Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa)
11/25/2006

Berlin (dpa) - Berlin’s Free University is to allow access to a giant video archive containing thousands of interviews with Holocaust survivors, the university said on Saturday.

Starting early December it will permit students, teachers and researchers direct online access to the information stored in the data bank of the University of Southern California (USC).

The archive contains 120,000 hours of interviews with 52,000 Holocaust survivors videotaped by movie director Steven Spielberg after filming Schindler’s List in 1993.

The film tells the story of German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who employed 1,200 Jews from wartime occupied Poland and the Czech Republic in his factories, thus saving them from the gas chambers.

Spielberg launched his Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation in 1994 to preserve the testimony of the survivors for future generations. The project is now part of USC.

The film material has since been digitalized and the testimony by men and women from 57 countries who are speaking 32 languages has been linked with keywords.

LINDA CONNER LAMBECK lclambeck {at} ctpost(.)com
Article Launched:11/26/2006 04:46:45 AM EST

FAIRFIELD — Martin Schiller chuckles when he’s asked his age.

Until a few years ago, Schiller thought he was born in 1934.

Then an older cousin mentioned that he clearly remembers making the trip from Germany to Tarnobrzeg, Poland, to visit Schiller, his newly born cousin, in 1933.

“When we were in the camps, we lied about our ages. Then I just lost track,” said Schiller, now 73, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps.

Everything else about a childhood spent in two camps during World War II remains painfully clear to Schiller and is chronicled in a book to be published next month by Hamilton Books.

“Bread, Butter and Sugar: A Boy’s Journey Through the Holocaust and Postwar Europe,” is told through the eyes of “Menek,”
Martin Schiller, of Fairfield, has written a book about his experiences as a child in a Nazi concentration camp in Poland (Ned Gerard/Connecticut Post)
Schiller’s childhood nickname.

It started as a memoir that Schiller, who is Jewish, wrote for his three children and two grandchildren. More.

Government of Israel, Jewish Agency, Holocaust Survivors Organizations, Yad Vashem and Fund for the Welfare of Survivors present :

“Claims Conference does not reflect the status and centrality of the State of Israel”.

In an unprecedented step, all the bodies have put together a “united Israeli front” and are signing a joint covenant calling on the Claims Conference to change the way it allocates resources, transfer 60% of its activities to Israel, significantly increase Israeli representation in Claims Conference institutions and properly reflect the status and centrality of Israel among the Jewish People and the number of Jews and Holocaust survivors living in Israel.

The key to allocating resources and the composition of Claims Conference institutions were fixed in the 1950’s and never updated. “We demand that the funds being allocated by the Claims Conference be divided according to the following key: 80% for humanitarian causes and assistance to the welfare of needy survivors and 20% to commemoration, education, research, documentation and strengthening the Jewish heritage,” declare the participants. “We also demand transferring part of the activity of the Claims Conference from New York to Jerusalem”.

“All the decisions come from America, it can’t be that they dictate to Israel what Israel needs.”

The Claims Conference was set up in 1951 in order to negotiate with the governments of Germany and Austria and to divide up the agreed payments among Holocaust survivors and heirs of Holocaust victims. The Claims Conference’s activity base was set in New York and its first head was Nachum Goldmann, head of both the Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress. The Conference was made up of the 23 participating Jewish organizations — the important bodies of Jewish communities around the world at the time. Since the establishment of the Claims Conference, its structure has hardly changed, whereas the Jewish map has altered significantly and Israel has become the center of the Jewish people and home for more than half of Holocaust survivors.

Leaders of Claims Conference participating groups based in Israel got together recently: Chairman of the Jewish Agency, Zeev Bielski; Minister for Pensioners and the minister responsible for the matter for the Government of Israel, Rafi Eitan; Chairman of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors, Noah Flug; the Chairman of Yad Vashem, Avner Shalev; and the Chairman of the Fund for the Welfare of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, Zeev Factor. During their meeting they decided for the first time to set up a united front in order to change the existing situation and bring about historic justice.

The signing of the covenant took place on Sunday, November 26th 2006, at 2:00pm, in the Ben Gurion Hall, Jewish Agency building, 48 King George St., Jerusalem.

for further information contact:

michael jankelowitz ,liaison to foreign press

jewish agency for israel

www.jewishagency.org

+972.52.6130220 mobile

TRANSLATION FROM THE HEBREW

November 2006

MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING

We the undersigned, the Government of Israel, institutions and organizations active in Israel in the matter of compensation, restitution of property, and the social welfare of survivors of the Holocaust in Israel, as well as in the realm of preserving the memory of the Holocaust, eternalizing the memory of the victims and the strengthening of Jewish heritage, and with regards to the above, are connected with the activities of the Claims Conference, hereby agree to the following principles:

1. To act, as far as possible, towards the restitution, to the owners, of Jewish property from the period of the Holocaust.

