FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Date: February 26, 2009

Contact: Peggy Kurtz, Tel: 718-268-5011 ext. 151 E-mail: pkurtz@cqyjcc.org

RESISTANCE LEADER HANNAH SENESH TO BE REMEMBERED BY FELLOW PRISONER

Who was Hannah Senesh? Beloved by many as both a resistance fighter during World War II and as a poet, whose impassioned words have become immortalized in much loved Israeli songs, very few people know about her earlier life. On Tuesday, March 31, at 1 p.m., Blessed is the Match, a powerful documentary film on the life and death of Hannah Senesh, will screen at the Central Queens YM & YWHA together with a talk by Susan Beer, a fellow prisoner with Hannah Senesh, at a Gestapo prison in Hungary.

An impassioned young Zionist, Hannah Senesh immigrated to Palestine from her native Hungary in 1939. In 1944, she joined a mission to rescue Jews in Hungary, parachuting in behind enemy lines. There she was captured, tortured, and ultimately executed by Nazis a few days before her twenty third birthday and a few months before the liberation of Hungary. Her poetry and her journals have lived on in the public imagination, fervent expressions of idealism and love of life. Blessed is the Match is the first documentary film to explore this young woman’s heartbreaking story and to take a closer look at who she was and what drove her. Fellow prisoner Susan Beer will speak on her memories of Hannah Senesh and their experiences. Susan Beer also survived Auschwitz and other concentration camps and has been a Holocaust educator, speaking to college students and adults for many years.

The film screening and talk by Susan Beer are sponsored by the Rabbi Simon Hevesi Library of the Central Queens YM & YWHA, at 67-09 108 Street in Forest Hills. All events are open to the general public, with a $4.50 donation suggested. For more information, call 718-268-5011, ext. 151, or email pkurtz@cqyjcc.org. Interviews & photo available.

The Central Queens YM&YWHA is a non-profit Jewish center offering recreational, educational, cultural and social events to enhance the quality of life in the Central Queens community. The Y is an agency of UJA-Federation .

Vatican rejects bishop’s apology
Bishop Williamson in the UK
The bishop said he did not mean to cause offence

The Vatican has rejected an apology by a British bishop who denied the full extent of the Holocaust.

It said the bishop needed to “unequivocally and publicly” withdraw his comments.

Earlier, Jewish leaders said the bishop had failed to address the issue of whether he believed that the Holocaust was a lie.

Richard Williamson said if he had known the full harm his comments would cause, he would not have made them.

‘Ambiguous’ apology

The bishop said that his opinions had been formed “20 years ago on the basis of evidence then available”.

But Vatican spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi said the bishop “does not seem to respect the conditions” it set after he had made the comments.

more.

Bishop apologizes for Holocaust remarks
February 26, 2009

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Bishop Richard Williamson apologized for making comments minimizing the Holocaust, but he did not recant them.

“The Holy Father and my Superior, Bishop Bernard Fellay, have requested that I reconsider the remarks I made on Swedish television four months ago, because their consequences have been so heavy,” Williamson said in a statement published Thursday by the Zenit Catholic News Agency.

Pope Benedict XVI sparked a furor last month when he reinstated Williamson and three other excommunicated bishops, all members of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, just days after Williamson told Swedish TV that he believed “that the historical evidence is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler.” He said no more than a few hundred Jews died in Europe during World War II.

This week, Williamson expressed regret for making the remarks.

“Observing these consequences I can truthfully say that I regret having made such remarks, and that if I had known beforehand the full harm and hurt to which they would give rise, especially to the Church, but also to survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under the Third Reich, I would not have made them,” he said.

Williamson concluded, “To all souls that took honest scandal from what I said, before God I apologize. As the Holy Father has said, every act of unjust violence against one man hurts all mankind.”

The founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Menachem Rosensaft, called Williamson’s apology unacceptable.

“Williamson’s disingenuous apology cannot close the book on this chapter,” Rosensaft told JTA. “Williamson in no way recanted his denial of the Holocaust. Instead, he merely expressed regret that his public expression of his noxious views called attention to Pope Benedict XVI’s ill-advised attempt to rehabilitate him.”

READ IT HERE:

The Galicia Jewish Museum Newsletter

DECISION PROTESTED
The pope lifted the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson, who denies the Holocaust.

By Michael Paulson
2/24/2009

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, facing a group of local Jewish leaders upset by the Vatican’s decision to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust denier, yesterday declared the Holocaust to be “the worst crime in human history” and pledged to move a Holocaust memorial to the new Braintree headquarters of the Archdiocese of Boston.
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