Shorts: World

Posthumous award for Holocaust novel

paris (jta) | A novel published more than 60 years after its author died in the Holocaust won one of France's top literary awards.

"Suite Francaise" by Irene Nemirovsky on Monday, Nov. 8, picked up the Renaudot Prize, awarded annually by a select group of authors.

Born in Kiev in 1903, Nemirovsky arrived in France in the 1930s. She wrote "Suite Francaise" in 1940, a novel which traces the lives of French war refugees fleeing the advancing German invasion.

Before she was deported to Auschwitz, Nemirovsky entrusted the tiny fragments of her book to her daughter, Diane Epstein, who agreed earlier this year to its publication.




Man sentenced for defacing Jewish memorial

paris (jta) | A man received a two-year prison sentence for defacing a French Jewish war memorial. A Paris court on Monday, Nov. 9, found Mathieu M., 22, guilty of scrawling swastikas and Nazi graffiti at the memorial at Verdun, site of a major World War I battle, in May.

Half of his sentence was suspended by the court. Another man, who was a minor at the time of the attack, is to be tried later.




JNF challenged in Scotland

london (jta) | A Scottish pro-Palestinian group petitioned the country's Parliament to strip the Jewish National Fund of its charitable status.

The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign gathered some 2,200 signatories to support their claims that JNF policies exclude non-Jews and contribute to human rights abuses.

The campaign's spokesman Ivan Clark told lawmakers: "The objection to the JNF is that it is an active part of the system that denies Palestinians their fundamental human rights with respect to land."

The move is the latest in a series of skirmishes between the JNF and pro-Palestinian campaigners.

The focus has moved to Scotland after the Charity Commission for England and Wales decided in June that the JNF satisfied its guidelines.




Blair to press Bush on Middle East

london (jta) | Tony Blair was expected to push for more U.S. involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during his meeting this week with President Bush.

Aides to the British prime minister told British media that the issue will be at the top of Blair's priority list.

"The need to revitalize the Middle East peace process is the single most pressing political challenge in our world today," the British prime minister said a day after U.S. voters elected Bush to a second term.




Jewish books pay big

london (jta) | A slew of rare and unusual Hebraica items fetched nearly $8 million at an auction. Sotheby's two-day sale last month brought in $7,989,320, a sum the auction house called "the highest total ever for a sale of Hebrew manuscripts."

One 15th-century manuscript, an ornately illustrated collection of poems and prayers on life-cycle events from Italy, went for $400,000, though initial projections had indicated it would go for half that.

The items belonged to Britain's Montefiore Endowment. The auction's proceeds will go toward Jewish education and scholarships in the United Kingdom.




Prague library features Hebrew texts

prague (jta) | A rare collection of Hebrew manuscripts and medieval texts is on public view at Prague's National Library.

The Saraval Legacy exhibition displays 34 Hebrew manuscripts that formed the most valuable part of a collection once belonging to Leon Vita Saraval (1771-1851), a Trieste-born Jew and bibliophile.

The collection was purchased in 1853 by the Jewish Theological Seminary in Wroclaw, Poland, which owned some 400 manuscripts and 30,000 books before the collection was confiscated by the Nazis during World War II.

The Nazis moved much of the Saraval items to Prague to put in their planned museum of an "extinct race." About one third of the manuscripts were recovered soon after the war, but the rest were lost or scattered around the world. Gestapo members often looted from Nazi holdings and sold items to the highest bidder.

The National Library has agreed to return the collection to Poland by the end of the year.




'Jewish card' played in Ukraine?

kiev (jta) | A Ukrainian Jewish lawmaker accused members of President Leonid Kuchma's administration of playing the "Jewish card" to discredit an opposition presidential candidate.

Yevgeny Chervonenko, who is a close aide to Viktor Yuschenko, the opposition candidate for president who finished second in the recent national vote and secured a slot in the Nov. 21 runoff, said that Ukrainian authorities are investigating whether Chervonenko holds an Israeli passport.

The move is seen as an effort to discredit Yuschenko by casting aspersions on his aide's supposed dual loyalties. Chervonenko, 44, vice president of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine, denies that he has an Israeli passport.

Chervonenko recently said in the Ukrainian Parliament that while being a "citizen of Ukraine, I'm proud to be a Ukrainian Jew."