WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Pope Benedict is being invited to visit the site of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz during an expected visit to Poland in May.
A spokesman says the Archbishop of Krakow, who was an aide to the late Pope John Paul the Second, also invited the new pope to two other Polish cities.
The Reverend Robert Necek tells The Associated Press that an invitation has been extended to visit John Paul’s hometown (Wadowice) and Krakow, where the late pope lived for 40 years as a priest and bishop.
John Paul was the first pope to visit any concentration camp. He went to Auschwitz in 1979. German authorities built the camp in southern Poland where about one-and-a-half (m) million people, most of them Jews, died during World War Two.

jta.org

U.S. congressional representatives pressed Bulgaria on a World War II-era compensation issue.
The letter urged Bulgaria’s president and prime minister to see that the country’s Jews receive their “rightful share� of the value of a hotel built in Sofia on the site of a prewar Jewish school. Bulgaria’s Jewish community is appealing a Bulgarian court decision from July that rejected Jewish claims to nearly half the property now occupied by the Rila Hotel.

The property was confiscated in 1943, and an administrative court ruled in 1992 that the Jewish community was entitled to just under 50 percent of it.

The letter, sent last week, was signed by two co-chairmen of the Congressional Bulgaria Caucus, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) and Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-S.C.), as well as by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), the ranking Democratic member of the House of Representatives’ International Relations Committee.

Last update - 02:36 30/12/2005

By Amiram Barkat, Haaretz Correspondent

The Jewish Colonial Trust (JCT), a company holding Holocaust victims’ assets, is bitterly opposed to transferring the money to a government-owned company mandated by a recent Knesset law to restore the funds to survivors. The majority of the JCT’s 70,000 Jewish shareholders died under the Nazis, but the company insists on continuing to manage its $500 million holdings.
MORE.

Dear All–

We hope you can join us for our first event of ‘06!

Friday, January 20, 2006 @ 8pm
3GNY Shabbat Dinner
Makor — 35 W. 67th Street
Price: $30/person or $50/couple

Guest Speaker: Thane Rosenbaum

3GNY’s first Shabbat Dinner will be a casual affair where you will have the opportunity to meet other young professional 3Gs living in the metropolitan area. Bring a friend or two, learn a little more about our group and stay after the meal to hear a brief talk given by special guest, Thane Rosenbaum.

Thane Rosenbaum is an award-winning novelist and the son of Holocaust survivors. Thane is a professor at Fordham Law School teaching Human Rights and Moral Justice, and his essays appear frequently in the New York Times, and other publications. His talk will focus on the themes in his latest novel, “The Golems of Gotham,” which deals with how the Holocaust is viewed today and whose main character is a grandchild of survivors.

You can pre-order a copy of “The Golems of Gotham” at the discounted rate of $12 per book online HERE when purchasing tickets. The book will not be available for purchase at the Shabbat dinner, but you can pick up your signed copy that night at Makor when you purchase a ticket and book package online.

* For more information about this event or to RSVP, please email Naomi Lopin at nlopin {at} 92y(.)org
or find this event listed on the Makor website HERE.

* Registration is required by Wednesday January 18th

* Vegetarian dinners optional with phone reservations

Have a Happy Hanukkah and Shana Tova!

Daniel Brooks,
3GNY

Ad offering trip to Auschwitz seen as
‘outrageous and beyond tasteless’

By Dinah Spritzer
December 28, 2005

PRAGUE, Dec. 28 (JTA) — A Polish Jewish leader is criticizing a Polish bus company’s recent advertisement for round-trip tickets to Auschwitz, with barbed wire in the ad’s background. The advertisement is “outrageous and beyond tasteless,� said Piotr Kadlcik, chairman of Poland’s Union of Religious Jewish Communities. MORE.

Holocaust-era rail car evokes painful memories
Artifact that will go on display at museum here is unveiled at ceremony

By MELANIE MARKLEY
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Al Marks could barely contain his emotions as he lighted a candle at the base of the World War II-era rail car that had just arrived from Germany for display at the Holocaust Museum Houston. more.

Concord Monitor editorial

Now that a Pittsfield English teacher’s well-meaning but flawed attempt to teach his students about the Holocaust has been sharply criticized, he and other teachers may be tempted to scrap the subject altogether. That would be the worst possible end to this story.

Pittsfield Middle High School’s Harry Mitchell took a risk when he decided to supplement his eighth graders’ discussion of Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. An extra assignment asked the students to make and wear a yellow star, like the symbol Jews were made to wear in Nazi Germany. “My intention with the star,” Mitchell told Monitorreporter Anne Ruderman, “was to get them to have some empathy and the feeling of what it was like to have to identify yourself with a symbol. If you’re not wearing it, you’re not getting the full awareness of Anne and her family.”
MORE.

SALEM NEWS ONLINE

Students confront horror of Holocaust through visit, poetry

By Bruno Matarazzo Jr.
Staff writer

HAMILTON — For high school freshman Aimee Nelson, approaching the six luminous glass towers at the New England Holocaust Memorial in downtown Boston was so overwhelming, she didn’t know how to react. MORE.

Austria to compensate Holocaust survivorsAssociated PressVIENNA, Austria - About 3,000 people have been cleared to receive the first payments from an Austrian fund to compensate Holocaust survivors, and another 3,000 should be approved shortly, the fund’s chief overseer said Thursday.

Hannah Lessing, general secretary of the General Settlement Fund, told the Austria Press Agency that the first cash payments will be made by Saturday. MORE.

CHARLOTTE OBSERVER

Posted on Thu, Dec. 29, 2005
GUEST COLUMN

Survivor tells students of Holocaust horrors
Susan Cernyak-Spatz answers questions and urges class to remember

TRISTAN WATERING
Special to Cabarrus Neighbors

The most horrific period in the history of the world seems like a distant memory for many of the kids born in the past few decades. Unfortunately, some do not even know what the Holocaust was or even deny that it ever happened. MORE.
MORE.