“LEARNING SEEDS”: NEW EXHIBIT TELLS REMARKABLE STORY OF HOLOCAUST-ERA AGRICULTURAL TRAINING FARM

RICHMOND, VA – The Virginia Holocaust Museum announces a new exhibition opening on August 10 at 10-12:30 that depicts the story of Gross-Breesen, an agricultural training farm for Jewish youth that was established on the Germany/Poland border before the outbreak of World War II. “Gross Breesen,” says Steve Strauss “is as much about education as it is about survival.”

Mr. Strauss, an acclaimed photographer based in New York City who worked for years for the TV News Show 60 Minutes, was first drawn to the subject when he was shown an original photo album depicting Gross Breesen. “There was one black and white photograph of a barn interior with sunlight pouring through a lone window onto a triangular pillar of harvested grain,” he said. “When I was told where it was taken and what the purpose of the farm was, the idea for a mixed media exhibition immediately came to mind.”

Dr. Curt Bondy, a charismatic and brilliant educator, ran the 1930’s farm. Under Bondy’s tutelage, the young men and women were immersed in a program that balanced hard physical farm labor with lessons on Jewish life, German history and social philosophy. The stately aesthetics and the stability of farm life at Gross Breesen were a welcome respite for the group of 130 Jewish youth that had for years been prey to the escalating oppression of Nazism. Through his efforts, many of Gross-Breesen’s youth were able to immigrate safety to foreign countries with a need for workers skilled in the agricultural sciences.

“Learning Seeds” will focus on this first group of Gross Breeseners, the individuals who took Bondy’s teachings and what they learned on the farm out into the world. Their story is a remarkable one, as almost all became leaders in their new communities as farmers, social workers, renowned artists, writers, educators and captains of business. But underlying their success was a profound sense of gratitude for what Bondy and Gross Breesen provided them, and despite their travels taking them to all points on the globe, they continued to “stick together,” keeping in touch with letters and reunions to this very day.
The exhibition itself is a mix of original photos taken at Gross Breesen, documentary footage and NPR/WJFF interviews of deceased and living Gross Breesners. To this end, several of these surviving Gross Breeseners plus their families will be on hand for the exhibits opening, and will be available to the press for interviews.

Survivors will have to wait for increased aid
By Adi Schwartz

In a long overdue response, the Prime Minister’s Office announced yesterday that the government does not intend, for the time being, to carry out the recommendations of the public commission of inquiry on the aid for Holocaust survivors.

At a meeting held yesterday at the Prime Minister’s Office, meant to adopt a stance on the conclusions of the commission, it was decided that “the government will discuss the various possibilities for the implementation of the report” during the discussions for the 2009 state budget.

Responding to the government decision yesterday retired Justice Dalia Dorner, who headed the commission of inquiry told Haaretz that “this is terrible. This buries the report.”

“Initially I had said that they are being cruel to the survivors and they told me that this is too harsh a comment. Now this is blatant cruelty. After all, time is critical. These people need this money immediately. If not for this, what was the purpose of the commission? Why did we issue recommendations as quickly as possible?”

The government decision follows specific recommendations by the commission to immediately increase the reparations paid to survivors – retroactively, since January 1, 2008.

The commission ruled on June 22 that in no more than 30 days, the state must adjust the compensation paid to survivors in line with the law on survivors of Nazi persecution. This means that the payments should constitute 75 percent of the rate paid by the German government to survivors.

In practice, the proposal for a large segment of the survivors is an increase to the monthly payments from NIS 1,046 to NIS 1,875.

CLAIMS CONFERENCE OBTAINS GERMAN PAYMENTS FOR JEWISH SURVIVORS OF NAZI SIEGE OF LENINGRAD NOW LIVING IN WEST

July 21, 2008 — In an historic breakthrough, the Claims Conference has negotiated one-time payments from Germany for certain Jewish victims of the Nazi siege of Leningrad.

In recent negotiations, the German government has agreed to include these Jewish victims in the Claims Conference Hardship Fund, provided they meet the program’s other eligibility criteria. The program issues a one-time payment of ˆ2,556.

It is expected that this agreement will lead to the payment to thousands of Jewish victims of Nazism from the former Soviet Union now living in Israel, the United States, Germany and other Western countries. It is the first time that the persecution of Jews who lived through the 900-day siege of Leningrad has been recognized by Germany.

Because of the Claims Conference negotiations, certain Jewish persons who stayed in Leningrad at some time between September 1941 and January 1944 or fled from there during this period may receive a one-time Hardship Fund payment, if they meet the other requirements of the Hardship Fund.

History

As German forces advanced toward Leningrad in 1941, Jewish residents tried to move as close as possible to the center of the city. Those Jews who were unable to flee from the Nazis and stayed in territories that became occupied were tortured and shot. The largest massacre occurred in Pushkin, a suburb of Leningrad. The 800 Jews of Pushkin were led into the cellars of Yekaterininsky Palace. They were then shot in groups in the neighboring park.

