3GNY would like to thank everyone who was at the Shabbat Dinner on the
20th. The turnout was incredible — our largest yet - and we’re very
excited about the continued and growing interest. This was also the
first event of what will be an important and productive year for our
group.

We’d like to thank Makor for hosting and organizing the dinner,
especially Rachel Silverman, Makor’s rabbinic intern who lead the
service.

We’d also like to offer a special thanks to Thane Rosenbaum for giving
a novel and thoughtful talk about his book “The Golems of Gotham”. He
read a chapter from “Golems” and he also brought up several
Holocaust-related issues we have yet to discuss as a group. Of note:
the use of the Holocaust in works of fiction, how and where it’s been
trivialized (Thane touched upon Anne Frank’s diary and how the version
most of us know was watered down for public consumption - by her
father) and how suicide among Holocaust survivors is extremely rare.
This fact came up as Thane discussed the book’s main character, Ariel,
trying to bring back to life her grandparents - survivors who committed
suicide before she was born. These topics got people talking.

To continue discussing these issues and others, please visit the
discussion boards on our website: 3gnewyork.org

We look forward to seeing everyone at our next event:

Darfur: Raising Awareness Together
Tuesday, February 21st @ 8pm
Makor - 35 W. 67th St.

We’ll focus on the atrocities currently being committed in Darfur, and
how to bring attention to this tragedy and prevent others like it. More
details to come.

Please RSVP to info {at} 3gnewyork(.)org

- 3GNY

SECOND GENERATION LOS ANGELES

invites you to a special screening of

“PAPERCLIPS”

Whitwell Middle School in rural Tennessee is the setting for this documentary about an extraordinary experiment in Holocaust education. Struggling to grasp the concept of six million Holocaust victims, the students decide to collect six million paperclips to better understand the extent of this crime against humanity. The film details how the students met Holocaust survivors from around the world and how the experience transformed them and their community forever.

GUEST SPEAKERS -
Dagmar and Peter Schroeder

Authors of Paperclips: The Making of the Children’s Holocaust Memorial, named “An Association of Jewish Libraries Notable Children’s Book”

The Schroeders, White House correspondents for a group of German newspapers, helped the school publicize the project to collect millions of paperclips. This amazing couple was instrumental in the project’s success and was responsible for finding and procuring a rail car that was used to transport Jews to concentration camps. The train is now known as the Children’s Holocaust Memorial in Whitwell, Tennessee.

Monday, February 13, 2006

7:00 p.m. sharp

Emanuel Arts Theater

Temple Emanuel

8844 Burton Way, Beverly Hills 90211

Co-sponsored by:

Hadassah

Second Generation Los Angeles

Lodzer Organization

Emanuel Arts

LIMITED SEATING - RESERVATIONS BY CHECK IN ADVANCE ONLY

DESSERT RECEPTION WILL FOLLOW THE SCREENING AND DISCUSSION

Donation $15.00 per person

Special reserved section $25.00 per person

Payable to: Second Generation

For further information, please contact:
Doris Montrose
doriswise {at} sbcglobal(.)net

Tuesday, January 31, 2006
BY MARY JO PATTERSON
Star-Ledger Staff
A Jewish social service organization in Elizabeth is among the agencies chosen to distribute funds worldwide to needy Hungarian Holocaust survivors.

The Jewish Family Service Agency will be given $33,678 of $21 million just released as a result of the so-called “Gold Train” class action lawsuit.

That lawsuit, filed in 2001 and settled last year, alleged that U.S. military personnel stole valuables belonging to Hungarian Jews off a train at the end of World War II. The train, stopped in Austria, was carrying jewelry, gold, artwork, china, religious treasures and other items seized earlier by the Nazis.

As part of the settlement, the U.S. government issued a statement of regret for the soldiers’ actions.

Many of the 33 plaintiffs, including Agnes and Gabor Somjen of New Jersey, do not qualify for any of the settlement money as they are not needy.

“It will benefit Hungarian Jews, and I am satisfied. I was not looking for any individual compensation,” Agnes Somjen, who lives in Morris County, said yesterday. Her parents were forced to turn over their possessions in 1944, she said.

Somjen, 74, said she and her husband have lived in New Jersey since 1958. Her husband was a physician in Dover, and she was his secretary. “We worked hard and since we retired, we are living on our pension and IRA,” she said.

