18

Stessel, Zahava January 19

Banks, Georgette January 20

Sigfried Fay January 21

Stern, William January 22

Sobel, Nathan January 23 Reichman, Rosa January 23

Weinberger, Hanna January 23

Garfunkel, Ilse January 25

Ragazzoni, Halina January 25

Susser, Adam January 25

Murawa, Felix January 25

Hoffman, Dorothy January 28

Hayes, Nancy January 28

Firstenberg-Elias,Marion January 29

Sonneborn, Esther January 29

Spiegel, Magda January 30

Zylberberg, Simone January 30

Blankroth, Renee January 31

Fersten-Osten, Renee January 31

Langer, Ari January 31

Miller, Brenda February 1

Rothstein, Helen February 2

Birnbaum, Margaret February 4

Birnbaum, Sheila February 4

Nihom, Hetty February 5

Leuchter, Kurt February 6

Hirschhorn, Clara February 7

Meisel, Judith February 7

Schindelman, Sylvia February 7

Hecht, Jacob February 8

Buckel, John February 8

Klugerman, Liane February 9

Marshak, Sizanne February 11

Gottlieb, Helena February 12

Jassy, Morris February 16

Lissner, Michael, Esq. February 16

Nider Morris February 16

Benedict Lucie February 17

Gruener, Jack February 17

Glass, Lilly February 18

Lewit, Abraham February 19

Hecht, Erica February 20 Zielonka, Frieda February 20

TIDINGS & TIDBITS

Corroboration: In a ceremony which took place on October 23rd in the Hall of Names of the Yad Vashem Memorial, the German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann presented the Museum with a personal detailed directory of 600,000 former Jewish residents of Nazi Germany. The list covers the period from 1933 to 1945 and is “to date the most comprehensive record of German Jewish life during the Nazi-era.”

The directory includes all relevant aspects; i.e: whether the individual survived or perished, or if his/her fate is unknown. Also listed are former addresses, details on emigration or on detention and deportation and where and when the individual perished.

Twenty scientists researched for four years, at the cost of $2.25 million, to compile the directory. The records will also be made available to the USHM Museum in Washington, DC; to the ITS in Bad Arolsen and to the Claims Conference.

The Chairman of the German Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”, Mr. Martin Salm commented: “It is a memorial to those murdered and those forced into exile. The shame for the crimes committed by the Germans is mixed with grief for the loss that Germany inflicted upon itself.”

Kristallnacht - A German Grief?

The small Jewish community (30 members) of the German town of Goerlitz has planned to hold a ceremony – memorializing Kristallnacht on the 70th anniversary – in the town’s renovated synagogue which dated back to 1909. They had planned to bring a Torah scroll from Dresden for the occasion.

The synagogue had first been bought by the city of Goerlitz from the remnants of the Jewish community of Dresden and subsequently they had to formally purchase it again from the Claims Conference.

The local Protestant church had received authorization from the town’s officials to hold its annual Kristalnacht commemoration --which traditionally focused on all victims of the Nazis -- and the officials refused to let the small Jewish community hold its own separate ceremony. The city council contends that all ceremonies must be secular and open to all. The entire event planned by the Jewish community, including speeches and performances, had to be cancelled.

Exposure: A Viennese student, doing research for an academic project, uncovered a suspected Nazi war criminal . During an interview, the individual allegedly remembered taking part in the murder of 60 Jewish prisoners in March 1945. The slaughter took place in a forest near the town of Deutsch-Schutzen in Austria. The suspect, an 89-year-old man, was a member of the Waffen-SS. A mass grave was discovered in 1995.

The student informed his professor and together they traveled to the residence of the individual in Germany. They conducted three more interviews, each for several hours. The man alternately admitted and later denied taking part in the shootings. The professor notified the State’s chief prosecutor Ulrich Maas in Dortmund, who held the first investigation on August 15th.

The student, Andreas Foster, and his professor, political scientist Walter Manoschek, plan to present their interview in a documentary film.

