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Newsletter : 9fax1019.txt
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>JN Oct. 19, 1999, Vol. 7, No. 193
Holocaust Website Aids in Ascertaining Jewish Finances
By Meredith Buel (VOA-Jerusalem)
Survivors of the Holocaust and family members of those who died in Nazi concentration camps will now be able to use the Internet to help them recover millions of dollars stolen before and during World War 2. A new Internet website providing access to documents identifying assets stolen by the Nazis was unveiled Monday in Jerusalem.
Tommy Lamm never met his grandparents. In 1943, Emmanuel and Gisella Lamb were taken from their home in Austria, shipped to a Nazi concentration camp and never heard from again.
Recently Lamm was searching the Internet and came across a new website designed to help survivors of the Holocaust - as well as family members of those who died - recover assets stolen by the Nazis. He found his grandfather's name on a list of Jews who lived in Austria just before the outbreak of World War 2.
"I am very excited about it. Not because of the assets - there may have been, there may not have been - that is not the point for me. The point for me is to see the list and perhaps his signature - a living link of something which is near and dear and yet we never had the pleasure of seeing him and growing up with him as people do today with their parents and grandparents."
The new website to help people like Lamm was unveiled in Jerusalem by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The Internet address - LivingHeirs.com - contains the names of 50,000 Jews who lived in Austria in the late 1930s. Each of these Jews was required to fill out forms listing all their financial assets.
The information has been available for decades. But for the first time - in an effort that took two years - the forms and names have been organized and are now accessible to anyone with access to the Internet.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper with the Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem explains the significance of the files. "Right now we are going to be looking at on the Internet 50,000 names taken from Gestapo files. They are not insurance files. They are not bank files. They are Nazi files. But the data within those files should lead people back to specific companies to be able to demand proper restitution."
Cooper says his organization is now demanding that Germany and other countries hand over similar documents. He says any new information will also be made available on the Internet. Advocacy groups are now working to create internet connections with additional archives in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, which contain documentation of assets confiscated from Jews during World War 2. The names of the victims will be placed on-line when they become available.
Absent Arab Jerusalem Residents Welcomed
By Ross Dunn (VOA-Jerusalem)
Israel has announced that it is ending its policy of revoking the residency rights of Palestinians who have been absent from their homes in Jerusalem for several years. The practice had been described by human rights groups as "the quiet deportation" of the city's Arab population.
Israel's Interior Minister, Natan Sharansky, says he is ending a policy against Palestinians in Jerusalem, which he describes as a system of harassment. He says Palestinians will no longer have to fear they will be stripped of their rights to live in the city, if they been abroad for seven years.
Since 1967, when Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan, this policy has caused more than 5,000 Palestinians to lose their residency permits for Jerusalem.
Jessica Montell, a director of the Israeli Human Rights group B'tselem, says the aim of this and other laws have been to reduce the number of Palestinian residents, in order to strengthen Jewish sovereignty over the city.
"It certainly has been the case that since 1967, successive governments made life difficult for east Jerusalem Palestinians in an intentional effort to reduce the population there. All of the efforts, in terms of denying family reunification, placing restrictions on building and housing. They all have been intended to reduce the Palestinian population in east Jerusalem, in order to create a demographic balance, where Jews will be numerically superior."
Montell says that while human rights groups welcome the latest move announced by Sharansky, they will not be satisfied until all such laws are repealed and replaced with legislation that permanently protects the rights of Palestinians in Jerusalem.
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