French Jews petition U.S. for asylum
More than 7,000 French Jews have signed a petition asking for political asylum in the United States because of anti-Semitism in France.
“Following the barbarous murder of a young Jew because he was Jewish, in the context of the rise in anti-Semitic acts committed by Islamic fundamentalists, numerous members of the community no longer feel safe in France,” reads the petition, which was sent to the U.S. Congress. The reference was to Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old Parisian Jew who was kidnapped and tortured to death last year by an anti-Semitic gang.
The petition asks Congress to enact a law according refugee status to French Jews. — jta
Hungarian Jews urged to leave for own safety
Hungarian Jews were urged to consider leaving during Passover for fear of anti-Semitic attacks. The rise of the far right during recent political upheavals in Hungary prompted local rabbis to post an ad in a Jewish newspaper telling community members to go abroad for the April holiday.
“We are really afraid of the troubles that will happen on the street during the holiday and think it is better to leave Budapest or just stay home,” Hungarian Jewish leader Peter Feldmeier said. “The notice expresses how fed up we are with the strong voices of the Hungarian Nazis and with the anti-Semitic movements in the country, which claim that the Jews are to blame for Hungary’s situation.” — jta
German Jew’s bodyguards said to have neo-Nazi ties
A former German Jewish leader expressed alarm last week at reports that some of his former police bodyguards apparently had neo-Nazi sympathies.
The affair centers on three police bodyguards provided to Michel Friedman, who was a vice president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews until 2003.
Frankfurt prosecutors are investigating a 43-year-old officer on whose computer hard drive a copy of the Nazis’ rallying song “Horst Wessel” was found.
Similar investigations were dropped against two more officers who used banned Nazi symbols. One posed in an SS uniform and another had recordings of far-right music. Prosecutors determined they could not pursue criminal charges because although the men possessed the materials, they did not distribute them further. All three police officers had been suspended or transferred. Two of the officers remain under internal police investigation, a ministry statement said. — ap
WJC president says Singer took funds
World Jewish Congress President Edgar Bronfman says he dismissed Rabbi Israel Singer from the organization last week because Singer was taking money without proper authorization or documentation.
Bronfman made the allegations in a March 14 letter to European Jewish Congress President Pierre Besnainou. It came after WJC affiliates in Europe, Latin America and Israel expressed dismay about being notified in a conference call earlier that day that Singer — who has held a variety of top positions in the WJC over the past 30 years — had been fired.
Singer “helped himself to cash from the WJC office, my cash,” Bronfman wrote in the letter. “We thought we had that all cleared up, and then we discovered that he was playing the same game in Israel, taking cash from the office and never accounting for it.”
Bronfman also announced in the March 14 call that Bobby Brown, director-general of the Israel branch, had been fired and the branch’s funding had been cut off. — jta
Non-Jewish Polish teens protest anti-Semitic graffiti
Sixty Polish teenagers protested anti-Semitic graffiti by staging a demonstration in the Lodz City Hall.
The teens, who are not Jewish, stood on the stairs inside the city hall on March 14 holding examples of the numerous anti-Semitic slogans that are scrawled across Lodz, such as “Gas the Jews” and slurs against the Widzew Lodz soccer team.
Such graffiti is more prevalent in Lodz, the second-largest city in Poland with 1 million people, than elsewhere in the country. Lodz was one-third Jewish before World War II. — jta
Poland to recognize
little-known Nazi concentration camp
Polish authorities are working on plans to mark a little-known Nazi concentration camp and nearby military installation.
The Pustkow labor camp, where 15,000 inmates died, was dismantled before the end of the war, and local official Andrzej Regula said it needs to be recognized before its existence is forgotten with the passage of time.
“If 15,000 people were killed here, the world should know about this,” Regula said in a telephone interview from the area, about 180 miles south of Warsaw. “Everyone knows about Auschwitz because it was left there, but Pustkow was taken apart and no one knows about it.”
Current ideas include a museum or reconstructing some of the camp’s barracks, Regula said.
Most of the inmates were Russian POWs, but some 3,000 Jews also died in the camp, Regula said. — ap
Polish radio to start Hebrew broadcasts
Polish state radio will begin broadcasting a daily program in Hebrew next week in an attempt to give Israelis an up-to-date picture of the country where many have their roots.
The program, funded in part by Poland’s Foreign Ministry, will air for the first time on March 26.
Kol Polin, or Voice of Poland, is meant to “let Israelis know that there is a living, breathing Jewish community here,” said Michael Hermon, an Israeli living in Warsaw who will be one of two presenters. “It’s not only museums and concentration camps.”
The program will consist of 30 minutes of news and entertainment every day except Saturday. Topics will include Jewish life in Poland, general politics, culture and business.
Hermon said the radio network was working to obtain an FM radio frequency in Israel, and in the meantime would broadcast on the Internet. — ap
Poland honors Righteous Gentile
A Polish Catholic woman who saved 2,500 Jews from the Nazis was honored by the Polish Senate.
Irena Sendler, now 97, was a social worker in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation of Poland. With the help of the Polish underground army, Sendler helped smuggle Jews out of the Warsaw Ghetto. She was tortured by the Nazis when they discovered her activities.
Now living in a Warsaw nursing home, Sendler’s efforts to save Jews were largely unknown in the wider world until recently. The Polish government is supporting her nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. Yad Vashem has named her Righteous Among the Gentiles. — jta
B’nai B’rith opens office in Brussels
B’nai B’rith International has opened an office in Brussels, Belgium to mark the Washington-based organization’s closer involvement in European affairs.
“We intend to monitor issues of racism and xenophobia, and hope to strengthen the fight against them in this way,” said Adam Mouchtar, director of the new office. — jta
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California