UNUSUAL LAWSUIT

Fred Westfield, an 82-year old holocaust survivor, who was saved by the ‘Kindertransport’ program, is suing the German government for compensation for his uncle’s extensive art collection. In lieu of asking for the return of some 400 or more artworks -- including paintings by Masters Frans Hals, Peter Paul Rubens, French impressionist Camille Pissaro and by El Greco -- Westfield, a retired economics professor, is seeking monetary damages. His uncle Walter Westfield was arrested a few days after Kristallnacht and the Nazis auctioned off hundreds of his paintings and tapestries. The auction took place under the pretext that Westfield had to pay a fine that the Nazis’ prosecutor and Court had imposed on fabricated offenses. Walter Westfield remained imprisoned and later was killed in Auschwitz.

Under rules of FSIA, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and the Den Hague Convention, Germany has three months to accept the lawsuit or reject it on grounds that it is a Sovereign Nation.

STEALTHY THIEVES ?

In an article by Tomer Zarchin in the Haaretz of November 8th, 2008, titled “ Treasury Acted As Stealthy Thieves in Handling Holocaust Victims; Property”, he accuses the Israeli Finance Ministry of allegedly having “ordered the destruction of ownership documents of land in British-mandate Palestine, that was purchased by European Jews who died in the Holocaust.” “The land was then sold to third parties who were unaware if the true owners’ identity.” “The Treasury’s Security officer in the 1950s…ordered the destruction of all real estate files.”

Zarchin writes further:

“The commission found that the treasury destroyed the files after requesting to see archive material that pertained to victim-owned land which the Jewish National Fund sold and partitioned to other parties. Additional companies that dealt with land that belonged to Holocaust victims include Yachin, an agricultural conglomerate, and a daughter-company of the JNF, Himnuta.”

“ Various occurrences cannot but lead to the conclusion that these institutions acted with blatant impropriety when handling the assets of Holocaust victims. For the sake of clarity, it needs to be said that these institutions acted as stealthy thieves, as market-place hagglers, and they certainly did not act as public institutions are expected to act.

The assets in question are property in the Sharon region, mainly around Netanya, Tel Mond. Emek Hefer, Hof Hasharon, Bnei Zion, Batzra and Harutzim. JNF[had] leased the lands to dozen of East European Jews before the Holocaust.”

Another letter of correspondence, which the team believes came from the offices of the JNF or Himnuta, concerns arrangements to register victim-owned land as JNF land: “In cases where we are able to ascertain that the owners are indeed missing, it is preferable if we transfer the land to our names through the rabbinical court system rather than through our arrangement with the government.”

In a November 10th update, Zarchin reports that there are indications that a large block of land ( 267 acres) north of the Yarkon river and west of Ramat Aviv, may have belonged to unidentified Holocaust victims. These lands constitute some of Tel-Aviv’s most expensive real-estate. Reportedly, Sde Dov airport, slated for demolition, stands on 43 percent of the land.

A NON-JEWISH WITNESS

. published a story of an U.S. soldier, Anthony Acevedo, a medic, who was captured during the Battle of the Bulge, imprisoned in a sub-camp of Buchenwald and – together with 350 other U.S. soldiers – used by the Nazis as slave laborer.

He was captured on the 6th of January 1945 and initially taken to a prison camp Stalag IX-B in Bad Orb with thousands of American, French, Italian and Russian soldiers.

One day a German commander gathered the American soldiers and asked all Jews to step forward. About 90 Jewish soldiers and another 260 U.S. soldiers who “looked like Jews” were deemed “undesirables” and selected, including Acevedo who is not Jewish. The Nazis crammed them into boxcars – 80 individuals in each boxcar – which traveled for six days and six nights until they arrived at Berga An Der Elster, a Buchenwald sub-camp.

The prisoners had to work 12 hours a day, digging tunnels and hiding equipment in the tunnels. They were given 100 grams of bread per week, made of redwood sawdust and soup that – according to Acevedo – was made from cats and rats. Less that half of the soldiers survived their captivity and a subsequent death march. Soldiers that tried to escape and were captured alive, were executed with gunshots to their heads, using wooden bullets. The medics were asked to fill the execution holes with wax.

When the Allies approached, the soldiers were taken on a 217 miles death march that lasted three weeks. Of the 300 soldiers who started the march, only 165 were alive when they were liberated.