In planning for the siege, Hitler had described Leningrad as a center of Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia. Before the war, approximately 300,000 Jews lived in Leningrad and the surrounding area. If the Germans had fully occupied the city, they would have all been killed.

The Germans surrounded Leningrad in September 1941. During the siege, the Nazis cut all water and power supplies while subjecting residents to constant air attacks and artillery bombardment. The population of about 3 million was left to starve and freeze to death. An estimated 1 million residents of the city died.

The Nazis disseminated anti-Semitic flyers throughout the city during the siege, telling residents that the Jews were responsible for their misery and that the Germans were going to liberate the country from the rule of Bolsheviks and Jews.

Hardship Fund

The Hardship Fund, established in 1980 after five years of Claims Conference negotiations, provides a one-time payment of ˆ2,556 to certain Jewish victims of Nazism from former Soviet bloc countries who emigrated to the West after 1969, which was the application deadline for the West German Indemnification Laws (BEG). West German compensation laws enacted from 1953 through 1965 excluded from eligibility victims of Nazi persecution resident in the Eastern Block countries and the Soviet Union.

West Germany created this fund only on the condition that the Claims Conference, rather than the government, administer applications and payments pursuant to German government guidelines.
Based on the original size of the fund, it was estimated that 80,000 Holocaust survivors would benefit from it. The collapse of Communism and subsequent Jewish emigration from Soviet bloc countries greatly increased the number of Jewish victims of Nazism eligible for payments.
To date, approximately 320,000 Jewish victims of Nazism have been approved under the Hardship Fund, with more than $850 million paid.
The Claims Conference continues to approve more than 5,000 applications each year for Hardship Fund payments.
Applicants should note that the full criteria for the Hardship Fund, including this change in criteria, can be found at www.claimscon.org or by contacting the Claims Conference offices in New York, Tel Aviv or Frankfurt. Please note that no second applications can be made to the Hardship Fund.

MARIASCHIN: Lithuania’s new Jewish concerns

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Lithuania, a NATO ally with a Jewish history in turn glorious and tragic, has once again become a cause for Jewish concern more than 60 years after the Holocaust.

A home to Jews for more than 1,000 years, Lithuania once cradled a renaissance of scholarship, religious thought and culture second to none in the Jewish world. Its capital, Vilnius – known as Vilna, in Yiddish – was called the “Jerusalem of the North.” The country was home to thousands of Jewish scholars, writers, rabbis, leading figures in science and medicine and internationally recognized educational and cultural institutions.

This exemplar of Jewish life was extinguished in less than four years, in a ferocious frenzy carried out by the Nazis and their collaborators, culminating in the death of more than 90 percent of its prewar population of more than 200,000, including many members of my mother’s extended family.

Today, the former Soviet republic enjoys full membership in the European Union (EU) and NATO, having been one of the first Central and Eastern European countries to join those prestigious institutions. Several American Jewish organizations supported Lithuania’s accession to these bodies, recognizing a historic moment in which to solidify democracy and rule of law on the full European Continent.

Step by step, Lithuanian Jewry has attempted to rebuild community life after its near destruction during the Holocaust, and its suppression under the Soviets. Indeed, in the years following independence in 1991, there were several important attempts by Lithuania to reconcile with the past, including establishment of a commission to investigate “crimes of the Nazi and Soviet regimes”; the transfer (after protracted negotiations) of hundreds of Torah scrolls to Jewish institutions abroad; and the introduction of public school texts, which included material about the Holocaust on Lithuanian soil.

Soon, Lithuania’s steady integration into the democratic West will reach a new plateau when Vilnius assumes the EU’s designation as the European Capital of Culture for 2009. But as the country prepares itself for the honor the EU will confer upon it next year, an alarming convergence of issues relating to the Jewish community and the country’s Holocaust-era past has posed serious questions about whether the EU designation is merited.

I presented these concerns directly to Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas at a recent meeting in New York. I, along with colleagues from other Jewish organizations, urged the prime minister and his government to pass legislation that will resolve the issue of restitution of Jewish communal property. Frustration over the slow pace on this issue is just one of the topics we discussed with Mr. Kirkilas.

Four problems, in particular, require immediate action:

(1) Rising anti-Semitism and xenophobia. Lithuania’s small remaining Jewish community has spoken out recently against the growing frequency of anti-Semitic and other hateful displays, such as a skinhead parade in central Vilnius on the country’s independence day, March 11. There was no immediate condemnation from any political leader against the march, some of whose participants shouted “Juden raus” (”Jews Out”) and other anti-Semitic taunts. The Conference of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, representing 25 organizations, also criticized the government for its attempt to include provisions in a new citizenship law, which would promote inequality based on ethnic origin.

(2) Investigations of Holocaust survivors. The state prosecutor has begun legal proceedings against Holocaust survivors Yitzhak Arad and Fania Brantovsky, both of whom stand accused of war crimes related to their activities as anti-Nazi partisans in World War II. It is believed that investigations of other former Jewish partisans are under way. Mr. Arad, an internationally respected Holocaust scholar and longtime director of Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, served on the international historical commission – appointed by Lithuania’s president – that documented the wartime atrocities of Lithuanian collaborators. The government’s actions against him now signal an attempt to turn history upside down by casting murderous collaborators as heroic victims.

