From Egypt, a crack in wall of Holocaust denial

Robert Satloff | Special to the Baltimore Sun
Posted February 26, 2007

When the United Nations considered a landmark resolution condemning Holocaust denial last month, the media missed a major story: One of the first delegates out of his chair to express support for “keeping memory alive” was the ambassador from Egypt.

This was a major breakthrough. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be the world’s most famous Holocaust denier, but he has only followed the model of a former president of Egypt — Gamal Abdel Nasser — who once said that “no person, not even the most simple one, takes seriously the lie of the 6 million Jews that were murdered.” Just two years ago, Egypt took the lead in criticizing the original U.N. resolution establishing Jan. 27 as international Holocaust Remembrance Day.
To me, it came as no surprise that Egypt, leader of the Sunni Arab world, now supports a resolution targeted mainly against Iran. Just days before the U.N. vote, I returned from an eye-opening visit to Cairo where I delivered lectures on my book Among the Righteous: Lost Stories From the Holocaust’s Long Reach Into Arab Lands, which details the often-overlooked experience of the half-million Jews who lived in Axis-controlled North Africa. This was almost surely the first time anyone had spoken publicly in an Arab capital on the Arab role in the Holocaust.

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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28 AT 7 P.M.

AUTHOR MARILYN HENRY TO DISCUSS

CONFRONTING THE PERPETRATORS:

A HISTORY OF THE CLAIMS CONFERENCE

at the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust

NEW YORK, NY – In 1951, Israel and an ad hoc consortium of Jewish organizations, known as the Claims Conference, negotiated with West Germany for “moral and material amends” for Nazi-era damages. Nearly 60 years later the Claims Conference has won compensation for hundreds of thousands of Nazi victims and established enduring legal and moral principles for redress for victims of human rights abuses. Marilyn Henry will discuss her comprehensive book, Confronting the Perpetrators: A History of the Claims Conference (Vallentine Mitchell, 2007), on March 28 at 7 p.m. at the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.

Marilyn Henry is a contributing editor at ARTnews Magazine, prior to that she reported for the Jerusalem Post from Israel, New York, and Europe. She is a recognized authority on the recovery of properties confiscated in Europe during the Nazi and Communist eras. Her work also has appeared in the Washington Post, Die Welt and other media outlets.

Tickets to this event are $5, free for members. Tickets may be purchased online at www.mjhnyc.org or by calling 646-437-4202.

Finland’s Tarnished Holocaust Record

An Interview with Serah Beizer

A few years ago it became public that Finland had handed over almost three thousand Soviet prisoners of war to the Germans during World War II. Until that time Finland had the reputation of a country that protected all its Jews, except for eight Central European Jewish refugees who were handed over to the Gestapo in Estonia.
At least seventy Soviet Jewish prisoners were extradited to the Gestapo. Finnish historians claim that these people were handed over because they were political prisoners. However, many of the Jews were barbers, carpenters, and postal workers by profession. These are highly unlikely candidates to have been political agitators or commissars.
The Finnish government has appointed a historical commission to investigate the deaths, extraditions, and deportations of Soviet prisoners of war and others to the Germans. Author Elina Sana, who has played a crucial role in bringing the matter to public attention, says in her book that Finland should establish a truth commission. The present commission does not qualify as one. It has done important research but will only partly disclose its findings. Finland’s Data Protection Board decided that ‘in order to protect the privacy of the registered [person]…action has to be taken so that data on a certain individual shall not be revealed to outsiders’ without his or her permission. As the data on prisoners of war extradited sixty to sixty-five years ago, most of them 85-105 years old if alive by today, will not be published, this is hardly a truth commission.
There was little punishment for war criminals in Finland. It now seems that a large part of Finland’s tarnished wartime record will never be revealed.
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By: Rabbi Aaron Krauss
Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism have become two sides of the same coin. How shall we react? Deborah Lipstadt, who famously succeeded in her case against Holocaust denier David Irving, set the tone by stating “We can do what we do best, we can educate.”

In this effort we have friends. No one deserves greater hakarat hatov than Atlantic City native Dr. Vera King Farris, who served as president of the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey from 1983 to 2003.

Dr. Farris was the first African American president of a public college in New Jersey and is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates in addition to numerous awards and titles. She was named New Jersey’s Woman of the Year in 1992.

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By HAVIV RETTIG

A new effort will be made to determine the number and living conditions of Holocaust survivors in Israel. The decision was reached in a meeting between Pensioners Affairs Minister Rafi Eitan and Reuven Merhav, the director of the Executive Committee of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany at the Knesset on Wednesday.

The new study, which will be conducted by the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, will gather information on the location, health and other quality-of-life factors for the estimated 250,000 survivors living in Israel.

“We decided on joint action to arrive at an agreed basis for the numbers, residential areas, economic situation and care needs [of Holocaust survivors,” Merhav told The Jerusalem Post, “in order to properly determine the resources Israel and the Claims Conference will need to mobilize over the next 10 years.”

The research will update figures from 1999 and 2000 that are no longer reliable, Merhav said. “Now we will have full statistics, including about those living in areas coping with terror, so we can mobilize the proper aid and infrastructure,” he said.