“Acevedo’s story was never supposed to be told. The liberated soldiers had to sign affidavits never to reveal their ordeals. The U.S. Army Center of Military History provided CNN a copy of the document signed by soldiers at the camp before they were sent back home: “You must be particularly on your guard with persons representing the press. You must give no account of your experience in books, newspapers, periodicals, or in broadcasts or in lectures.”

The document ends with: “ I understand that disclosure to anyone else will make me liable to disciplinary action.”

When queried recently why this gag-order was imposed on the soldiers, the chief archivist at the U.S. Army Center for Military History claimed: “ The information was kept secret to protect escape and evasion techniques and the names of personnel who helped POW escapees.”

Acevedo followed the rules and kept his mouth shut for over 60 years. Even his four children did not know his war experiences. Now he feels it is too important to be forgotten. He lectures and makes presentations in local high schools, telling his experiences to today’s generation.

GLOBAL NEWS

(Items you may have overlooked)

United States:

--The Crocket County Tennessee Sheriff’s Office in conjunction with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms ATF arrested two men who allegedly planned to murder 88 blacks at a local high school and plotted to assassinate president-elect Obama. Daniel Cowart,21, and Raul Schlesselman, 18, had ties with the racist skinhead group, ‘Supreme White Alliance’.

Reportedly, the ADL had assisted in the detection and investigation.

-- The permanent Art installation and the informational plaques of the San Francisco Holocaust Memorial were defaced with drawings in black markers of swastikas inside of Stars of David. The Memorial features 11 life-size bronze-cast figures behind a barbed-wire fence.

-- A coalition of Jewish organization is denouncing the Mormon Church for breaking a promise to stop baptizing posthumously victims of concentration camps.

-- An International Conference, held in New York on November 16th and 17th, focused on Soviet Jewish soldiers, Jewish resistance and Jews in the USRR during the Holocaust.

The program was sponsored by the Blavatnik Family Foundation, the Maurice & Corinne Greenberg Fund of the USHMM, the New York University and the Center for Jewish History.

Canada:

-- In late November, a second trial started in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan against David Ahenakew, an aboriginal leader, for inciting racial hatred. In 2002, Ahenakew had told a reporter that Jews were a ‘disease’ and that Adolf Hitler had been trying to ‘clean up the world’ when he ‘fried’ 6 million during WWII. In the first trial he was convicted and fined but his conviction was overturned on appeal. The second trial is expected to test the limits of what constitutes a private conversation.

-- Canadian Judge Michael Phelan upheld a order to strip Helmut Oberlander of his citizenship because he had lied about working with Nazi Einsatzkommandos during WWII.

-- A Lebanese-Canadian citizen and sociology professor was arrested November 13th by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Hassan Diab, 54, is suspected in the 1980 bombing of a Paris Synagogue on Rue Copernic, a wealthy Eastern Paris neighborhood. The bombing resulted in four deaths and over 30 injured. French authorities have asked for his extradition and have 45 days to prove their case.

Israel:

-- In 1933, Zionist organizations negotiated an agreement with the Nazis to transfer some 50,000 Jews and $100 million of their assets to Jewish Palestine in exchange for stopping the global Jewish-led boycott which threatened to topple the Nazi regime in its first year. Details of this story can be found in the compelling, award-winning book by Edwin Black: “The Transfer Agreement.”

-- A grand-niece of Hermann Goering, Bettina Goering, is visiting Ashkelon in Israel to attend the ‘Jewish Eye’ Film Festival where a documentary film “Bloodlines” about her relationship with a child of Holocaust survivors, Ruth Rich, is being screened. The film relates to Bettina’s emotional encounter with Ruth Rich whose brother was murdered by the Nazis and whose parents emerged broken from the Holocaust. In an interview, Bettina credited her encounter with Ruth of enabling her to emanate from a guilt-ridden life.

-- Magen David Adom will be receiving a Nazi-looted painting “The Pink Wall’ by Henri Matisse (1898). The painting had been on display in the George Pompidou Center in Paris and is being returned, by the French Culture Ministry, to the estate of Harry Fuld, a Jewish art-collector from Frankfurt. Magen David Adom is the beneficiary of the estate and is trying to recover other paintings from Fuld’s collection. The painting was discovered in 1948 “among the possessions of a Nazi officer who was responsible for the delivery of Zyklon-B gas to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. The officer surrendered to French authorities in 1945 and hanged himself shortly afterwards.” (JTA)

Germany:

-- Once again, a Memorial dedicated to Jews deported from Berlin was vandalized with swastikas.

