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Newsletter : 0fax0406.txt
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>JN April 6, 2000, Vol. 8, No. 64
Holiday Request by Iranian Jews Denied
By IsraelWire
Iranian officials have rejected a request by the representatives of the Iranian Jews being held in prison on charges of espionage to permit them to spend the Passover holiday with their families. A second request for a postponement of the trial scheduled to get underway on April 13 would be considered. The defendants are also requesting they be permitted to chose their own attorneys.
U.S. Holocaust Restitution
By Jon Tkach (VOA-Washington)
Jewish leaders and U.S. officials told Congress Wednesday that efforts to make restitution to victims of the Holocaust must be sped up before the remaining survivors are all gone.
The Clinton Administration's special representative on Holocaust-related issues - Stuart Eizenstadt - says more and more countries and companies are cooperating with efforts to recover money and property stolen from Jews during the Holocaust.
Just this week, he says, Dutch companies made moves to cooperate with a panel investigating claims that European Insurers refused to honor the insurance policies of Holocaust victims.
"This is the best and most expeditious way of resolving insurance claims from this period and we support giving those companies safe haven from sanctions, subpoenas, and hearings in the United States."
Eizenstadt says, despite worries about Austria's right-wing Freedom Party's role in the government, Austria is moving to set up a fund to compensate Jewish slave and forced laborers. But he says Austria has done little to help victims recover money and property stolen by the Nazi regime.
Eizenstadt calls on Austria and other governments and companies to open their archives to help researchers find stolen money and goods. It is especially urgent, he says, because Holocaust survivors are dying of old age. But, Eizenstadt and other speakers before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also stressed that restitution is not the only issue.
Holocaust Survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel: "Had I considered then the possibility that hatred would reemerge so soon, I would never have believed it. I told you I was naive. For now we all know Anti-semitism and various hatreds did not die in Auschwitz - Jews perished there."
Wiesel says in addition to righting the material wrongs, people across the world must work to ensure that the horror of the Holocaust is always remembered.
Holocaust-Era Diplomats are Honored
By Breck Ardery (VOA-United Nations)
More than 80 diplomats who saved hundreds of thousands of people during the Nazi holocaust are being honored at United Nations headquarters in New York.
Organizers of a month-long exhibit, titled "Visas for Life," say it is a long-overdue effort to recognize the 80 men and four women who risked their careers and even lives to save Jews and others during the Nazi occupation of Europe. The diplomats, often acting in defiance of their own governments, issued transit visas that made it possible for the visa-holders, mostly Jews, to avoid Nazi death camps.
The exhibit - in the public lobby of UN headquarters -- includes photographs of the diplomats, photographs of the people they saved, and copies of the documents used to save them. Exhibit curator Eric Saul says many of the diplomats paid a heavy price for saving the lives of Jews.
"We believe that there are more than 500,000 people alive today as a result of diplomats who mostly defied the orders of their governments and issued visas to every country in the free world. More than half of them were fired by their governments, dishonored or lost their careers, their dignity and, in some cases, have yet to be honored in their own countries. This exhibit is to document and honor these great men who have been forgotten by history."
Although most of the honored diplomats are not widely-known, Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat in Hungary, has previously been recognized for his work in saving tens of thousands of Jews by issuing them Swedish diplomatic papers. Wallenberg's niece Nane is the wife of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. At a ceremony to open the exhibit, Mrs. Annan said her uncle used passports, bribery and even threats to save the lives of Jews.
"When he heard that all the Jews living in Budapest's largest ghetto were to be massacred he got a message through to the German commander declaring that, after the war, the commander would be held responsible and probably hanged as a war criminal. The massacre was canceled."
Unlike many of the diplomats, Wallenberg was acting with the knowledge and approval of his government. After the war, he disappeared in the Soviet Union where he is presumed to have died.
Kate Wacz (Vaks) was a very young girl when she and her family received Swedish visas from Wallenberg's office but she remembers that day well. "We knew that with this document, we could feel safe. I am just so thankful for everyone in the Swedish delegation and also to all the other diplomats who risked their lives to be with us during the war when they did not have to be there."
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