Simon Wiesenthal Center seeks witnesses to Babi Yar massacre

The Simon Wiesenthal Center for preserving the memory of the Holocaust announced it is seeking out Holocaust survivors who survived the Babi Yar killing fields in the Ukraine during World War II and who would be willing to testify in the trial of some of the perpetrators, who were only recently located. The center, named after the storied Nazi hunter, located the names of 80 people who participated in the Babi Yar massacre, while two of those involved were located alive and well by the German two months ago.

The two perpetrators, whose identities were made public, were located by Germany thanks to information received from the Simon Wiesenthal Center. None of the people who carried out the massacre—which involved the murder of some 50,000 Jews starting September 1941—has been indicted thus far.

Memorial at the Stutthof concentration camp (Photo: Ezra Wolfinger/NOVA)

The center is also continuing to seek out people who survived Poland's Stutthof concentration camp. Two of the soldiers who served in Stutthof near the end of 1943, when gas chambers were active in the camp, were indicted for their part only two weeks ago. The center is attempting to find witnesses to testify in the trials, and has located some 20 people who were interned there during the aforementioned period. Survivors from the Zhytomyr and Kamianets-Podilskyi camps in the Ukraine are also being sought by the center. Hungarian Jews who were not citizens were deported to the two camps in the summer of 1941, and were murdered there by Ukrainians, Hungarians and Germans. Locating survivors from the camps is considered to be a last ditch effort to try the Nazi criminals. Germany's policy on indicting Nazi war criminals underwent a change ten years ago. In the past, to indict a Nazi criminal the prosecution would have had to prove he had committed a specific crime against a specific victim with the motive being racist hatred, conditions which are nigh impossible to prove today, with so few witnesses left and the difficulty in singling out the criminals who participated in the extermination—as most Jews had no idea who their assailants were.

The policy shift was made possible thanks to a decision that stipulated the entire existence of death camps was predicated on murdering innocent people, and that therefore anyone stationed there may be indicted for being an accessory to murder based on their service alone. The attendant punishment for said offense in Germany was five to ten years.

The trial of John Demjanjuk served as precedent to try others based merely on their service in death camps (Photo: AP)

The change made is much easier for the prosecution, which no longer needed a witness to finger the defendant, which itself paved the way for the prosecution of many criminals who could not have been indicted otherwise. The conviction of John Demjanjuk, purported to be a Treblinka guard dubbed by prisoners "Ivan the Terrible," based on the policy shift was a precedent. After his trial, widespread searches were underway in an attempt to locate anyone who served in the death camps or murder squads, and two other criminals who served in Auschwitz were also convicted.

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'Entry forbidden to Jews' at Polish hotel

A photo of an anti-Semitic sign hanging outside of a hotel in the town of Cesarzowice "Entry forbidden to Jews, Commies, and all thieves and traitors of Poland", said the sign.

 

In nearby Wrocław, one of the largest cities in Poland, there was an anti-Semitic incident in November, 2015. Piotr Rybak, leader of the extremist "National Radical Camp", burnt an effigy in the figure of a religious Jew at an anti immigrant rally in a city square. According to one of the reports out of Poland, Rybak is the owner of the "The Polish House", the hotel, with the sign.

The sign

The website of the Anti Defamation League (ADL) stated that Rybak is in custody after anti-Semitic calls at a rally in Wrocław during an Independence Day celebration this month. Rybak was arrested after he violated his parole agreement after a two year trial for the events at the November, 2015, rally.

Last month, Rybak, who was indicted for incitement against Jews, managed to avoid a prison sentence of ten months. He was sentenced to three months of partial house arrest.

In light of the anti-Semitic sign, the ADL called on the Polish authorities to investigate the incident and take the necessary steps against the perpetrators.

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German artists build Holocaust memorial near far-right leader's home

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German political art group builds Holocaust memorial near the home of a far-right politician who said history should focus more on German WWII victims; the art collective said it would remove memorial if politician would kneel in front of it and ask sincerely for forgiveness; politician denies he criticised memorial, adding that he had said the Holocaust was a disgrace. German artists build Holocaust memorial near far-right leader's home : http://ift.tt/2jeCMpC

Giant swastika unearthed in Germany

Construction workers in Germany have unearthed a giant concrete swastika on a sports field in the northern city of Hamburg.

 

The German news agency dpa reported Tuesday workers were digging in the ground with an excavator to build changing rooms when they suddenly hit the four-by-four meter (13-by-13 foot) Nazi symbol.

The swastika was found in a Hamburg construction site (Photo: AP)

Members of the sports club at the Hein-Kling stadium in the city's Billstedt district told dpa the swastika served as a foundation for a monument that was torn down decades ago. City officials say they want the swastika, which was buried 40 centimeters (1.3 feet) below the ground, gone as quickly as possible. Because it's too heavy to be transported away, they are planning to destroy it with jackhammers.

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Letters and milk jug: Warsaw Ghetto archive goes on display

Letters and other witness accounts of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto—the records of a community destroyed in the Holocaust—have gone on display for the first time.

 

The exhibition, titled "What we were unable to shout out to the world," opened at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw this week. It includes letters, journals, official records and other documents in Polish and Yiddish as well as an old metal jug used to hide documents from the Emanuel Ringelblum archive.