-- A former German soldier, Josef Scheungraber, now 90, was found guilty by an Italian Court in 2006 of having ordered the murders of 14 villagers in Falzano, Tuscany, in June 1944, as a reprisal for the killing of two of his men. The Italian Court sentenced him to life in prison but Germany does not extradite its citizens. Instead, the German authorities initiated their own trial in Munich.

-- Jewish cemeteries in Gotha and Erfurt, in the East German State of Thuringen, were vandalized. A banner was found with anti-Semitic graffiti, including the words: “Six Million Lies”. The bloody head of a pig was hung at Gotha’s cemetery gate. According to the A.P, on average, one Jewish cemetery per week has been vandalized.

-- There are numerous stories about the ‘Kristallnacht’ but little physical evidence, except for a few, brief black-and-white films. However, in October of 2008, an Israeli researcher reported having found a trove of piles of looted Jewish objects in a local thrash dump in the woods outside Klansdorf. Reportedly, on the day after Kristallnacht in 1938, wagons filled with personal and religious items were unloaded by political prisoners from a nearby camp and the contents thrown in a dump. The Israeli researcher Svoray, found Mezuzot and some other Jewish artifacts. Regrettably, looters have been combing the site for decades, looking for silverware and anything of value. The ‘Ghetto Fighters House’ is planning to fund a project which would bring Israeli and German youths together at the site to sift through the contents of the dump.

-- In our September issue, we reported that Nazi-hunters were on the trail of Aribert Heim, a former physician nicknamed “The Butcher of Mauthausen” who conducted torture experiments on Jewish prisoners. He is allegedly hiding in an area on the border of Argentina and Chile.

Now we learned that a son of Heim, Ruediger Heim, wants his father (now 94) to be officially declared dead. That would give him and his brother and sister the ability to lay claim to a bank account of his father of $1.78 million, that they discovered in 1997. Ruediger asserts that he would donate part of this sum to help document the suffering of the victims in the Mauthausen camp.

Eastern Europe:

-- The 67th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre was commemorated by Ukrainian officials, diplomats, Holocaust survivors and other Ukrainian Jews. Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Parliament Speaker Arseniy Yatzenyuk laid flowers at the momument.

-- A Holocaust Monument in the city of Poltava, Ukraine, was vandalized with Ukrainian nationalist symbols and anti-Semitic graffiti.

-- On September 28th, six or seven masked neo-Nazis attacked the director of a show being performed at the Budapest Jewish theater. After the second performance,while the audience was milling around the theater, the attackers sprayed acid on director Ferenc Sebo and dumped a bucket of pig feces over his head. Some bystanders were splattered with feces and badly beaten The director, actors and playwright had received threatening letters because neo-Nazi blogs had assumed that the play mocked a Hungarian cultural heritage.

-- 48,000 Jews in Bulgaria were saved by the country’s religious and political leaders; but 11,000 Jewish residents from the areas of Thrace and Macedonia – that were annexed to Bulgaria in 1941 – were arrested by Bulgarian police under Nazi orders, were deported to Treblinka and perished. President Georgi Paranov is the first Bulgarian leader to accept responsibility for the 11,000 deaths.

-- Three neo-Nazis attacked a 52-year old man in the Jewish quarter of Prague and beat him with a cobblestone.

-- About 200 graves in Bucharest’s largest Jewish cemetery were vandalized.

-- The headquarters of the Jewish Agency in the Southern city of Saratov was vandalized by hoodlums who painted swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti on the J.A. headquarters and on a neighboring building that houses the local ‘Chesed’ welfare agency.

Down Under:

-- On December 6th, 1938, a delegation of Australian aborigines, headed by William Cooper, delivered a petition to the German consulate in Melbourne, protesting the “cruel persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazi government of Germany.”