(3) Property restitution. Lithuania has stalled for years on an agreement that would return or provide compensation for properties belonging to the Jewish community, while some of those assets have by now been privatized and Lithuanian Jewry still struggles to revive itself. Draft legislation on restitution has languished for years, with no sign it will soon be considered. Other governments in Central and Eastern Europe acted years ago to restitute properties seized from Jewish communities by the Nazi and communist regimes – with varying degrees of goodwill and effectiveness – but Lithuania has been idle on this front.

(4) The Snipiskes Cemetery. The possible desecration of the historic Jewish cemetery by the Soviet regime is now being perpetuated both by Lithuania’s post-communist government and Vilnius’ municipal authorities. In the 1950s, the communist authorities built a “sports palace” on the site, and some remains, including those of the legendary Jewish religious figure Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman (The Vilna Gaon) were reinterred. Experts maintain there are still remains on the site and urged efforts to determine the precise boundaries of the resting ground.

But following the land’s privatization and sale to developers, construction of luxury apartments on the cemetery grounds continued apace, despite a pledge last year by the Lithuanian president to end defilement of the sacred site. Recently, a belated effort to establish the cemetery boundaries has been announced. While this effort to identify the cemetery’s boundaries is welcome, it is a tragedy that this procedure was not introduced before construction began. The government should cease all construction until experts definitively determine where the remains lie.

The cumulative weight of these ongoing issues suggests, at best, the Lithuanian government’s pronounced indifference toward the most pressing concerns of its surviving Jewish community and, at worst, outright hostility. This is hardly the posture the United States and Europe should expect of a full-fledged member of the democratic family of nations, or that the EU should expect of the host country of its 2009 cultural capital.

Daniel S. Mariaschin is executive vice president of B’nai B’rith International. B’nai B’rith is a founding member of the World Jewish Restitution Organization.

Orlev threatens state probe if return of Shoah victims’ assets isn’t speeded up
By DAN IZENBERG

Knesset State Control Committee Chairman Zevulun Orlev warned on Monday that if the company established to locate and return assets belonging to the heirs of Holocaust victims did not speed up its work over the next month, he would call for a state commission of inquiry to investigate its conduct.

“I am considering allotting a certain amount of time for the company to get itself together and, if the situation does not improve, establishing a state commission of inquiry,” Orlev (NU/NRP) said at a highly emotional committee meeting.

Yishai Amrami, the director-general of the company, told the committee that although it had amassed assets worth NIS 752 million and so far confirmed 110 heirs who were entitled to NIS 105m. of those assets, only 10 heirs had received their money so far. The company has been operating for a year and four months.

Holocaust survivors demanded to know why a share of the unclaimed money had not been distributed to the roughly 250,000 survivors currently living in Israel.

The high emotions in the discussion were caused by the fact that the survivors are dying at a rate of 30-40 per month and many of them live in severe poverty. Their representatives and sympathetic MKs accused the company of “sitting” on its assets instead of distributing them to those who cannot wait.

The company’s lawyer, Nadav Ha’etzni, told the committee that the law that had established the company gave precedence to the rightful heirs over survivors as a whole. He added that the law called on the company to wait one full year from the time an asset was located before it could distribute its value among the survivors.

“We are talking about rightful owners,” said Ha’etzni. “These assets are not abandoned. Our first duty is to try to locate the heirs and transfer the money to them.”

Nevertheless, Amrami told the committee that the company had distributed NIS 100m. to the survivors over the past year.

Seventy-five percent of the money went to the 12,000 neediest survivors, according to criteria established by the company. Each survivor received NIS 6,000 directly to his or her bank account.

Another NIS 25,000 went to various projects commemorating the Holocaust.

But Holocaust survivor and MK Sarah Marom Shalev (Gil) said the company should have distributed more money and not only to the neediest of the survivors.

“Who is the money going to be left to?” she said. “Why do you have to establish criteria [and give only to the neediest] when you have millions at your disposal?”

Shmuel Halpert (UTJ) accused every institution involved in the location and distribution of the properties of “deliberately procrastinating. Everyone is trying to mark time, aware that each day more of the survivors will die.”

Meanwhile, company chairman Avraham Roth, who was involved with the return of properties belonging to Holocaust victims in Holland, said Israel behaved worse than any other country in returning these assets that don’t belong to them.

“We are talking about many survivors,” he said. “We don’t have the energy to fight any more. No other country has behaved as badly as the institutions in Israel. In Holland, they handed over everything. Here we have been unable to achieve this. The Dutch government and parliament were also attentive to our needs.”

Roth singled out Bank Leumi as being the worst offender. The company estimates that the bank controls NIS 500m. belonging to Holocaust victims and charges that it refuses to cooperate.