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Newsletter : 0fax0128.txt
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>JN Jan. 28, 2000, Vol. 8, No. 17
Holocaust Conference Opens in Stockholm
By IsraelWire
The International Holocaust Conference in Stockholm opened with the participation of 20 prime ministers and heads of state. There were also delegates from 45 countries and 800 journalists. Police and security forces closed many areas off, as security was very heavy for the opening of the conference. Mailboxes in the conference areas were sealed, as were manholes, to prevent the placement of explosive devices.
German Holocaust Memorial Dedicated
By Jonathan Braude (VOA-Berlin)
Germany marked the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp Thursday with a Berlin ceremony at the site where a vast - but controversial - memorial to Jews who died in the Holocaust will be built. It was a moment for Germany to consider its past and honor the dead. But the ceremony comes as the debate over compensation for the survivors of Nazi slave labor programs continues.
The memorial will be built in the center of what was once the capital of Nazi Germany, beside one of its famous landmarks - the Brandenburg Gate. Architect Peter Eisenman's maze of 2,700 stone pillars will cover a huge area - the size of three football fields - and is intended to remind the world of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis.
Wolfgang Thierse, speaker of Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, said the memorial would be a reminder not only of the Holocaust, but of the lasting vulnerability of human rights and dignity, which is Germany's special and moral duty to uphold.
Leah Rosh, the leader of the foundation which spent 10 years struggling to get the project approved, said the memorial was an initiative from Germany's non-Jews and a reminder to all its citizens that the past could not be wished away.
"Just Revenge" By Alan Dershowitz
By Nancy Beardsley (VOA-Washington)
In recent years, survivors of the Holocaust have made renewed appeals for justice-whether in the form of financial compensation, the return of stolen art, or increased efforts to prosecute Nazi war criminals. But what if a Holocaust victim should carry out a deadly act of retribution on his own? That's the premise of a new novel called "Just Revenge," by Alan Dershowitz, a defense lawyer and Harvard Law School professor.
The cover of "Just Revenge" shows a group of men, women and children gathered together for a wedding in Poland in 1938. All the people in the photograph were relatives of Dershowitz, and within two years, almost all would die in the Holocaust. More than 40 members of his family were Holocaust victims, and Dershowitz says their story inspired his new novel:
"I went back to Poland and Germany to try to trace what happened to my family. I saw three names on the list at Auschwitz. I found out about a terrible story in which a relative was able to see her own child bayonetted by an SS soldier. And then I found out what happened to the people who killed my family and the millions of others. Nothing. They had never been brought to justice. They had lived good lives. And the rage within me made me understand what it would be like for my character, a professor who had seen his whole family murdered, knowing that the person had gotten away with it."
"Just Revenge" is about an elderly biblical scholar named Max Menuchen who in 1942 watched a Nazi officer murder his family in Lithuania. Menuchen himself survived after being shot and left for dead. More than half a century later, he finds his family's killer, living near his Boston home and dying of cancer. Menuchen can't bear the thought that the former Nazi will end his life happy, surrounded by a loving family.
"God in the book of Exodus, says `I will take revenge unto three and four generations on sinners.' In the book of Deuteronomy that changes. God says `No, the sins of the fathers shall not be inflicted upon the children.' The New Testament and the Koran then move in somewhat different directions on the issue of revenge. Jesus says `Turn the other cheek,' and Mohammed doesn't quite agree. And we've debated the role of holy books on justice for years, and they don't speak often through only one voice."
Dershowitz says he does agree with his character Max Menuchen that not enough has been done to bring Nazi war criminals to justice. But he also believes that revenge seldom brings lasting satisfaction. One act of revenge can lead to another in retaliation, and result in only a hollow sense of victory.
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