Wednesday 31 July 2013

New Latvia Museum Honours Rescuers of Jews During Holocaust

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

President Shimon Peres has taken part in the ceremony to open a museum honoring a couple who saved some 50 Jews from extermination in Nazi-occupied Latvia.

The museum in downtown Riga, Latvia's capital, is located next to the property once owned by Zanis Lipke, a port worker who together with his wife hid Jews in an underground pit measuring some 9 square meters (90 square feet).

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Friday 26 July 2013

Orthodox Jew Sues Landlady For Removing Mezuzah

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

An Orthodox Jew from Long Island has sued his landlady after reporting she evicted him for refusing to remove a mezuzah from his door, according to the New York Post.

The 53-year-old Arye Sachs claims his allegedly anti-Semitic landlady, Margarit Pascale, repeatedly commanded him to remove the mezuzah from the door of his North Babylon apartment. 
 
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Wednesday 24 July 2013

U.S. Antisemitic Incidents Decline in 2012

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

The total number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States fell by 14% in 2012, continuing a three-year trend of incremental declines, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents, issued Monday.

The ADL Audit reported a total of 927 anti-Semitic incidents across the US in 2012, including assaults, vandalism and harassment, marking a 14% decline from the 1,080 incidents reported in 2011.

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Antisemitic Display at Roger Waters Concert in Belgium

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

On Saturday night, Israelis were among those who attended a British musician and former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters’ concert in Belgium. Even as Waters is a known activist pushing for the boycott of Israel, Israelis were still amazed to see that the show included a blatantly anti-Semitic display.

Toward its end, a black balloon in the shape of a wild pig was released to the sky, on it a Star of David, in the company of symbols of dictatorial organizations and regimes from around the world. 

 
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Monday 22 July 2013

Yad Vashem Commemorates Little-Known Holocaust-Era Uprising

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

When one thinks of a ghetto uprising, the first thing that comes to mind is Warsaw. But historians have already determined that the Warsaw Ghetto fighters were not the first to revolt against the Nazis – they were preceded by the fighters of the Nieswiez Ghetto in eastern Poland.

In order to create awareness and honor the ghetto fighters, an event marking the ghetto will be held Monday evening at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. 

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Friday 19 July 2013

Jewish Groups Call on EU to Overturn Polish Ban on Kosher Slaughter

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Europe's Jewish leaders on Thursday asked the European Union to back their call for a Polish ban on the ritual slaughter of animals for food to be overturned.

Jewish community and religious leaders from across Europe also urged the EU to review its own legislation on animal slaughter to strengthen the rights of Jews and Muslims to eat meat killed in line with their religious requirements.
 
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Thursday 18 July 2013

Rewards Offered as Part of "Last Chance" Effort to Catch Remaining Nazi War Criminals, Bring Them to Justice

FSWC Reports:

From Reuters:

A "last chance" campaign to root out surviving Nazi war criminals and bring them to justice before they die will be launched next week in Germany, almost 70 years after the end of World War Two.

Nazi-hunters have been encouraged by the prosecution last month in Hungary of 98-year-old Laszlo Csatary for helping to deport Jews to Auschwitz and by the arrest in Germany of Hans Lipschis, a suspected former guard at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
 
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Wednesday 17 July 2013

Swiss Banks Said to Have Paid Out Over $1.2 Billion to Holocaust Survivors and Their Heirs

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Holocaust survivors and victims' heirs have received $1.24 billion from a Swiss fund set up after a scandal over dormant accounts of Jews killed in World War II, a magazine said Monday.

The Swiss-Jewish weekly Tachles said the figure was contained in a report by New York judge Edward Korman, who oversees the management of the fund.

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Monday 15 July 2013

Thai University Apologizes After Graduation Banner Depicting Hitler Among Superheros Displayed

FSWC Reports:

From The Toronto Star:

BANGKOK—Thailand’s premier university has apologized for displaying a billboard that showed Adolf Hitler alongside Superman and other superheroes, saying Monday it was painted by ignorant students who didn’t realize Hitler’s image would offend anyone.

The huge billboard was placed outside the art faculty of Chulalongkorn University as part of a tribute to this year’s graduating class.

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Israel, Jewish Groups Protest Polish Ban on Kosher Slaughter

FSWC Reports:

From Reuters:

Israel has criticized an extension of Poland's ban on kosher meat production, saying on Monday that it damaged efforts to rehabilitate Jewish life in a country whose large Jewish community was all but wiped out in the Holocaust.

Citing animal cruelty, Warsaw lawmakers on Friday rejected a government-backed bill that would have allowed slaughterhouses to produce meat in accordance with Jewish ritual law. The practice was halted last year by a constitutional court ruling.
 
