Plans for genocide memorial stir up emotions from diverse groups
By PETER HECHT
McClatchy Newspapers
SACRAMENTO - Assemblyman Lloyd Levine says he came to understand his Jewish cultural roots and comprehend a horrific epoch in history on a trip to Israel in 2004.

He was at the Yad Vashem holocaust museum in Jerusalem, transfixed by cubes stacked like children’s play blocks. Each depicted children who died of Nazi genocide. A somber voice intoned their names as 1.6 million beams of light reflected the toll of young lives taken.

”For the next several hours, I had the abiding urge to throw up,” Levine, D-Van Nuys, said. ”It makes you sick knowing what happened.”

Levine returned to California determined to make his own contribution to the victims by seeking a ”dignified and quiet” memorial outside the Capitol to honor those who ”perished and suffered” in the Holocaust.

But as the bill he sponsored was debated and amended in the Legislature and then signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sept. 30, Levine’s original vision grew markedly.

Under Assembly Bill 1210, which goes into effect Jan. 1, California will begin a quest to construct a memorial in Sacramento not only for victims and survivors of the Holocaust, but for all people who faced genocide and ethnic cleansing across the world and many generations.

On its face, the effort raises a poignant challenge by seeking to bring together diverse peoples and histories to acknowledge acts of inhumanity from the Holocaust of Nazi Germany to the killing fields of Cambodia to the ongoing ethnic slaughter in Darfur.

Though still an ill-defined concept, the idea of such a memorial is stirring emotional discussions among vast, varied communities affected by genocide.

In Glendale, Haig Hovespian hopes the memorial will acknowledge the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in Turkey in 1915.

”A vast majority of Armenians who came to California were either survivors or descendants of the victims of Armenian genocide,” said Hovespian, community relations director for Armenian National Committee of America. ”If you want to boil it down, it is the reason that they are Californians today.”

In Sacramento, Zang Fang, 36, believes such a monument should acknowledge Hmong refugees who fled wanton killings in Laos during 30 years of retaliations for the Hmong’s support of the United States’ secret war against communist Pathet Lao in the 1970s.

As a toddler, Fang lost his father, Joua Lue Fang, who fought alongside U.S. forces and was killed in an explosives accident. As an 8-year-old, he saw an uncle, Zong Chue Fang, executed and lost a cousin, Xialee Fang, who was gunned down while collecting wild roots as Pathet Lao forces sacked Hmong villages.

Thousands were ultimately killed or imprisoned, and 200,000 people were forced into exile. Fang’s family attempted a perilous trek to flee Laos on a mountain trail lined with bodies of Hmong victims. They eventually made it to Thailand in a boat crossing the Mekong River, as 16 people drowned when a second boat capsized.

”What the Hmong did to help the Americans needs to be acknowledged,” Fang said of the Capitol memorial. ”And the price they paid to help the Americans needs to be acknowledged.”

Under AB 1210, a nine-member International Genocide Commission, including at least six survivors or descendants of genocide, will be appointed to select a design and initiate private fundraising to build the memorial.

”The construction of this memorial will help all Californians remember the unimaginable suffering genocide survivors endured,” Schwarzenegger said in signing the legislation.

The bill declares that ”California recognizes the atrocities of all ethnic cleansing campaigns,” including ”the Holocaust, Kosovo, Armenian genocide, Rwanda, African American slaves, Native Americans and the plight of the Hmong in Southeast Asia.”

If built, the memorial would be the 16th major monument at Capitol Park, joining such company as the Civil War Veterans Grove, the Father Junipero Serra statue, and veterans, Vietnam War and firefighters memorials.

The planned genocide memorial’s attempt to meld together such horrific events from far corners of world history may prove particularly sensitive.

Andrew McPherson, director of design at Nacht & Lewis Architects in Sacramento, which designed a veterans memorial plaza at Mather Field, said the genocide commission should cast a wide net in seeking input.

”To have somebody go off into a vacuum and design a memorial is really, really risky,” he said. ”You’re going to have people coming out of the woodwork that have different ideas. And you’re going to have people who may be offended, saying, ‘Why wasn’t I asked?’”

Holocaust survivor and author David Faber, 80, of San Diego wonders how other acts of genocide can be incorporated into the same reflective space as a Holocaust memorial.

”It’s nice if they do that,” Faber said. ”It can work, providing that it is put into sections: the Holocaust here, Rwanda here, Kosovo here….”

His hesitation over a combined memorial may be because his own sense of persecution is literally burned into his flesh. Faber’s left forearm bears number 161051 from the Bergen-Belson concentration camp in Germany, one of numerous death camps he was shuttled to as a boy.

