World Report

Friday, July 21, 2000 | by

PRAGUE (JTA)—The Czech Republic's foreign minister discovered his grandmother's name on a list of Nazi death camp victims while visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.

Jan Kavan, whose Jewish father changed his name from Kohen, surprised his tour guides when he told them he lost family members during the Shoah. A search of the memorial's database turned up his kin's name and listed her place of death as Buchenwald.

Former Soviet state now offering Yiddish

MOSCOW (JTA)—An intensive one-month course in Yiddish language, literature and culture opened in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.

The third annual program was organized by the local Jewish community with support from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency for Israel. Students from countries including the United States, Britain, France, Australia and Germany are participating in the program.

Italian Jews protest honor for anti-Semite

ROME (JTA)—Italian Jews have begun a letter and fax campaign to force the city of Bari to change the name of a street honoring a key promoter of fascist-era anti-Semitism.

Nicola Pende was an eminent pathologist who headed a list of scientists in signing a 1938 "manifesto of racist scientists" that "proved" Italians to be "Aryans" and paved the way for harsh anti-Semitic laws issued later that year. Last month, after a similar campaign, municipal authorities in the southern town of Pesche decided not to name a street in Pende's honor.

Germany sponsors Holocaust-era fund

BERLIN (JTA)—Germany joined other nations at a historic signing ceremony creating a $5.2 billion fund for Holocaust-era slave and forced laborers. Among the signers were U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat and representatives from Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Czech Republic. Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called the fund's creation "above all a gesture of moral responsibility" toward Nazi victims.

Meanwhile, the Evangelical Church here pledged $5 million to a fund established to compensate Nazi-era victims. The church said it acknowledged that German churches and affiliated social agencies used forced laborers during the war for such things as cemetery upkeep. "This was participation in a forced and unjust system. We recognize this guilt," the church said in a statement.

France recognizes past wrongdoings

PARIS (JTA)—France held a national memorial day honoring the tens of thousands of Jews who suffered at the hands of the French state during World War II.

Sunday's national day of recognition, approved by the parliament in February, also honored those who protected Jews during the Vichy government's collaboration with the Nazis. Jewish leader Henri Hajdenberg applauded the government's willingness to acknowledge the nation's wartime past.

Conference boasts Wiesel and Lipstadt

LONDON (JTA)—More than 600 scholars are attending a Holocaust conference in Oxford, England.

Attendees include Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and American academic Deborah Lipstadt, who recently won a libel suit brought against her by Holocaust denier David Irving.

In his remarks, Wiesel was critical of "good people who worry that the Holocaust has overshadowed" other aspects of Jewish life. "The danger is not from Christians now. The danger is from those who deny the truth of our commitment," he said.

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