World Report

Friday, March 2, 2001 | by

PARIS (JTA)—Yahoo! is refusing to meet a deadline imposed by a French court to halt the sale of Nazi memorabilia accessible on its Web site by the end of the week.

A representative of the Internet portal said the company has no intention of complying with the ruling, issued in a courtroom here last November.

The judge declared Yahoo! would be fined up to $14,000 per day for ignoring the ruling, but the issue may be moot because the company says it has nearly eliminated all auctions of Nazi goods from its site.

Uncharacteristically, U.N. head backs Israel

GENEVA (JTA)—The U.N. high commissioner for human rights criticized Iran last week for what the Simon Wiesenthal Center said was a deliberate effort to bar a Jewish representative from a conference on racism that Iran hosted.

Mary Robinson, whom Israel views as an unfairly harsh critic, "expressed her dismay at the procedural and technical difficulties" that prevented the center from attending the meeting in Tehran, according to a statement from her office.

The Bahai International Community also was barred from attending.

'Mein Kampf' ruling spurs Czech surprise

PRAGUE (JTA)—Czech Jewish leaders expressed surprise after an appeals court overturned the conviction of a publisher for producing an unabridged Czech version of Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

The court said there had been a number of procedural errors in the original December trial of Michal Zitko, who at the time was given a three-year suspended prison sentence and fined.

The appeals court referred the case back to the lower courts.

Hungarians needing dough learn to raise it

ROME (JTA)—Some 20 representatives of Hungarian Jewish organizations this week began a four-month course in basic fund-raising techniques and strategies, the first such training program implemented for Hungarian Jews.

The course was organized by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The course will teach participants to create draft projects, organize fund-raising goals and campaigns and write grant applications.

"Fund-raising is a profession and art that can be both taught and studied," said the JDC's Hungary director, Israel Sela.