World Report

Friday, January 3, 2003 | by

SAO PAULO (JTA)—A Brazilian Jewish group touched off a controversy with its decision to spend $1 million to sponsor a presentation at Carnival celebrations in February.

The Jewish Culture Center in Sao Paulo recently launched a partnership with a local samba school with an eye toward a Ten Commandments presentation at the Rio de Janeiro Carnival.

Some Jewish activists blasted the center for being willing to spend so much, charging the money could be better spent on helping financially strapped Jewish institutions.

Subway may damage historic Russian shul

MOSCOW (JTA)—Jewish officials in the Russian city of Kazan are trying to save the city's only synagogue from damage.

The synagogue is among many buildings in Kazan's historic center that are facing damage from the construction of the city's first subway line.

Local Jewish donors and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee are expected to spend thousands of dollars on geological research and construction work to reinforce the foundation of the 1915 synagogue, one of Russia's largest.

Concordia Hillel sues school's student union

MONTEAL (JTA)—The Hillel at Montreal Concordia's University is suing the school's student union.

The lawsuit, filed recently, demands that the student union apologize to Hillel, reinstate Hillel without conditions and give the group $100,000 in damages.

The union voted to suspend Hillel in December after fliers promoting a program that calls for young Jews to volunteer in the Israeli army were distributed from Hillel's table on campus.

Canadian Indian goes to synagogue

MONTREAL (JTA)—Canadian Indian Matthew Coon Come gave a Sabbath sermon in a historic Montreal synagogue, where he denounced the anti-Semitic comments of another Canadian Indian leader.

In his sermon at the Sephardic Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Coon Come, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, compared the Canadian Indian drive for recognition to the Jewish experience.

He also denounced David Ahenakew, calling him a spokesman "of darkness and discrimination."

Ahenakew created a controversy last month when he praised Hitler. He later apologized for his remarks.

Holocaust scholar apologizes for claim

BELGRADE (JPS)—A well-known Yugoslav scholar has apologized for any misunderstanding regarding what he previously published on the role of Jews at the Jasenovac concentration camp, thereby defusing a potential showdown at a Holocaust conference on Sunday.

Dr. Milan Bulajic, who for many years headed the Museum of Genocide Victims in Belgrade and has written many books on the Holocaust in Yugoslavia and particularly on Jasenovac, made a dramatic apology Sunday for failing to present the historical context of testimonies published in his 1989 book "Ustaski Zlocini Genocida" ("The Genocide Crimes of the Ustasha").

According to those testimonies—by Serb inmates of the camp who came under heavy pressure by the collaborationist administration in Belgrade to blame the Jews for the crimes committed there—Jews ran the camp and were actively involved in the mistreatment of Serb inmates, charges that Jewish historians say are totally exaggerated and are based primarily on false testimony made under duress by Serb inmates