Shorts: World

Denier's trial halted after judge fires defense

mannheim, germany (ap) | The trial of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel will have to be rescheduled, the judge said this week, after firing one of Zundel's defense lawyers.

Judge Ulrich Meinerzhagen ordered defense attorney Sylvia Stolz dismissed, saying he doubted she would defend Zundel properly and that a replacement would need time to prepare.

Meinerzhagen ordered that Zundel remain in custody but set no date for the trial to reopen. The court also dismissed a defense motion calling for Meinerzhagen's removal.

Zundel, 66, who was deported to his native Germany from Canada in March, faces charges of incitement, libel and disparaging the dead before the state court in the southwestern city of Mannheim.

He faces a maximum sentence of five years in jail if convicted.

At the opening of his trial last week, Meinerzhagen dismissed Horst Mahler, himself a prominent far-right activist, whom Stolz had wanted as her assistant.

The judge said Stolz, one of Zundel's four lawyers, may have committed an offense by allowing Mahler to help prepare the defense's case.

Mahler is barred from practicing as a lawyer because of a conviction earlier this year for incitement over the distribution of anti-Semitic propaganda.

Also this week, Germar Rudolf, who published a study that he said proved the Nazis did not gas Jews at Auschwitz, was deported from the United States to his native Germany to serve a 14-month prison term for Holocaust denial, Stuttgart prosecutors said.

Rudolf, a 1989 chemistry graduate of Bonn University and a former student at Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, Germany, was sentenced in 1995 to the prison term but then disappeared.

The crucial evidence in the Stuttgart case was Rudolf's "Expert Report on the Formation and Detectability of Cyanide Compounds in the Gas Chambers of Auschwitz.' It concluded that "no mass gassings with hydrogen cyanide took place in the National Socialist concentration camp Auschwitz.'




Violinist's son fired for remarks

berlin (jta) | The son of famous Jewish violinist Yehudi Menuhin lost his job in Germany over extremist statements.

The board of the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation fired Gerard Menuhin as president after it learned of his anti-Jewish statements in far-right German publications. In columns and interviews in the National Zeitung newspaper, the Web site of the National Democratic Party of Germany and the monthly magazine Deutsche Stimme, Menuhin, 57, reportedly referred to "an international lobby of influential people and associations that put Germans under pressure for their own purposes." He said Germans are under "endless blackmail" because of the Holocaust, and that "a people that allows itself to be intimidated 60 years after the end of the war with the events of that time is not healthy."




Czechs halt neo-Nazi concert

prague (jta) | Czech police stopped a neo-Nazi concert. Last week's action came after months of criticism that police had failed to stop similar concerts in other cities.

The police monitored the concert in Zlata Olesnice, attended by 100 people, with cameras and listening devices as the windows of the venue were covered up with plastic sheets.

They detained three participants who tried to smuggle some T-shirts and CDs with what police said was Nazi content. One participant was charged with inciting hated.




China plans to build 'Jewish neighborhood'

beijing (jta) | China may build a "Jewish neighborhood" in Shanghai, Chinese media reported. The district would be modeled after the area that was home to thousands of Jews who came to Shanghai as refugees during World War II. Kosher restaurants and clubs could help make the district a tourist attraction, Chinese officials hope.




Vatican document anniversary marked

dublin (jta) | Irish Jews and Catholics celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Vatican document that rejected collective Jewish responsibility for Jesus' death.

This week's meeting marked "a revolution unparalleled in human history" marking an "amazing transformation" of Catholic attitudes toward Jews over the past 40 years, said Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee's international director of inter-religious affairs.

Rosen, a former chief rabbi of Ireland, spoke at a commemoration of the anniversary at Dublin's main synagogue. Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and Dermot Lane, president of the Mater Dei Institute, an Irish seminary and theological college, also spoke at the event.

Lane urged his fellow Christians to "remember that our birth certificate carries a Jewish address."