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Friday November 17, 2006

Shorts: World

New Munich synagogue opens

munich (ap) | Nearly 70 years after Adolf Hitler declared Munich’s main synagogue an “eyesore” in the center of his power base and personally ordered it torn down, the city’s Jews celebrated a return to the heart of the southern German city.

On Nov. 9, the 68th anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, Torah scrolls were marched, flanked by hundreds of onlookers and secured by some 1,500 police officers, through the winding cobblestone streets of downtown Munich to a newly built synagogue in the heart of the city.

Charlotte Knobloch, president of Germany’s main Jewish group and a Munich native who survived the night when synagogues and Jewish businesses across Germany were attacked, praised the new synagogue and community center as a statement that Jews survived in Munich.

“It has always been my great wish to open the Ohel Jakob synagogue, Munich’s new main synagogue,” Knobloch said. “Because today we can show the entire world that Hitler did not succeed in annihilating us. There are Jews in the former capital of the Nazi movement.”

Rioters vandalize Kristallnacht memorial

frankfurt (jta) | Police in a town in eastern Germany arrested 16 neo-Nazis who tore up wreaths at a Kristallnacht memorial.

The wreaths, destroyed during a riot in Frankfurt an der Oder, had been laid at the site of a synagogue destroyed in the 1938 anti-Jewish riots that signaled the advent of the Holocaust. Nov. 9 marked the pogrom’s 68th anniversary. Police said those arrested were between ages 16 and 24.

Neo-Nazism is more of a problem in eastern Germany, with higher unemployment and little tradition of education about Germany’s fascist past, than in other parts of the country.

Canadian Hillel House attacked

vancouver (jta) | Vandals threw rocks and shattered windows at Hillel House at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Mark Weintraub, chair of the Canadian Jewish Congress’ Pacific region, noted that the vandalism occurred during Holocaust Awareness Week, a coincidence that “further highlights the heinous nature of this crime.”

Volkswagen honors survivor

braunschweig (jta) | German carmaker Volksagen honored a man who survived the Holocaust by pretending to be a member of Hitler youth and working in one of its factories.

The plaque for Solomon Perel, 81, was unveiled Monday, Nov. 13 in the Volkswagen plant in Braunschweig, where he was apprenticed as a toolmaker during World War II.

The German-born Perel has lived in Israel since 1948. His story was the basis for the 1990 film, “Europa, Europa.”

Auschwitz renovation sparks concern

oswiecim (ap) | A proposal to renovate the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp in Poland is drawing criticism from Holocaust survivors in Israel, who fear modernization will disturb the camp’s original state and the somber memorial to those who suffered and died there.

The renovations, proposed by Piotr Cywinski, 34, the new director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, call for updating five exhibits housed in former prisoner barracks, and establishing a new education center to modernize the message of the memorial for younger generations.

But Holocaust survivors in Israel are worried that the renovations could make the camp seem more like a museum and less like the site where nearly 1.5 million people, most of them Jews, were slaughtered by the Nazis.

“We have a lot of museums. We have a lot of places where we talk about the Holocaust, but Auschwitz is the original place where it happened,” said Noach Flug, president of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel.

Argentine judge orders Rafsanjani captured

buenos aires (jps) | A federal judge said he was seeking the “international capture” of former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani and eight others in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center that killed 85 people.

A special prosecutor sought the order, alleging that the worst terrorist attack ever on Argentine soil was orchestrated by leaders of the Iranian government and entrusted to Hezbollah.

Austrian lawmaker praises Nazism

vienna (jta) | A member of the Austrian Parliament said Nazism had its “good sides.” Wolfgang Zanger, a member of the far-right Freedom Party, said: “Of course Nazism had its good sides, only we don’t want to see them today” in a televison interview.

Eleven mainstream parties condemned Zanger’s remarks and the Green Party called on him to resign. Zanger, 37, is one of 21 Freedom Party members in the Parliament since Oct. 1 elections.

The Freedom Party, which has a history of anti-Semitic and racist statements, won 11 percent of the vote.

No airlift for Indian Jews

new delhi (jta) | A planned airlift of Indian Jews to Israel was canceled out of concern that diplomatic relations between India and Israel could be harmed.

A group of 218 members of the Bnei Menashe, a community from northeastern India that claims descent from the tribe of Menashe, will still be immigrating to Israel but in smaller, staggered groups, immigration officials said.

The officials said the Indian government had been wary of a major media focus on the previously scheduled airlift for Nov. 21. The group was converted last year by rabbinical judges sent to India by Israel’s Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar. Amar has declared Bnei Menashe “descendants of the Jewish people” and has been working to help facilitate the aliyah of those who want to live in Israel.

Fire guts Toronto kosher store

toronto (jta) | One of Toronto’s major kosher stores has been destroyed.

A four-alarm fire broke out on Friday, Nov. 10 at Perl’s Meats, causing an estimated $1.76 million in damage.

Fire department officials said the blaze was caused when a second-floor oven burst into flames, igniting dried-out old wood.

Company founder Herman Perl, a Holocaust survivor who started the business with $24 more than a half-century ago, said he hoped to be back in business soon in temporary premises until the building can be repaired or rebuilt.

Perl’s was located in the heart of Toronto’s midtown Orthodox district.

Anti-Semitic salute draws light sentences

vienna (ap) | Three soccer fans who admitted making Nazi salutes in front of a concentration camp memorial in northern Austria received suspended sentences on Wednesday, Nov. 15.

Two others were cleared of the charge that they broke an Austrian law banning attempts to diminish, deny or justify the Holocaust.

During the one-day trial by an Upper Austria court, all five had admitted making the salutes as they posed for a photo in front of the Mauthausen memorial. But they disputed that they had acted out of right-wing conviction, arguing instead that they were drunk at the time. Three of the five said they participated because of peer pressure.

The other two, who also were charged with posting the photo on the Web site of their fan club, were found guilty, and received suspended two-year sentences.

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