Jonathan Cuneo, an attorney in Washington, D.C., representing the Holocaust survivors, said the Somjens and other plaintiffs became plaintiffs out of “altruism.”

“Frankly, they are only too delighted to have the money go to their colleagues in need,” he said yesterday. “This suit has never been about money alone.”

Money from the settlement will be used for emergency services such as medicine, food, housing and home care to Hungarians judged financially needy.

About 62,000 Hungarian survivors of the Holocaust are spread around the world today.

How many live in New Jersey is not known, said Tom Beck, executive director of the Jewish Family Service Agency in Elizabeth.

“We estimate that in New Jersey there are 7,000 Holocaust survivors from all over,” he said. “We don’t know how many are from Hungary, but we do have on a record of a number of them who are needy.”

By PABLO GORONDI (Associated Press Writer)
Associated Press
01/26/2006

BUDAPEST, Hungary - Confined to a hospital bed and tired of the bland food, Anna Somogyi wishes she could attend Friday’s commemorations of the United Nations’ Holocaust Memorial Day.

Hopeful of returning home in a couple of weeks, Somogyi, 84, is one of dozens of Holocaust survivors receiving care at Budapest’s Jewish Charity Hospital, the only such facility in Central-Eastern Europe.

Maintained by Hungary’s Jewish community from state funds as well as donations from international Jewish organizations, the Charity Hospital, where non-Jews make up around 25 percent of the patients, introduced a hospice program five years ago to assist the terminally ill.

By GEIR MOULSON
.c The Associated Press

BERLIN (AP) - Johannes Rau, the former German president who urged his country to open up to foreigners and promoted deeper ties with Israel, died Friday at age 75, his office said. No cause of death was given, but Rau had suffered from persistent health problems in recent years. During his 1999-2004 term as president, Rau paid particular attention to cementing Germany’s ties with Israel, rooted in the countries’ shared history of the Holocaust.
In 2000, he became the first person to speak German in the Israeli parliament, making an emotional plea for forgiveness.
“With the people of Israel watching, I bow in humility before those murdered, before those who don’t have graves where I could ask them for forgiveness,” Rau said.
“I am asking for forgiveness for what Germans have done, for myself and my generation, for the sake of our children and grandchildren, whose future I would like to see alongside the children of Israel.”
The son of a Protestant pastor, Rau was born in the western city of Wuppertal. He dropped out of high school and worked as a journalist and at a Protestant publishing house before entering politics as a member of the Social Democratic Party.
He became mayor of Wuppertal in 1969 and, in 1978, the governor of his home state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous and the country’s industrial heartland - a post that he held for two decades.
The Social Democrats made him their candidate in a failed effort to unseat conservative Chancellor Helmut Kohl in the 1987 general election, and he lost a first bid for president in 1994.
Rau persuaded German lawmakers to elect him on his second try in 1999, fending off concerns about his health - he had his left kidney removed in 1992 and an operation in 2000 to replace a stomach artery. He was inaugurated in July 1999 in the German parliament’s last session in Bonn before the government moved to the historic capital of Berlin.
Rau traveledabroad frequently as the moral voice of a modern, reunited Germany. At home, Rau stepped into Germany’s intensifying debate on immigration, seeking a balance between urging Germans to respect foreigners and acknowledging their fears as the country became increasingly multicultural.
Rau is survived by his wife, Christina Delius, and three children.

gsi {at} imeg(.)com

www.genshoah.org
February, 2006

Dear Members and Friends,

We experienced some computer difficulties and may not have received some incoming messages. If you sent something to us for inclusion in this newsletter and it does not appear, please forgive us. We are correcting the problem.

Please note that the Generations of the Shoah - New Jersey conference originally scheduled for June 4th has been moved to September 10, 2006. Since the theme of the conference is Carrying the Legacy Forward it was deemed inappropriate to conflict with the Salute to Israel Parade planned for New York City on June 4, 2006. We will have more information, including program details, soon.

For the rest of the GSI Newsletter click HERE.

