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Newsletter : 0fax0503.txt
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>JN May 3, 2000, Vol. 8, No. 80
230,000 Holocaust Survivors Living in Israel
By IsraelWire
According to the Central Bureau of statistics, 230,000 survivors of the Nazi Holocaust are currently living in Israel, 130,000 of who survived the ghettos and concentration camps. Most of the survivors, 205,000, live in municipal settings. The survivors comprise over 30 percent of the nation's over 60-year-old population, and 40 percent of the over 75-year-old category.
Iranian Spy Trial
By IsraelWire
The confession made by defendant Danny Tefilin, one of the 13 Iranian Jews facing espionage charges, may place the remaining defendants in peril, perhaps facing a death sentence. The 13, rabbis and teachers, are accused of spying for the governments of Israel and the United States.
Statements from Israel indicate the confession was extracted by means of torture, and Tefilin was never an agent for the government of Israel. American officials have over the past year issued several statements denying that the 13 had at any time acted as agents.
According to a Washington Post report, Tefilin did admit to receiving $500 a month from the government of Israel "to trick his countrymen into giving him political, military and social information to relay to Jerusalem."
Nation Stops for Yom HaShoah
By Jenny Badner (VOA-Jerusalem)
Sirens wailed across Israel Tuesday, bringing the nation to a standstill as Israelis paid tribute to the 6 million Jews who died in the Nazi Holocaust. Much of the focus was on young Israelis -- to make sure they remember ancestors killed during World War 2.
For two full minutes, air raid sirens wailed across Israel. Pedestrians stopped and stood in silence. Traffic came to a halt and drivers got out of their cars to remember the millions of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. Suddenly, the blaring sound stopped and life returned to normal.
The Remembrance Day began when thousands gathered at an official ceremony in Israel's Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem. Israeli politicians joined soldiers, citizens and Holocaust survivors who lit six candles, for the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis. But the day of remembrance is more than a public ceremony, and in one way or another, it touches virtually the entire country. Every restaurant, cafe and movie theater in Israel is closed by law when the memorial begins. Somber music and films about the Holocaust dominate radio and television.
While Holocaust Martyrs & Heroes Remembrance Day ceremony was taking place at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, marking the start of the day, hundreds of Israelis were gambling in the Oasis Casino located in the PLO Authority autonomous city of Jericho.
Stories of death and survival are retold in synagogues, and especially in schools, to make sure that the youngest generation of Jews will know what their ancestors in Europe endured.
When the sirens sounded, 10-year-old Maya Yechieli Wind stood in silence with the rest of her classmates in the playground of her Jerusalem school. Every one of the hundreds of small children, wearing colorful hats to protect them from the strong sun, stood together.
Maya explains what she thought about during those two minutes. "I think of all the souls that are now in heaven, the souls of the Jews that have been killed that had no reason to be killed and I think of the family that I lost. I lost my four great grandparents and aunts and uncles."
More than 50 years after the end of World War 2, Maya says she recognizes the importance of never forgetting the Holocaust and the meaning of the memorial day.
"It's different than any other day. It's different because the Jews died and we are Jews and here we are in Israel where we can be safe and if Israel [existed] then this wouldn't have happened. It scares me in a way in that I'm scared that it will happen again."
After the sirens were silent, the children acted in plays and sang songs about the Holocaust. Then, the children were able to go back to their regular activities of reading, writing, and playing during recess -- having remembered their ancestors who died during World War 2.
Yad Vashem Unveils Plans for New Holocaust Museum
By IsraelWire
The directors of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem announced plans for a new $25 million museum. The groundbreaking ceremony for the Jerusalem Forest complex will take place next week.
The new Jerusalem Forest complex is planned as the centerpiece of the larger $66 million project designed by architect Moshe Safti, and will include a media center with video screening rooms and computer work stations linked to Holocaust databases.
The focus is still on the tragedy which befell the Jewish people, the new addition will include the Nazi atrocities which befell other groups including gypsies, homosexuals, the handicapped and Jehovah's Witnesses.
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