An exhibition opened at a Warsaw museum showcasing documents from the city's ghetto (Photo: AP)

 

Ringelblum, a Jewish historian and social activist, and some 50 to 60 helpers collected the documents during World War II to preserve a record for posterity of Jewish life in the Warsaw ghetto during the German occupation of Poland. They gathered on Saturdays, and came to be known as the Oneg Shabbat, meaning "Joy of the Sabbath."

(Photo: AP)

They hid their trove in 10 metal cases and two metal milk cans, evidence that was recovered after the war.

(Photo: AP)

Ringelblum and all but three of those who helped him were killed in the Holocaust. The Germans imprisoned 400,000 Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, where they suffered severely from starvation and diseases before most were deported to the Treblinka death camp and murdered.

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Paris school room named for Jewish boys slain in 2012 attack

PARIS - A conference room at a Paris middle school has been named in honor of two Jewish boys who were shot to death by an Islamic extremist in southern France more than five years ago.

The dedication of the room in memory of Arie and Gabriel Sandler is part of an effort by the Georges Brassens school to fight racism and anti-Semitism in France, which is home to Europe's biggest Muslim and Jewish populations.

The program seeks to make French values and the country's various religions and cultures more familiar to the school's students, many of whom are Muslim with roots in France's former colonies. It includes visits to the Paris Museum of Jewish art and history and the Arab World Institute.

(Photo: AP)

 Samuel Sandler, whose grandsons were 3 and 5 years old when they were killed during an attack at a Jewish school in Toulouse, said the naming ceremony was a "very moving" moment.

"Because of the murderer's weapon, they weren't able to go to school anymore," he said, yet "all schoolchildren will remember them."

The chilren's grandfather Samuel Sandler speaks at the naming ceremony (Photo: AP)

 The program, called "Humanity," has existed for years but it has been reinforced since a series of attacks by Islamic extremists in 2015 amid a peak of both anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim acts in France. The two teachers who lead the project, Jacqueline Courier-Briere and Nasser Dja Bouabdallah, said their method consists in answering all questions "without taboos" during respectful debates among students who range from 11 to 14 years old. Among the topics addressed are "Is a Muslim allowed in a Catholic church" and the more complex freedom of speech issues that emerged when satiric newspaper Charlie Hebdo was targeted in a deadly attack. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in revenge for Charlie Hebdo's depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.

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Holocaust survivors celebrate Bar and Bat Mitzvah at Kotel

Despite being over 70 years late, dozens of Holocaust survivors from southern Israel celebrated a Bar and Bat Mitzvah ceremony at the Western Wall earlier this week.

"We ran away with nothing, only the clothes on our back," said Ravichev Aspir. "My mother told me that in our religion, it's customary for boys and girls to celebrate when they reach that age, but it's not something we could have done."

Holocaust survivors celebrating Bar, Bat Mitzvah at Kotel (Photo: Noam Moskovich)

Aspir was 11 when the war began. "My father was 51, so they did not enlist him in the Red Army," she elaborated. "Together with my mother and brother, who was 17 at the time, we fled to the remote areas of Russia, where the Nazis had not yet invaded. We had nothing, we were hungry all the time, and we lived in a crowded place. I remember most of the time I was just cold and very hungry."

When the time came to celebrate her Bat Mitzvah, her parents could not hold the event. After the end of the war, the family stayed in Russia because their home in the Ukraine was completely destroyed.

(Photo: Noam Moskovich)

  

After completing her studies at the university, Aspir returned with her husband to Ukraine and in 1994 immigrated to Israel with her husband and son. She now lives in Arad. "I am very excited about the event at the Western Wall. Because of such events Israel came to be, and that is what I feel now," said Aspir.

(Photo: Noam Moskovich)

Alexander Buchnik, 87, born in Moscow, was also very excited to finally celebrate his Bar Mitzvah. "I do not remember much of the war. My father was drafted into the Red Army, and we do not know what happened to him to this day," he said. "My mother took me and my two little brothers and escaped from the war.

"When I was 13, Moscow was liberated from the Nazis, and we went back there, but we had no way to celebrate a Bar Mitzvah. Mother was busy surviving and keeping us alive, we could not think about it at all."

Buchnik and his family immigrated to Israel in 1994. "I've been thinking about having a Bar Mitzvah all my life, and all my life I felt like I've missed out on so much," Alexander said. "I am excited and happy; at last I will become a real Jew."

Liebman Semyon, a native of St. Petersburg, was about five years old when the war began. He was in preshool with his two-year-old sister when the authorities came and took the children to a remote city. Their mother joined them at a later stage.

(Photo: Noam Moskovich)

  

"It was absolutely forbidden to talk about Judaism or about having a Bar Mitzvah, so we did not talk or initiate any conversation about it," Semyon recalled. "When I received an ID, they suggested I change my name and that I don't state my nationality in order to hide my identity. I said I did not want to change anything." "This is an amazing surprise and holds great significance for me," he added. "I suddenly feel like a child before a big event. I'm really excited."

(Photo: Noam Moskovich)

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the chairman of the Friendship Foundation, which organized the event, said he "finds it difficult to think of anything more moving than elderly Holocaust survivors who get to celebrate a late Bar and Bat Mitzvah, in the holiest place for the Jewish people."

The Western Wall Heritage Foundation noted this was one of the most special events to take place in the history of the Western Wall.

"The light and darkness here are mixed up, but the hope is absolute, and this is proof that it is never too late," Eckstein added.

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