Shorts: World

Extremist calls gas chambers a ‘detail’

Extreme rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen told the European Union Parliament that “gas chambers were a detail in the history of the Second World War.”

Already charged and fined by French courts for similar remarks he made in 1987, Le Pen’s comments outraged European Parliament members and Jewish organizations.

Following the remark last week, European Union Parliament members drafted an accord that could prevent the 81-year-old Le Pen from presiding over July’s inaugural session of parliament, Reuters reported. Traditionally, the assembly’s inaugural session after elections, during which its president is elected, is led by the oldest member of the body. In this case, that would be Le Pen.

“It would be a shame if Le Pen were allowed to become the doyen of the new European Parliament and would send a bad signal to Europe and the world,” World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder said in a statement. Lauder asked parliament members to prevent Le Pen from assuming the honorary role. — jta

Audit: Anti-Semitism on rise in Canada

Anti-Semitism in Canada is “at an all-time high,” according to the findings of an annual audit.

Anti-Semitic incidents in Canada rose by 8.9 percent in 2008 over the previous year, due partly to the sour economy, according to B’nai B’rith Canada’s League for Human Rights. Its 2008 Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents released March 31 tallied 1,135 incidents, representing a more than a four-fold increase in incidents over the past decade.

The findings “offer a paradoxical view of the state of anti-Jewish prejudice in Canada,” said Frank Dimant, B’nai B’rith Canada’s executive vice president. “On one hand we have a government that has made it a priority to root out hatred, and an official Liberal opposition that also recognizes the widespread anti-Jewish prejudice against our community.”

“We attribute this to the fallout from the developing economic recession and such high-profile fiascos as the Bernard Madoff scandal,” B’nai B’rith Canada said in a news release. — jta

WWII mass Jewish grave discovered

Investigators discovered a mass grave for 200 Jews in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod, which is on the country’s border with Slovakia.

Rabbi Mendel Teichman, the chief rabbi for the city and the region, said he recently came across an open area with no fence and no headstones in the local Jewish cemetery. He then found decades-old historical documents stating that the gravesite was the resting place for more than 200 Jews killed by the Nazis in World War II, he said.

Before the war, Uzhhorod was part of Hungary and the city was known as Ungvar. — jta

Web site combats Holocaust denial

A new Web site aimed at curbing Holocaust denial will include a history of Muslim-Jewish relations in English, French, Arabic and Farsi, the project’s organizers said.

The initiative, called Project Aladdin and set to launch Friday, April 3, hinges on the Internet site, which is also to carry a history of the Holocaust and offer online Arabic and Farsi translations of books including “The Diary of Anne Frank,” said the organizers, who are prominent figures from Europe and the Muslim world.

Among those unveiling the project are Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, former French President Jacques Chirac and Abdurrahman Wahid, former president of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Former President Bill Clinton also hailed Project Aladdin, which he said in a letter “has the potential to play a vital role in countering denial with facts and putting a human face on something that otherwise might seem too terrible to believe.”

The initiative is being launched at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters and is partially sponsored by France’s Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah. — ap

Venezuela accuses 11 in synagogue attack

Venezuelan prosecutors have filed charges against eight police officers and three others in the January attack on Caracas’ largest synagogue.

In a statement released last week, prosecutors said they have asked a court to approve charges including robbery and acts of contempt against a religion.

The Tiferet Israel synagogue was ransacked and vandalized January. Assailants shattered religious objects, spray-painted anti-Semitic slogans and stole a computer database with the names and addresses of Jews in Venezuela. The attack took place as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez severed diplomatic ties with Israel in protest of its military offensive on the Gaza Strip. — ap