He witnessed Nazi soldiers executing his mother and five sisters at his family home in Poland. He also lost his brother, father and more than 90 extended family members to the Holocaust.

”We’re talking 6 million people (who perished),” Faber said. ”How many would be here now if they hadn’t been murdered? It would be over 50 million. A generation was wiped out.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said a universal-themed Capitol memorial would be an appropriate ‘’statement of empathy and solidarity with all victims of genocide.”

”… It is a shocking and depressing statement that, here in the 21st century, you have to stand up again and again and say this type of behavior cannot be sanctioned,” he said.

That’s why San Francisco lawyer Martina Knee, a daughter of Holocaust survivors and a member of the Bay Area Darfur Coalition, wants the memorial to acknowledge still unfolding mass killings of hundreds of thousands of villagers in western Sudan.

And Igor Cimpo, 30, of Sacramento wants the memorial to honor the 12,000 people who died in the former Yugoslavia in Sarajevo and the 8,000 — Muslim men and boys — massacred in Srebrenica.

The Bosnian refugee dodged Serbian sniper fire during the 1992-1996 siege of Sarajevo, ”running to get water, to get food, always wondering if you were going to make it home.”

”There was genocide in the middle of Europe. It happened again, so long after the Holocaust,” Cimpo said. ”I fear these events happen and people forget overnight. I’m afraid they’re forgetting now.”

Rome’s mayor declared that Italy’s planned Holocaust museum must be located in the capital.

Walter Veltroni confirmed last Friday that he wants the structure built on the grounds of Villa Torlonia, which stands over a Jewish catacomb and was the home of dictator Benito Mussolini from 1925-1943.

No construction date has been set, but Veltroni’s declaration follows a controversy between Rome and Ferrara as to which city should host the museum.

Veltroni said Rome suffered the most among Italian cities, with more than 2,000 Jews deported, mostly to Auschwitz.

However, Ferrara, which lost almost its entire Jewish community, says it suffered more proportionally.

To see video click here.

(CBS) Two-time Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg may be the most successful American filmmaker ever. Few others have had such a powerful influence on the way movies are made and seen.

After 35 years in the business, the genius that is Spielberg is one of this year’s Kennedy Center Honorees.

“It’s a very daunting honor,” Spielberg told Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen. “The Kennedy Center Honors, it’s like there are only 7,000 stars in the known universe and somebody came over to me and said, ‘You and four others are gonna have your name on one of those stars.’ ”

He says he made his first film as a 12-year-old, attempting to earn a Boy Scout photography merit badge.

“I was supposed to tell a story,” he recalled. “We had a still camera that was broken, and we had an 8 millimeter Kodak movie camera that was working, so I asked the scout master could I substitute film for still, and he said, ‘Yes.’ So, I made a little Western. I called it ‘Gun Smog,’ and I shot the Western. It was all cut in the camera, about three minutes long. That was the first time I really made a movie.”

To see photos from this year’s Kennedy Center ceremony, click here.

Spielberg’s first blockbuster also began with mechanical troubles when the shark made for “Jaws” malfunctioned.

“Without the shark,” Spielberg explained, “the decision was either to pack it in, go back to L.A. until they can perfect the technology of this mechanical monster, or sort of tough it out and figure out how to make the movie around the shark. And I found that the absence of the shark was actually making it, for me anyway, a scarier movie.

“Imagination is always much more frightening than what you can put before an audience. And the great collective imagination, which happens in the audience of 500 people in some way, you know, it’s a sort of conspiracy of the collective imagination. And they make an event out of it. And they create something that sometimes filmmakers don’t even intend.”

And, it turned out ” ‘Jaws’ was a living nightmare that turned into a golden opportunity,” Spielberg said. “The success of that picture gave me control of my films; gave me control of what movies I would be making for the rest of my life. And it sort of opened up just a treasure chest of opportunities for me.”

From there, even the sky wasn’t the limit. Movies such as “E.T,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Jurassic Park” followed.

But, said Spielberg: “After I had children, began having children in the 1980s, I changed, and I began making films that were important to me and films that I really cared to leave behind for my kids. And I think the paradigm somewhat shifted in myself, and I made fewer films like ‘E.T.,’ ‘Close Encounters (of the Third Kind)’ and ‘Indiana Jones,’ and more like ‘Schindler’s List’ and ‘Saving Private Ryan.’

“The thing I’m most proud of is that ‘Schindler’s List’ paved the way for the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation to come into existence. It collects the living witness testimonies of Holocaust survivors. That’s what I’m proudest of.