2. To act, as far as possible, towards the restitution of additional funds that will be earmarked for the compensation and social welfare of Holocaust survivors and towards the strengthening of the memory of the Holocaust and Jewish heritage.

3. To act towards the just and correct distribution of compensation funds and of unclaimed funds or property.

4. The funds distributed by the Claims Conference for the support of programs and activities, which are not included in direct payments to survivors, will be distributed according to the following key: 80% of the funds will be earmarked for humanitarian purposes of aid to needy Holocaust survivors and their social welfare. 20% of the funds will be earmarked for the purpose of memorializing the Holocaust, education, research and documentation of the Holocaust as well as strengthening Jewish heritage, all this towards the preservation of the correct and important balance between these two goals.

5. Acknowledging that the Jewish people has undergone many changes, demographic and other, over the past 50 years, and mainly the establishment and development of the State of Israel, the Israeli representation in the Claims Conference and its various committees must be substantially expanded to reflect the central role of the State of Israel within the Jewish people, and the number of Jews and Holocaust survivors who were absorbed in Israel and live in Israel today.

6. In light of the centrality of the State of Israel, as stated above, 60% of the funds mentioned in paragraph 4 above, will be allocated in Israel and the remainder will be distributed in the rest of the countries of the world.

7. To present a unified stance regarding all of the above topics at the Claims Conference and to create a framework for coordination that will ensure the realization of the above principles.

____________________ __________________ _________________
The Minister for Retirees The Jewish Agency The Chairman of the
Affairs for Israel Central Organization of Holocaust Survivors

_________________________ ________________________________
The Chairman of Yad V’Shem The Chairman of the Fund for the Social Welfare of Holocaust Survivors in Israel

21:33 Nov 26, ‘06 / 5 Kislev 5767

(IsraelNN.com) Israel and the Jewish Agency are campaigning to give the Jewish state a larger share of Holocaust restitution funds, following a weak response from Israel for emergency aid during the retaliatory war against Hizbullah terrorists this summer.

Jewish Agency chairman Zev Bielski told reporters Sunday, “The Claims Conference is a very stubborn organization. We will continue this campaign until they give us our rightful seats at the table.” The Claims Conference is responsible for allocating hundreds of millions of dollars a year in restitution payments.

MORE

NEW YORK — After more than 60 years, a Holocaust survivor was reunited the day after Thanksgiving with a woman whose family kept her hidden from the Nazis during World War II, NewsChannel 4’s Pei-Sze Cheng reported.

It was a tearful reunion between unlikely friends: Lea Ingel, an escapee from a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-controlled Lithuania, and Geidrute Ramanauskiene, the daughter of a Catholic family. The two became close friends when Geidrute’s family protected Lea from the Nazis, Cheng said.

“They took me in, in their life,” said Lea. “I was escaping from the ghetto. I had no food, and they were taking away people to kill.”

Lea, now 84 years old, was 20 when she and her husband, Samuel, were taken in by Geidrute’s family, who hid the couple inside the family’s modest farmhouse.

For about a year all of them lived in constant fear, keeping the biggest secret of their lives, Cheng said.

“I was happy to help her and so were my parents, but we knew we were taking a big risk,” Geidrute told Cheng.

“If the Germans had found them, the Jews and the entire family would have been murdered,” according to Stanlee Stahl, spokesman for the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, which organized the reunion.

The foundation financially helps about 1,400 non-Jews who risked their lives helping Jews survive under Nazi rule.

The group says 91 percent of Lithuanian Jews died during the holocaust, and most of Lea’s family died in the ghetto.

Today, the two friends are a bit older, but the special bond they share remains the same.

“I feel very good, and I love her very much. She is a very good person to everybody,” Lea told Cheng.

December 3, 2006 - January 29, 2007
Library Gallery, 2nd floor

Exhibit

Częstochowa, the most sacred Roman Catholic city in Poland and home of the Black Madonna, has for centuries been a pilgrimage site for millions of Catholics. Before World War II about a third of the population of the city was Jewish (almost 40,000). After the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, they confined the Jews to a ghetto and later deported them to the concentration camp in Treblinka. Some 6,000 survived in HASAG, a forced labor camp on the outskirts of the Częstochowa. Today, there are fewer than 100 Jews in the city.