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Friday 12 July 2013

Twitter Reportedly Hands Over Data in French Antisemitism Case

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

Twitter said Friday it had handed over data to French authorities to help identify the authors of anti-Semitic and racist tweets following complaints from Jewish groups and anti-racism organizations.

A French court in January ordered the company to provide the data after legal action by France's Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) and four anti-racism groups. 

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Monday 8 July 2013

Hungary Agrees to New Holocaust Restitution Deal

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

The Hungarian government announced a deal Saturday with a US-based Holocaust restitution organization on reparations for Hungarian survivors living abroad, ending a year-long row over transparency and a freeze of payments to survivors.

"The government has concluded an agreement with the Conference of Material Claims Against Germany," Janos Lazar, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff, said in a statement to the Hungarian news agency MTI.
 
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Sunday 7 July 2013

French Rabbi Stands Up To Antisemitism as Many Fellow Jews Leave to Escape It

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

It's a tough job being a rabbi, especially for those who work in France's suburbs.

Fostering pride amongst congregants isn't always easy when most French Jews prefer to hide their Jewish identity out of fears of arousing anti-Semitism.  Many have left, but he remains. Rabbi Davide Altabe has run the Villepinte synagogue for 10 years. The building in a working-class suburb of northern Paris has been torched twice. 
 
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Thursday 4 July 2013

Yad Vashem Celebrates 50 Years of Honouring "Righteous Among the Nations"

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

In the spring of 1943, the friend of a Polish-Catholic family discovered a naked, Jewish baby in a nearby dark, cold cellar. The child, not even two years old, could neither walk nor talk. Her Jewish parents had been murdered and the family they paid to protect her had abandoned her.

Taking on considerable peril, Jozef and Natalia Roztropowicz took in the child, baptized her as Irena and raised her as their own. Five years later, they made another gut-wrenching choice: Returning their beloved daughter to an adoptive Jewish family who moved with her to Israel two years later.  The child, now a 71-year-old woman named Sabina Heller, says they are the reason she is alive.  

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Latvian WWII Memorial Condemned as Antisemitic

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Wednesday condemned plans by Latvian nationalists to mark a World War II event that led to the massacre of a town's Jewish population.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Nazi-hunting center in Jerusalem, called the commemoration planned Thursday in the northern town of Limbazi "absolutely disgusting and a terrible insult to the victims of the Holocaust in Latvia."

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Koreans' Visit to Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Leads to Apology Tour in Jerusalem

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

A group of tourists from Korea raided Jerusalem's city center last weekend, handing out flyers apologizing for Christianity's atrocities against the Jewish people. 

According to the tourists, a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum prompted them to go out and seek the forgiveness of the Jewish people.  Yet a member of an organization protesting missionary activity says the group's real goal is to appease Jews and bring them closer to the Christian religion. 

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Wednesday 3 July 2013

German Newspaper Publishes Caricature Depicting Israel as a Horned, Knife-Wielding Monster

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

The image is a caricature published by the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung, a daily newspaper, criticizing Germany's military aid to Israel. The paper attempted to express the manner Israel is viewed by its enemies. 

 "Germany presents" the drawing's subheading reads and then elaborates: "For decades Israel receives arms, sometimes for free. Israel's detractors believe Israel to be a voracious Moloch. Peter Beinart condemns this situation."

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Tuesday 2 July 2013

Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Blames Jewish Diaspora for Domestic Anti-Government Protests

FSWC Reports:

From Reuters:

A Turkish deputy prime minister linked the "Jewish diaspora" to recent anti-government unrest, drawing condemnation from world Jewish leaders on Tuesday and concern among Turkey's Jews the comments could make them targets of popular anger.

Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay's office said his comments, made to reporters in the town of Kirikkale and published on the Cihan news agency website on Monday, were taken out of context.

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Jews in Belgium Endure Antisemitic Insults and Assault after Affixing Mezuzah on their Apartment Door

FSWC Reports:

From ynetnews.com:

A former Israeli tennis player and her wife have been the victims of an anti-Semitic attack in their own home in a suburb of Antwerp, Belgium. Police have refused to accept a complaint against those who made the attack.  Ruth Sverdloff, a former Israeli tennis champion, and her wife, Cindey Meul, moved into an apartment in Aartselaar, near Antwerp, in the middle of May.

In accordance with the Jewish tradition, they affixed a small mezuzah on the door of their apartment. They then suffered three weeks of anti-Semitic insults and harassment from their neighbors, culminating in Cindey Meul being attacked in the apartment, beaten and left unconscious with a broken nose.

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