” ‘Schindler’s List,’ I’m very proud of as a motion picture, but I really realized that that picture had a sole purpose, which was to provide me and others with the opportunity to collect the testimonies of those who really experienced the Holocaust. Not those who recreated the experiences of the Holocaust through film.”

What has Spielberg yet to accomplish?

The answer, the father of seven said with a smile, is “Grandchildren.”

Emil Gumpert Teachers’ Workshop: Teaching the NJ Mandate on the Holocaust

Thursday, April 19, 2007
Trustees Pavilion
Ramapo College of New Jersey
Mahwah, NJ

“Teaching about Genocide in the World of Today Real-Time: Darfur and Beyond”

Qualifies for Professional Development Credit

Free of Charge

Program and further details will follow after the New Year.

Dr, Michael A. Riff, Director
Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies
Ramapo College of New Jersey
505 Ramapo Valley Road
Mahwah, NJ 07430-160
Phone: 201.684.7409; Fax: 201.684.7953
mriff {at} ramapo(.)edu

Scam uses memory of Holocaust victims

If you receive these e-mails, you should delete them immediately or report them to the United States Secret Service by forwarding them to 419fcd {at} usss.treas(.)gov with the words “no money lost” in your subject line — then delete them.

Scam Alert
By Amy C. Fleitas • Bankrate.com

You may have been courted by the Nigerian scam, also known as the 419 scam (named after the section of the law pertaining to it). It comes in e-mail or letter form and tells you of a huge amount of money hidden overseas that the writer of the letter wants to put in your bank account. In return, he promises you a big cut of the cash.

What you may not know is that this scam comes in many different forms. Con artists are continually updating the scam in an attempt to change it enough so that people won’t recognize it. While the original version of this bogus letter claims to have access to a bank account in Nigeria, Bankrate recently received a version of the scam that claims to be from Switzerland. Rather than money that belonged to warlords, this person claims to have access to funds that belonged to victims of the Holocaust who are now deceased and left no wills.

Long story short: Any checks you receive from this person will be fake. The crook will ask you to keep part of the money and send him the difference. Shortly after you send him the difference by mail or wire, his check will bounce, and you will owe the total amount to your bank. Warning: Sometimes people are told by their banks that the check has cleared, so they go ahead and wire the difference to the scammer. But don’t be too sure: The scammers sometimes forge a cashier’s check, which fools the bank into prematurely reporting the check as “cleared.” Once the forgery is discovered, the bank will try to hold you liable.

You should not answer these e-mails or click on the links they contain. The Federal Trade Commission has warned that by clicking on links, you may unknowingly download spyware onto your computer.

Here’s how one Holocaust scam e-mail, entitled “THE GAIN OF WORLD WAR II,” reads:

Hello,

My name is Mr. Ronald Lauder, a member of Independent Committee of Eminent Persons (ICEP), Switzerland. ICEP is charged with the responsibility of finding bank accounts in Switzerland belonging to non-Swiss indigenes [sic], which have remained dormant since World War II. It may interest you to know that in July of 1997, the Swiss Banker’s Association published a list of dormant accounts originally opened by non-Swiss citizens. These accounts had been dormant since the end of World War II (May 9, 1945). Most belonged to Holocaust victims. The continuing efforts of the Independent Committee of Eminent Persons (ICEP) have since resulted in the discovery of additional dormant accounts — 54,000 in December 1999.

The published lists contain all types of dormant accounts, including interest-bearing savings accounts, securities accounts, safe-deposit boxes, custody accounts, and non-interest-bearing transaction accounts. Numbered accounts are also included. Interest is paid on accounts that were interest bearing when established.

The Claims Resolution Tribunal (CRT) handles processing of all claims on accounts due non-Swiss citizens. I discovered a dormant account of ORDNER ADELE with a credit balance of 35,000,000 US dollar plus accumulated interest. The beneficiary was murdered during the holocaust era, leaving no WILL and no possible records for trace of heirs. The Claims Resolution Tribunal has been mandated to report all unclaimed funds for permanent closure of accounts and transfer of existing credit balance into the treasury of Switzerland government as provided by the law for management of assets of deceased beneficiaries who died interstate (living no wills) [sic].

Being a top executive at ICEP, I have all secret details and necessary contacts for claim of the funds without any hitch. The funds will be banked in the Cayman Island, being a tax free, safe haven for funds and we can share the funds and use in investment of our choice. Due to the sensitive nature of my job, I need a foreigner to HELP claim the funds. All that is required is for you to provide me with your details for processing of the necessary legal and administrative claim documents for transfer of the funds in your name.

