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Friday February 2, 2007

Shorts: World

Anti-Semitic incidents up in Europe

Anti-Semitic attacks rose in 2006, especially in Europe, an Israeli study said.

The severity of the violence intensified in some cases, according to the study released Sunday, Jan. 28 by the Global Forum Against Anti-Semitism.

There were hundreds of violent attacks ranging from murder to bodily injury, property damage and threats, according to the report.

In Austria, incidents jumped 66 percent in the past year, in Germany 60 percent and in Scandinavian countries 50 percent. In France and Russia, anti-Semitic incidents increased 20 percent. Ukraine and the United Kingdom reported a slight decrease in attacks in 2006, the study said. It stated that Holocaust denial and growing anti-Jewish sentiment following Israel’s war with Lebanon seemed to attribute to the rise in anti-Semitic incidents. — jta

Holocaust memorial used as urinal

Some visitors to Germany’s main Holocaust memorial in Berlin reportedly have been using it as a urinal. According to a report in Spiegel Online, the problem began soon after the memorial opened in May 2005.

Designed by New York architect Peter Eisenman, the large memorial consists of 2,711 cement slabs of varying heights, arranged along a grid, and covers an area the size of three soccer fields.

Officials at the memorial kept the problem quiet at first, and portable toilets solved the problem to some extent. But other behavior, such as people picnicking or sunbathing on the slabs, was much discussed in German media.

Memorial director Uwe Neumarker has proposed installing a permanent public restroom alongside the site. — jta

Poland honors Auschwitz efforts

Poland honored its citizens who tried to aid victims of Auschwitz. At a ceremony outside the former concentration camp Saturday, Jan. 27, residents of Oswiecim, where Auschwitz was located, and Holocaust survivors listened to a letter from President Lech Kaczynski praising the efforts of those who risked their lives to help those persecuted by the Nazis.

“World public opinion has often held that the residents of the area were completely indifferent to the fate of the prisoners,” Kaczynski said in the letter, read on the 62nd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

A presidential aide awarded medals to some 40 people from Oswiecim and surrounding villages to honor them for trying to help Nazi victims. The Nazis murdered 1.5 million people at Auschwitz, about 90 percent of whom were Jewish. — jta

Buchenwald puts photos online

For the first time, a concentration camp memorial has placed its photo archive online. The memorial at the former Buchenwald concentration camp presented a digital archive of some of its 10,000 historical photos on the Internet, according to a report by Agence France Presse.

The goal was to preserve the memory of victims at a time when fewer survivors and other eyewitnesses remain alive to tell the story. The announcement was linked to Holocaust Memorial Day.

Some 56,000 people died at Buchenwald, located outside Weimar in the former East Germany. — jta

David Irving denies gas chambers existed

Holocaust denier David Irving said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.

“At Auschwitz they did not have gas chambers, or at least there is no proof that I am satisfied with,” the British revisionist said in a recent interview with Italy’s Sky TG24 News.

Irving was convicted and jailed in February 2006 by Austrian authorities for Holocaust denial. His three-year sentence was reduced in an appeal and he was released in November on probation. — jta

Canadian synagogue vandalized

A swastika and anti-Semitic graffiti were discovered on a synagogue in Edmonton, Canada.

Below a swastika on the front doors of the Beth Israel Synagogue, someone wrote, “This means not welcome — get out.”

The vandalism occurred shortly before Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach was due to arrive for the shul’s 100th anniversary dinner. The doors were quickly cleaned so as not to mar the celebration.

The synagogue, Edmonton’s oldest, was attacked with Molotov cocktails seven years ago; a Palestinian immigrant from Lebanon was later apprehended in that attack. — jta

Iranian elite mark Holocaust

More than 100 Iranian scholars, writers and activists living at home and abroad honored Holocaust victims and excoriated Iran’s government for denying the genocide.

A petition appearing in the latest New York Review of Books begins by calling the Nazis’ “Final Solution” and their ensuing campaign of genocide “undeniable historical facts,” deplores the Iranian regime’s use of Holocaust denial as “a propaganda tool” and says “the new brand of anti-Semitism prevalent in the Middle East today” has no precedent in Iran’s history.

The petition concludes by saying that the petitioners “pay homage to the memory of the millions of Jewish and non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and express our empathy for the survivors of this immense tragedy as well as all other victims of crimes against humanity across the world.” — jta

Berlin sends female rabbi to pulpit

Berlin’s Jewish community elected a female rabbi to a pulpit position. This marks the first time in Berlin that a female rabbi has been recognized by the official community.

The board of the Jewish community voted 17-12 on Jan. 24 to install Rabbi Gesa Shira Ederberg, 38, to serve in the egalitarian congregation of Beit Ohr.

Ederberg, a Conservative rabbi, was ordained in January 2002 in Jerusalem at the Schechter Institute for Jewish Studies. In September 2006, the congregation in Berlin voted to hire Ederberg as its part-time rabbi.

The first German woman known to have been ordained — Regina Jonas, a Berliner who was murdered in Auschwitz — was hired as a teacher by the Jewish community during the Nazi period. She delivered occasional sermons but never served as a pulpit rabbi. — jta

Anne Frank’s father’s letters found

Letters were found from Anne Frank’s father documenting his attempts to get his family out of Nazi-occupied Holland.

Time magazine reported that in the summer of 2005, Estelle Guzik, a volunteer archivist at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, found some 80 documents of Otto Frank’s correspondence from 1941 tracking his attempts to take his family to safety in the United States. His pleas went unanswered.

The Frank family went into hiding in 1942, but ultimately was discovered and sent to Nazi concentration camps.

YIVO, which inherited the documents from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, didn’t immediately disclose the find due to legal concerns. It announced that it will release the documents Feb. 14, Time reported. — jta

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