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Comments (0)More than 150 medical instruments possibly used to conduct experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz were donated to its memorial museum.
A museum spokesman announced the donation of the collection on the Auschwitz museum’s website.
The collection, which was found near the Nazi death camp in Poland following its liberation in 1945, had been held in private hands for more than 60 years.
“This is a great event, quite unusual,” museum director Piotr Cywinski said. “There are very few items related to the SS doctors’ pseudoscientific experiments. Evidence of their crimes were either destroyed or consistently sent to the depths of the Reich.”
The museum said the collection included mainly gynecological and surgical instruments, and there was a “very high probability” that they were used in the camp.
“Presumably they belonged to the SS doctors who, because of the experiments they conducted, could be in possession of such medical instruments,” said Piotr Setkiewicz, the manager of the museum research department.
Setkiewicz said it was possible that the instruments had been owned by SS Dr. Carl Clauberg, who carried out experiments on the sterilization of women in Auschwitz block 10, or three other Nazi doctors—Eduard Wirths, Horst Schumann or Bruno Weber—who also used female camp prisoners in their experiments.
Amsterdam Reform Congregation Dedicates New Building
Amsterdam’s Reform congregation dedicated its new synagogue building in time for Rosh Hashanah.
The home for the Liberal Jewish Congregation was inaugurated Aug. 29 in ceremonies led by Rabbi Menno ten Brink and attended by local Jewish and political leaders, as well as by the Dutch royal family. Construction took about two years and cost some $16 million.
The congregation of some 850 member families outgrew its postwar synagogue, which was built by Holocaust survivors from Holland and Germany. About $1.4 million for the synagogue project came from the state, which distributes funds that were stolen from Dutch Jews deported during World War II.
Designed by architect Bjarne Mastenbroek, the new building, situated on a small island in the city of canals, contains two sanctuaries, classrooms and a youth room, a center for interfaith dialogue, and offices for the Union for Progressive Judaism in the Netherlands. Amsterdam’s is the largest of Holland’s nine Progressive congregations.
A unique feature of the synagogue is its wall of windows resembling a menorah.
Amsterdam’s Jewish population includes descendants of Conversos and Sephardim who fled the Spanish Inquisition in the late 15th century and eastern European Ashkenazim who fled pogroms in the 17th century. The 20th century brought German Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. Coming from the birthplace of Reform Judaism, they brought new life to Amsterdam’s then-small Reform congregation.
Unlike its American counterpart, the Reform movement in Europe generally does not accept Jews of patrilineal descent as full members.
Melbourne Jewish Leaders Sever Ties with Newspaper
Jewish leaders in Melbourne have severed ties with the city’s major broadsheet newspaper over its treatment of Israel.
Jewish Community Council of Victoria President John Searle and Zionist Council of Victoria President Dr. Danny Lamm issued a joint statement last week accusing The Age newspaper of pursuing a continued “war of words against Israel” and a “clear and consistent vilification of the world’s only Jewish state.”
The leaders of Victoria’s major Jewish bodies said they had addressed the newspaper’s “strident line” against Israel on several occasions with Paul Ramadge, the editor in chief, but to no avail.
But in an e-mail Aug. 24, Ramadge said because of the complexities of the Middle East conflict, his paper would never be able to report “in a way that pleases both sides all of the time.”
While Searle and Lamm said there was no one incident that triggered the severing of ties at this time, the paper’s coverage of a Turkish-flagged ship’s attempt to break the blockade of Gaza in late May was the final straw.
The newspaper had a correspondent and photographer aboard the flotilla when the Israeli Navy intercepted it on May 31, leading to the deaths of nine Turkish passengers. A subsequent front-page article in The Age said the Israeli naval commandos “hunted like hyenas” before “tightening the noose”—language described by the Jewish organizations as “incendiary.”
Ramadge said his staff “reported what happened accurately, fairly and to the best of their abilities.”
Searle and Lamm said the problem dated back to Ramadge’s predecessor, Andrew Jaspan, adding that The Age’s alleged bias also had the “hopefully unintended by-product of legitimizing anti-Semitism in this country.”
“We believe that The Age’s record speaks for itself,” they said. “Quite simply The Age is not a friend of our community.”