Kindly provide me with your full name, address, and telephone/fax. I will pay all required fees to ensure that the fund is transferred to a secure, numbered account in your name in the Cayman Island, of which you will be capable of accessing the funds gradually and transferring to your country and other banks of choice in the world. My share will be 60 percent and your share is 40 percent of the total amount. THERE IS NO RISK INVOLVED.

The letter goes on to include the scam artist’s contact information and Web addresses for various sites. Keep in mind that anyone can build a legitimate-looking Web site — a Web site does not validate anyone’s claims to cash.

If you receive these e-mails, you should delete them immediately or report them to the United States Secret Service by forwarding them to 419fcd {at} usss.treas(.)gov with the words “no money lost” in your subject line — then delete them.

Obtaining Reparations for Holocaust Survivors
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Sveltlana Ismailov, one of the caseworkers at the Edith and Carl Marks Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

Published: December 25, 2006

“Let me show you something,” Sveltlana Ismailov said as she dipped a hand inside the bottom left drawer of her desk. Ms. Ismailov, 70, a caseworker at the Edith and Carl Marks Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, pulled out a booklet of receipts and a manila folder with “Germany” written on it and underlined with a black marker.

As she flipped through the booklet, names like Janna Goldvary, Zi Popolskaya and Alexander Gilman flashed by. They and the others are Holocaust survivors who have donated money to the community house.

She has helped them get reparations of close to $2,500 or a monthly pension from the German government.

“Here is only some of them; I have many books of that kind,” she said, with a heavy Russian lilt. Using maps, lists of Nazi concentration camps and a person’s recollections, she has pieced together these survivors’ experiences to help them apply for compensation from Germany.

This is only one of the many social services that Ms. Ismailov offers at the Jewish Community House, which is a beneficiary of the UJA-Federation of New York, one of the seven agencies supported by the Neediest Cases.

She sees about 1,500 people a year, and 80 to 90 percent are from Russia and the other former Soviet republics, she said. Most do not speak English. “Hardship, hardship, hardship” is what she hears from her clients.

She says that Neediest Cases money enables her to assist the community’s poor, many of whom are immigrants trying to establish themselves in America.

MORE

Teens help Holocaust survivor tell his life story

Sisters adapt book for 10- to 12-year-olds

By Mark Abramson / Daily News Staff Writer
When Mendel “Manny” Steinberg wanted to present to children a PG version of his book “Outcry” about how he survived a concentration camp during the Holocaust, he turned to Menlo Park teenagers Bailey and Laura Griscom.

Bailey, 17, wrote Steinberg’s story in a way that children could understand without getting frightened. She has also studied the Holocaust by reading other books about the subject. The book is titled “The Boy Named 27091,” in reference to the number the Nazis tattooed on Steinberg. It is aimed at children ages 10-12.

Bailey’s sister, Laura, 16, illustrated the book. It was first released in November, when the Griscoms and Steinberg attended a book-launching party in Los Angeles.

“We wanted kids to be able to get the idea that obviously it was a terrible time in history … but we didn’t want to make it so they would go to sleep at night and have terrible nightmares,” Laura said. “For me it was fairly difficult to draw pictures of the Holocaust and people in concentration camps and not have dead bodies.”

Laura said she tried to tell the story in the illustrations by emphasizing the agony in the characters’ facial expressions. As a student at the Idyllwild Arts Academy, she has done several similar works.

Arie Letzter from Kolbuszowa, Poland is searching for his family.

Their names are:

Siandle/Sheindel Letzter
Gittel Letzter
Mendel Letzter

from Kolbuszowa, Poland

It is believed that they perished in Belzec but perhaps someone survived? If you have any information please contact Lauren Lebowitz at lebo1217 {at} aol(.)com

Germany announces Holocaust compensation figures
By David Byers Updated: 24/Dec/2006 12:36

BERLIN (EJP)— Germany has so far paid out almost six billion dollars to people forced to work for the Nazis during World War II, the chiefs of a compensation fund have announced.

Speaking in Berlin last Thursday, Guenter Saathoff, a member of the board of trustees of the Remembrance and Future Fund, said nearly 1.7 million people had been compensated, equating to more than 99% of people who qualify for the claims.

The fund was set up by legislation passed by the Government in Berlin in 2000 after years of debate, and began operating in 2001. Its funds are drawn from both the Government and companies that were proved to have profited from forced labour across Europe during the war.

Deadline looming

In his statement, Saathoff said 1.7 million victims or their legal heirs in 100 countries have so far received a total of 4.4 billion euros. The final deadline for victims or descendants to apply for compensation is December 31.