Now, 70 years later, Yad Vashem will plant 70 Australian trees in honor of their humanitarian action. Israeli ambassador Yuval Rotem presented a Citation in Honor to the grandson of Cooper, Boydie Turner, on December 2nd, 2008 at the State Parliament House, in presence of Premier John Brumby.

-- John Key, 47, the son of a Jewish refugee, Ruth Lazar, was elected Prime Minister of New Zealand. John Key’s alcoholic father died when Key was 7-years old and he was raised by his mother in government housing. An aunt of Ruth arranged a marriage of Ruth in Britain on the eve of WWII, which enabled the family to escape Austria in 1939. Key does not practice Judaism but hopes to visit Israel where he has cousins and he intends to pay his respects at Yad Vashem.

WHERE TO GO

WHAT TO SEE:

Manhattan:

(1) At The Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Pl., NYC. Tel: 646-437-2000. Seniors: $7.oo

a) Exhibit: “The shooting of the Jews Of Ukraine- Holocaust by Bullets”. This new exhibit displays much of the forensic evidence; i.e.: classified communiqués, bullets, testimonials, mostly the result of the scrupulous research by French Catholic priest, father Patrick DesBois who, over a number of years, uncovered the mass graves of 1.5million Jews murdered by the Nazis. The exhibit closes Feb. 16th.

b) On January 11th, 2009, 2PM:

An afternoon of dance, theater, and live music: “The Legacy Project: Echoes” with artist daughters of Holocaust survivors from two continents.

(2) At the Center for Jewish History, 15 W. 16 Street, NYC; Tel: 212-294-8330

a) Until December 31st, 2008, presented by Leo Baeck Institute: “Fighting For The Fatherland – The Patriotism of Jews in World War I.”

b) Until January 4th, 2009: “American Jewish Chaplains and the Survivors, 1945-1953.”

(3) At the United Nations’ headquarters; Visitors’ Lobby East 46 Street and First Avenue. From January, 26th to March, 24th; 2009. USHMM exhibit Deadly Medicine- Creating the Master Race.” Info:



(4) At the Austrian Cultural Forum, 11 East 52nd Street (between 5th and Madison Avenues).

On January 27th, 2009; 7.30PM: Concert in Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust: Found Objects – A Musical Literary Expedition into “The Lahr Von Leitis Archive.” For info:



(5) At the Holocaust Resource Center at Temple Judea, Manhasset;

For info: 516-621-8049

Exhibit until April 2009: “The Memory Project: Loss, Memory, History, Art.” Holocaust survivor’s riveting testimony about life in the Warsaw ghetto.

Whippany, New Jersey:

At the Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus; Holocaust Council of Metrowest.

Reel to Reel Film Series:

On December 15th, 2008; 7PM: “The Rape of Europe”. Discussion and light refreshments.

RSVP to 973-929-3194 or: holocaustcouncil@

Houston, Texas:

At The Holocaust Museum

a) Until December 31st, 2008; Exhibit: “Bearing Witness – A Community Remembers.” Authentic film footage, artifacts, collection of children shoes, documents, etc…

b) Until February 8th, 2009, at the Mincberg Gallery; exhibit: “A One-Man Army; the Art of Arthur Szyk” work of Polish Jewish artist who escaped in 1940s to the U.S.

VISITING PROGRAMS

(I) iVolunteer, a visiting program in New York City, sends volunteers to the homes of Holocaust survivors, providing them with companionship and needed assistance. The volunteers are carefully matched with survivors who live nearby and share common interests. Through weekly visits the volunteers build rewarding friendships with survivors

For info:

(II) Connect2, in Southern Brooklyn, provides friendly visits and regular telephone contacts. They also assist elderly with reading mail, shopping, and other needs. All Connect2 volunteers are screened and trained prior to beginning home visits. Holocaust survivors who want to be part of this program, please call: 718-449-5000; ext. 2216

NAHOS Inc.

The National Association of Jewish

Child Holocaust Survivors, Inc.

P.O.Box 670125, Station C

Main Street, Flushing, N.Y. 11367

Fax: (718) 820-0859; or e-mail:

estherhamalka@

or: leotonirech@

President & Editor:

Leo Rechter

Executive V.P. Public Relations:

Esther Widman

Treasurers:

Gilberte Hunkins

Minia Moszenberg

Auditor:

Sol Lipper

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