Beginning with the earliest evidence of Jewish life in Częstochowa, dating from the 1700s, “The Jews of Częstochowa” traces the history and growth of the local Jewish community and recounts the vitality and contributions of this once-vibrant population that was virtually obliterated. The exhibit displays original photographs, documents, books and other remembrances of pre-war life, the large scale tragedy of the ghetto and HASAG, and finally the postwar denouement. There are also two videos about life before and during the Holocaust years, with eyewitness recollections by former residents of the city.

“The Jews of Częstochowa” was assembled by the faculty of the Jan Dlugosz Academy, a local college in Czestochowa, and underwritten by Sigmund Rolat and Alan Silberstein, Jewish-American businessmen with roots in the city. The citizens of Częstochowa voted the exhibition “the most significant event” of 2004.

This award-winning show first opened in Częstochowa, Poland, in 2004 and then moved to the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. It was visited by tens of thousands of Polish and foreign visitors. The North American tour of the exhibit began in 2005 in New York City at the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland. It then moved to Washington, DC, where it was on view at the Russell Senate Office Building Rotunda. From January through April 2006, Seton Hall University, New Jersery, hosted the exhibit. In July and August of 2006, the exhibition was on view at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Also on view is “Inspired by Jewish Culture”, a selection of art projects by students of the Malczewski School of Fine Arts in Poland, who were motivated by the exhibition. Says one student: “Teenagers came to visit and started to have a vision of how to understand Jewish history: […] In Częstochowa, we not only think about Jasna Gora [Black Madonna Sanctuary], but think also about the Jews who helped build this city.” Significantly, the Polish Ministry of Culture has incorporated the Malczewski School program into the nationwide curriculum of fine arts schools. This exhibition is sponsored by Sigmund Rolat and the Taube Foundation For Jewish Life & Culture.

Hours & Tours
Visitors are welcome to visit the Library Gallery on their own during regular Gallery hours. Groups may also request a tour led by a docent who will explain the exhibit in greater detail and tailor the visit to the group’s interest and age group. Schools and other organizations interested in requesting a tour should complete the online tour request form.

Related Links
Jews of Częstochowa Exhibition Brochure (pdf)
The World Society of Częstochowa Jews and their Descendants

sport (november 23, 2006)
From Nazi camp to weightlifting champ

Ben Helfgott in Melbourne this week.

Jason Frenkel

MEET Ben Helfgott, the only known concentration camp survivor to ever compete in an Olympics Games.

The English weightlifter made a special visit to Australia this week for a commemorative dinner at the MCG to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Olympic Games – an event which also coincided with his 77th birthday.

It was an emotional return to Melbourne for Helfgott, an MBE who has devoted much of his life to Holocaust education, restitution and compensation.

MORE.

Nov. 22, 2006 | Henry Greenspan is a psychologist and playwright at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and is the the author of On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Recounting and Life History and, with Agi Rubin, Reflections: Auschwitz, Memory, and a Life Recreated.
MORE

By Arthur Max / The Associated PressPublished: November 17, 2006

BAD AROLSEN, Germany: The 21- year-old Russian sat before a clerk of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate’s office, describing the furnaces at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where he had been a prisoner until a few weeks before.

“I saw with my own eyes how thousands of Jews were gassed daily and thrown by the hundreds into pits where Jews were burning,” he said.

“I saw how little children were killed with sticks and thrown into the fire,” he continued. Blood flowed in gutters, and “Jews were thrown in and died there;” more were taken off trucks and cast alive into the flames.

Today, the Holocaust is known in dense and painful detail. Yet the young Russian’s words leap off the faded, onionskin page with a rawness that transports the reader back to April 1945, when World War II was still raging and the world still knew little about gas chambers, genocide and the Final Solution.

The two pages of testimony, in a file randomly plucked off a shelf, are among millions of documents held by the International Tracing Service, or ITS, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross

more.

By JONNY PAUL
LONDON

The testimonies of a Holocaust survivor and a survivor of the Rwandan genocide were the highlights of a law enforcement conference Tuesday in London.

The conference brought probation staff and voluntary agencies, who work with criminal offenders to help prevent recurring offenses and protect the public, together to discuss how they work with survivors of torture, genocide and hate.

The conference, entitled “Surviving Holocaust, Genocide and Post Traumatic Stress” was organized by London Probation, a law enforcement agency which is part of the UK Probation Service. Over 60 professionals from the participating agencies attended the conference.

The unique one-day event commemorated the survival of communities that have often arrived as refugees fleeing unimaginable horror and resettled in the UK.

MORE.