TOLEDO BLADE

Suit seeks to affirm ownership of painting
Museum says it acquired Paul Gauguin work fairly
By TAHREE LANE
tlane {at} theblade(.)com>

The Toledo Museum of Art has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, asking for a ruling that it, not the heirs of a Jewish woman who lived in Nazi-era Europe, is the rightful owner of a treasured painting by Paul Gauguin. The museum acquired Street Scene in Tahiti in 1939 and has displayed it almost continually since.
Joining the suit was the Detroit Institute of Arts, which wants the court to say it has clear title to an 1889 painting by Vincent van Gogh, The Diggers, ownership of which is being challenged by the same 16 heirs.
The suit says almost 70 years after the museums bought the paintings, the “distant purported heirs of Mrs. Nathan have repeatedly and deliberately contacted [Toledo Museum of Art] directly and through TMA’s legal counsel, by letter and telephone, to assert their claim to ownership and the right to possession of the Painting, attempting to compel TMA to turn possession over to them or enter into an agreement otherwise resolving their claim.”
In December, 1938, three dealers bought the Gauguin and the Van Gogh for $6,865 and $9,364, respectively.
After World War II and before her death in 1958, Mrs. Nathan sought restitution and recovery of her money, property, and artworks seized by the Nazis, and compensation for assets she sold under duress or at less than fair prices, the Toledo museum research reported.
“None of her claims included or referenced the van Gogh or Gauguin paintings,” the Toledo museum said. Her brother, Willy Dreyfus, was co-executor of her estate until his death in 1977, and the museum’s research indicates he did not challenge the 1938 sale.
Mr. Rowland said his clients want an independent commission to look at the situation, such as sometimes occurs in Germany. He noted that the museum’s research was collected by their representative.
In the last three years, sales of Gauguins have ranged from $1 million to $35 million, and recent sales of van Goghs painted
near the end of his life have ranged from $2.4 million to $10 million, according to ArtPrice.com.

DIA defends its right to Van Gogh
Nazi-era collector’s heirs say it’s theirs
BY MARK STRYKER
DETROIT FREE PRESS
January 26, 2006
The controversy over Nazi-looted art that has plagued other leading U.S.
and European museums has reached the Detroit Institute of Arts as a
battle over a Vincent van Gogh masterpiece has landed in federal court.
The DIA went to court Tuesday to protect what museum leaders say is its
rightful ownership of an 1889 painting by van Gogh worth at least $15
million, by one estimate.
The DIA took the action after failing to resolve a long-simmering
dispute with the heirs of a Nazi-era Jewish collector, who claim that
the painting, which has been in the DIA’s collection since 1970, belongs
to the family. DIA officials, however, say that the evidence is
incontrovertible that the painting, which belonged to Martha Nathan, a
German-Jewish collector in the 1920s and ’30s, came to the museum in an
ethical fashion.
While other pieces of art from Nathan’s collection were in the French
government’s official 1947 register of art losses by private individuals
in France during the war, the Van Gogh and Gauguin are not listed.
The Van Gogh painting was bought by Detroit collector Robert H.
Tannahill from Wildenstein for $34,000 in 1941. He willed it to the
museum in 1970.
The DIA has a history of sensitivity to Nazi-era provenance issues. In
1950, the museum was the first in the United States to return a piece of
Nazi-looted art, a painting by Claude Monet, to its rightful owner.

OSCE and Yad Vashem Publish Guidelines for Teachers to Commemorate Holocaust Victims

(BRUSSELS/JERUSALEM - January 26, 2006) Marking the first international day for Holocaust remembrance, Yad Vashem and the Organization for Security Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) have published guidelines for educators on commemoration for Holocaust Remembrance Days.

The guidelines were developed as a practical tool for educators in order to support their efforts to plan and organize projects or commemorative events in order to ensure that the memory of the victims of the Holocaust will be maintained and continued in the future. The guidelines will be launched on January 27, at a commemoration ceremony for the victims of Holocaust, hosted by the Belgian Chairmanship of the OSCE in Brussels.

Currently available in four languages, (English, Russian, French, Flemish) the guidelines will be translated into additional languages over the coming months. They will be available for free, on both the 55-member state OSCE and Yad Vashem websites and in hard copy with an accompanying CD of best practice examples.

Funded by the Asper International Holocaust Studies Program, supported by the Asper Foundation, and developed with the support of the Government of Germany.

The guidelines will be available on the following links as of 27 January.

https://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2006/01/17836_en.pdf

http://www1.yadvashem.org/education/lessonplan/english/january2006.html#1

Attached is an essay that my daughter wrote regarding her last trip with her grandmother who died last week. My mother was a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising along with several other camps. Her story is currently featured in an exhibit that can be found HERE.

I thought you might find this story of interest.

For the Essay by Michelle, click HERE.
–
Harry Diament
diamondprinting {at} gmail(.)com