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September 17, 2008
Poles Caring for Jewish Sites to Meet
Rome
JTA Wire Service
The first national conference of non-Jewish Poles who care for Jewish heritage sites in Poland is set to begin. The conference will take place next week in the small town of Zdunska Wola, near Lodz in central Poland. Supported by state and local authorities, the Sept. 15-16 conference is the brainchild of local activist Kamila Klauzinska, one of scores of non-Jewish Polish volunteers who have been honored by the Israeli embassy over the past decade for their work in preserving Jewish heritage in Poland. Klauszinska is a graduate student in Jewish studies at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University. Organized in association with the Yachad Historical Society, a group dedicated to the preservation of Zdunska Wola’s Jewish history and heritage sites, the conference is dedicated to the memory of Ireneusz Slipek, who until his death in 2006 spent 20 years caring for and cleaning up the Jewish cemetery in his hometown of Warta.
11 Jews Killed in Russian Crash
Russia’s chief rabbi traveled to Perm to lead the funerals of 11 Jews who died in a plane crash. A passenger jet crashed early Sunday morning during its descent into central Russia, killing all 88 passengers, including at least 11 members of the local Jewish community. The flight, operated by a subsidiary of Aeroflot, was en route from Moscow to Perm, a city in the Ural Mountains in central Russia when it crashed at 3:10 a.m. Four Jewish families with three children were among those killed in the crash. The flight recorders from the Boeing 737 Aeroflot Nord flight were damaged in the crash and it may take several weeks to determine the cause, the Interfax news agency reported. Investigators have ruled out terrorism as a possible cause. Witnesses reported seeing the airplane on fire before it crashed onto a section of the Trans-Siberian railway in an unpopulated area of the city. A delegation from the Chabad-led Federation of Jewish Communities, including Russia’s chief Chabad Rabbi Berel Lazar, traveled to Perm to assist in the funerals of the victims. The Jewish victims were Yevgeny and Lyudmila Sankin, 50 and 53; Anna Spivak and Yakov Spivak, both 32; Sergei Yudin and Valeriya Yudin, 41 and 3; and Ifraim Nakhumov and Golda Nakhumova, 36 and 24, with their children, Ilya Nakhumov, 7, and Eva Nakhumov, 5.
Jews of Libyan Origin Request Reparations
Jews of Libyan origin have asked Italy to include them in a $5 billion reparations package. The package is compensating Libya for Italy’s occupation of the country. Italy ruled Libya as a colony from 1911 to 1943. The Jews of Libyan origin also have asked Libya to compensate them for goods seized after almost all remaining Jews in the country fled widespread persecution in 1967. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi signed the compensation agreement Aug. 31. Meir Cahlon, the president of the Israel-based World Organization of Libyan Jews, sent a letter earlier this month to Berlusconi via the Italian ambassador in Israel. Cahlon said that Libyan Jews “suffered the damages of colonization as did everyone.” In addition, he said, they faced further persecution because of Italy’s fascist anti-Semitic laws, implemented in 1938. These, he said, led to “losses of jobs, losses of possessions, losses of freedom and losses of human dignity, ending with the deportations to labor and death camps, where 620 Libyan Jews were eliminated.” About 40,000 Jews lived in Libya in 1938, but by the late 1960s the number had dwindled to some 6,000. Virtually all the Jews fled to Israel or Italy in 1967.
Romans Outraged by Nazi’s Pageant Appearance
A video appearance at a beauty pageant by convicted Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke has provoked outrage. The organizer of the “Star of the Year” pageant, held last week in a small town near Rome, showed a film clip of the former SS officer, who greeted the audience and wished good luck to contestants. Priebke, 95, is serving a life sentence under house arrest for his role in the World War II Nazi massacre of 335 Roman men and boys, including 75 Jews. According to local media, several people in the audience reacted by shouting “for shame!” Local politicians and Jewish representatives quickly condemned the appearance, with some accusing pageant organizer Claudio Marini of using wartime tragedy as a publicity stunt. “Speculating on the macabre notoriety of a war criminal is really the opposite of a beauty contest,” Renzo Gattegna, the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. “And to this is added the cynicism of never considering the pain of the families of the victims.” Marini had prompted sharp criticism earlier in the year when he attempted to name Priebke to the pageant’s jury, claiming he was doing so as part of a “peace process.”
This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.