The foundation said it plans to continue its work next year even after the deadline has passed, using funds to help aging victims of the Nazis to pay medical bills, or to finance other humanitarian projects related to combating fascism.

“The goal will be to develop into an indispensable instrument of activity for humanity and human rights and for learning from history,” he said.

Art request rejected

Meanwhile, in a landmark ruling, a top German court has rejected claims by relatives of a Nazi doctor for the return of art confiscated by Soviet occupiers in 1945, which could set a precedent for a host of similar cases by families of former Nazi activists.

Gustav Schuster, a gynaecologist who worked in Nazi courts which ordered the sterilisation of handicapped women as part of Adolf Hitler’s drive to create a ’master race’, had collected hundreds of paintings, graphics and etchings.

Somewhat ironically, among them were works by German impressionist Max Liebermann, who was reviled by the Nazis for his Jewish background.

They were confiscated by occupying Soviet forces in 1945.

Relatives of Schuster, who delivered Nazi party propaganda speeches, applied for their return after German re-unification in 1990, starting a legal battle that has dragged on for several years.

But in a final verdict, Germany’s top administrative court in the east German city of Leipzig said there were no grounds for restitution because of Schuster’s prominent role in the Nazi party as a promoter of Hitler’s ideology.

“The aim of this function was to spread National Socialist ideology,” the court said in a statement.

Suitability

The ruling is significant because it appears to judge whether or not people are suitable to re-claim stolen property based on their ideologies. Thus, the ruling does not bode well for the relatives of Nazi sympathisers or activists seeking to reclaim art stolen by Stalin’s troops, which are believed to go into their thousands, according to the the German Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

However, the judgement is believed to have little impact on a host of other cases being put forward by the relatives of Jews whose art was stolen by the Nazis, which are looked upon much more sympathetically.

Crucially, the German Government, though not commenting on the court case’s results, supports a curb on claims by relatives and ancestors of former Nazis. It has, in the past, sought to curb such claims by denying restitution rights for property owned by Nazis who supported Hitler’s regime or committed serious crimes.

Right to know truth about the Holocaust
XXXX XXXXXX

These are excerpts from a letter sent by the Greater Miami Jewish Federation to South Florida’s congressional delegation last week.

On Nov. 25, Arthur Max, of the Associated Press, published an astonishing report about the massive and previously closed collection of information from Nazi death camps under the jurisdiction of the International Red Cross now located at Bad Arolsen, Germany. The scope of the records reported is breathtaking, as are the moral and policy implications of the revelation.

Fate of loved ones

South Florida is home to the second-largest concentration of Holocaust survivors in the United States and the third-largest in the world outside of Israel. According to Max’s report, survivors and their families have been unjustly denied access to many of the records at Bad Arolsen regarding their own experiences in the camps or those of their family members.

We are mandated by history and morality to remember that this greatest crime against humanity was, in fact, millions of crimes against millions of human beings, all of whom have the absolute right to receive all of the unvarnished truth about their fate and the fate of their loved ones.

We are also painfully aware that far too many examples exist of survivors and heirs of Holocaust victims who have attempted to obtain morally and legally justified restitution or compensation for horrific slave labor from the entities that profited from the Holocaust, only to be met with rejections, and then, as added insult, to be denied access to the sources of information they are told justify these rejections.

In addition, there is now abundant evidence that tens of thousands of destitute survivors live in our midst, in the United States and Canada, in Israel, in the former Soviet Union, in Europe and Australia, and in Latin America — and that government and community and restitution-based resources are inadequate to meet their basic human needs.

In the United States alone, there are more than 45,000 Holocaust survivors living near or below the federal poverty level who cannot afford adequate nutrition, housing, home care, medications, or necessary devices such as dentures, eyeglasses, or hearing aids. This is unthinkable in 2006.

As leaders of our general and Jewish communities, locally and nationally and even internationally, the Federation Board believes that our generation owes the survivors the dignity of justice in their final years.

Help survivors, heirs

In light of these compelling facts, we call upon Congress to take all steps necessary to guarantee immediate access to the Bad Arolsen archive by a qualified group of researchers to create a comprehensive and accessible database of information for all affected families. As a starting point, we urge you to bring together the responsible U.S. and Red Cross officials to determine the scope of the task and identify the personnel and resources to make this information accessible as soon as humanly possible. If necessary, we are asking that Congress enact legislation, with funding, for the immediate completion of these tasks.

We ask Congress to explore and encourage any and all methods to provide survivors and heirs a full opportunity to access the Bad Arolsen materials and to utilize said materials in support of their claims without regard to any previous denials or deadlines.