World Report

BUDAPEST (JTA) -- A synagogue in eastern Hungary was burned to the ground by arsonists, according to local police.

The synagogue in the town of Tokaj has not been used for religious purposes since before World War II, when there were still thousands of Jews still living there.

Just the same, the synagogue had been undergoing renovations during the past four years, with local officials planning to use it for cultural events.

Cemetery vandalized at Rosh Hashanah

WARSAW (JTA) -- Vandals broke into Warsaw's only surviving Jewish cemetery over Rosh Hashanah, smashing tombstones, scrawling satanic graffiti and strewing ashes, beer cans and other rubbish.

Andrzej Zozula, executive director of the Union of Polish Jewish Communities, said Warsaw police were investigating. Zozula added that the desecration appeared to have been the work of a satanic cult and it was not clear whether anti-Semitism was a prime motivation. "This type of thing has happened in Christian cemeteries, too," he said.

First Reform temple dedicated in Russia

MOSCOW (JTA) -- Russia's first Reform Jewish community center was dedicated last week in Moscow.

The center includes a synagogue and Hebrew school as well as special programs for young and elderly people.

The center also houses an institute for social workers. On completion of the institute's two-year program, 21 men and women from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus will work in some of the 62 Reform congregations that have sprung up in recent years across the former Soviet Union.

Investigators find 48,000 Swiss accounts

ZURICH (JTA) -- International investigators found almost 48,000 Holocaust-era dormant accounts in Swiss banks, the Jewish Weekly of Switzerland reported Thursday of last week.

The total is far larger than what had been claimed by Swiss bankers in 1995, when they said only 775 such accounts existed.

A summary drafted by the investigators, who are headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, criticizes Swiss banks for "questionable practices" and "widespread insensitivity" after the war.

But the summary, quoted by the Jewish Weekly, said the commission found no evidence of "concerted systematic efforts to divert the funds of victims of Nazi persecution to improper purposes."

Catholic critics dispute book attacking Pius XII

ROME (JTA) -- A Vatican historian and Catholic rights groups are attacking a new book which claims that wartime Pope Pius XII was an anti-Semite who tacitly condoned the Holocaust.

The critics are saying that "Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII" by British historian John Cromwell is historically inaccurate. The book, which has been excerpted in Vanity Fair magazine, is to be published later this month.

The author cited secret Vatican records and the pope's own files to support his conclusions.