Comments (0)Auschwitz Museum Launches Facebook Page
October 25, 2009Washington
JTA Wire Service
The state-run Auschwitz Memorial Museum in Poland launched its official page on Facebook.
By Thursday, less than a week after the page debuted on the popular social networking Web site, the Auschwitz page had more than 1,400 members. The page was launched to reach out to a broader, younger public.
“Auschwitz Memorial is experimenting with new ways of reaching and educating people—such as Facebook,” a note on the page said. “There are many contemporary issues connected with historical memory and there are contemporary problems that we must solve now, after 65 years. The question is, should Auschwitz Memorial, as an institution, be closed for such new possibilities as Facebook with millions of people?”
This year, more than 1 million people have visited the Auschwitz Memorial Museum, located at the site of the Nazi death camp in southern Poland.
The Facebook page includes information on Auschwitz and provides a forum to post discussions, photographs and Web links. The memorial museum already has a Web site and a YouTube channel.
Several other pages on Facebook are devoted to Auschwitz and Holocaust memory.
Polish Holocaust Memorial Vandalized
Vandals defaced a Holocaust memorial at the Jewish cemetery in a town in southwestern Poland.
According to The Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, unknown vandals threw white paint over the commemorative plaque affixed to the monument at the cemetery in Klodzko sometime last week.
“Incidents like this undermine all good things happening in Polish-Jewish relations,” said Monika Krawczyk, the foundation’s CEO.
The foundation, which deals with the restitution and preservation of Jewish cemeteries, synagogues and other property, said the damage was “even more regrettable considering the fact that the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland for years has efficiently cooperated with local volunteers for the upkeep of the Klodzko Jewish cemetery.”
According to the foundation, this was the latest in a series of incidents in recent weeks at Jewish cemeteries. In Izbica, unknown persons set fire to a large tree at the local Jewish cemetery, and in Leczna, where local volunteers have been working to clean up the cemetery, unknown persons dumped a load of trash on the grounds.
Meanwhile, two youths were detained in Opole for allegedly damaging more than 20 tombstones in the Jewish cemetery there, which had undergone restoration in 2005.
Council of Europe Decries Political Hate Speech
The Council of Europe called on the major Hungarian political parties to keep racist hate speech out of an upcoming election campaign.
Responding to an appeal by the Jewish community, the call by the 47-member council was made last Friday following a fact-finding mission to Hungary led by Thomas Hammarberg, the council’s human rights commissioner. The next parliamentary elections are due within months.
The Wiesenthal Center, a consultant to the council, asked for an inquiry this fall following several provocative anti-Semitic demonstrations staged by the resurgent Hungarian neo-Nazi movement.
Hammarberg held talks in Budapest last week with Peter Feldmajer, president of the Association of Hungarian Jewish Religious Communities, as well as Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai and several government officials.
The commissioner expressed concern over manifestations of increasing racism and intolerance in Hungary targeting Jews and other minorities, and the lack of appropriate condemnation and effective counter measures by the authorities. He called on leaders of the major political parties to disassociate themselves from hate speech uttered by their followers.
Feldmajer shared his concern with Hammarberg during the meeting, in which they discussed the proliferation of hate speech in Hungarian political discourse.
Meanwhile, hundreds of uniformed members of the banned extremist Hungarian Guard held demonstrations at a Roma settlement, the scene recently of a fatal race riot. Several demonstration leaders called for the re-establishment of the notorious Hungarian Gendarmerie, the main instrument used by the Nazis during World War II for the transport of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz.
This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.