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Newsletter : 8fax1230.txt
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>Israel Faxx
>JN Dec. 30, 1998, Vol. 6, No. 229
Elections are Set for May 17
By David Gollust (VOA-Jerusalem)
An Israeli parliamentary committee has approved May 17 as the date
for the country's elections -- a date moved up by a year and a half
after the breakdown of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's
right-wing coalition.
The Knesset Law Committee approved the election schedule that had
been negotiated Monday by leaders of Israel's main parties and sent
it to the full parliament -- which is all but certain to approve it
next week.
Israeli voters will go to the polls May 17 and again June 1 if --
as appears likely -- no candidate for prime minister gets a
majority in the first round.
Gypsies and the Holocaust
By Judith Latham (VOA-Washington)
The destruction of 6 Million Jews in Europe during World War 2,
along with the confiscation of their assets, is a tragedy that is
widely known today. But millions of Roma, or "gypsies," Poles and
other Slavs, political and religious dissenters, homosexuals, and
handicapped victims also perished. The European Roma and the Sinti,
as German gypsies are known, were singled out for destruction
purely on racial grounds -- like the Jews.
Delegates from more than 40 countries met in Washington earlier
this month to try to untangle the complex issue of Holocaust era
assets looted by the Nazis during the Second World War. The State
Department invited the International Romani Union for the first
time to be a full participant in the conference. Rajko Djuri,
president of the union, which represented the Romani and Sinti
people, explains why this meeting was so important to his people.
"The Romani Holocaust, or genocide, was very similar to the Jewish
Holocaust and especially the mass murder of Roma in concentration
camps. At least 500,000 Roma were killed during the Nazi era. In
addition, we know now that a considerable amount of gold was stolen
from the victims."
Djuric says his organization has proposed that 15 percent of the compensation paid to Holocaust victims go to Romani and Sinti survivors.
Holocaust survivor Rita Prigmore was born into a well-known Sinti
family in the town of Wurzburg in southern Germany. Prigmore's
family had lived there since the 1600s.
Prigmore and her twin sister were only six weeks old when Nazi
doctors began experiments on them in the spring of 1943. Within
days, her sister was dead. Prigmore herself suffered partial brain
damage from the experiments. For years she has experienced migraine
headaches, fainting spells, and sporadic loss of vision. She tells
how her parents and other members of the family -- like so many
other Roma and Sinti -- were forced to be sterilized.
"When my mom went to be sterilized, they found out she was with
child, but not with one -- with two -- identical twins, two girls.
So, because deportation was about to happen, they decided they
could postpone it, if she would give up the twins for experimental
purposes -- like what Dr. Mengele did -- dyeing the eyes."
Prigmore says her mother was permitted to visit her twin daughters
only occasionally at the clinic in Wurzburg where phoney medical
experiments were being conducted on them.
"When we were six weeks old, mama got the family papers to finally
go to Auschwitz. We were all on one list. Mama panicked, and she
and my grandpa and my grandma went into the clinic and wanted to
see us. And when they went up there, usually in the little beds,
there were two of us, Rolanda and i. There was only one bed
occupied, and that was me.
"She ran out and wanted to know what happened. And then, she started fighting with the nuns. And then, one of the younger ones said, 'Why don't you tell the lady that her little girl is dead.' So they took my mom down the hall, and she opened the door, and there was a bathtub. My sister lay in there with just a little white dress on and a bandage around her head. Mama, of course, panicked, and she ran back and took me out and ran down the stairs. By the time they got back home, the Gestapo was there. And then, mama just had to give me back."
