Wednesday March 25 3:27 PM EST
By Robert Cribb
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Wired) - A collection of Web sites promoting white supremacy and Holocaust revisionism have cast a spotlight on a British Columbia Internet service provider and prompted calls for stricter Canadian hate laws governing the Internet.
Bernard Klatt, who runs Fairview Technology Centre (http://www.ftcnet.com) out of his rural home in Oliver, British Columbia, has been called Canada's largest purveyor of Internet hate literature.
About a dozen of his neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and skinhead clients have used his server to publish material railing against immigration and "the homosexual agenda" while celebrating "Euro-Christianity" and Hitler's accomplishments.
Last Saturday, Klatt was planning to hold a "free-speech" seminar in his hometown featuring a who's who of Canada's far right. But at the last minute, town officials canceled his rental agreement for the community hall where the meeting was scheduled.
"We took action to protect the community from violence," said Oliver Mayor Linda Larson. "(Klatt) started advertising on an international level (via the Internet) and that attracted the extreme element from both sides of the issue."
So Klatt turned the occasion into an outdoor press conference, complete with about 100 protesters, accusing town officials of abridging free speech.
"The whole thing made an excellent point as to why we need an uncensored Internet," he later said in an interview. "If you can't hold a public meeting to discuss free speech, at least there's a possibility of getting information out over the Internet."
Klatt's case has drawn the interest of British Columbia Attorney General Ujjal Dosanjh, who is calling on the Canadian federal government to draft tougher laws governing those who publish "hate propaganda" of the Internet.
"We're looking at making the federal law that applies to hate propaganda and hatred more enforceable," said Brent Thompson, media spokesman for Dosanjh, who is also British Columbia's minister responsible for multiculturalism, human rights, and immigration. "We need to look at the law, review it, and possibly amend it so that we can successfully prosecute these matters."
But the weekend's developments are only the latest in a long string of controversies surrounding Klatt.
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The Charlemagne Hammer Skinheads, a group of British and French skinheads who used Klatt's server to publish a Web site mocking Jews and minorities, were recently charged with uttering threats and various other crimes.
After the site was traced to Klatt's server last year, the town of Oliver was dubbed "Hate Capital of Canada" by Sol Littman, the Canadian representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
"(Klatt's site) has the most out-and-out racist, fascist, anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying Web sites in Canada by a wide margin, and the material on it is the most hateful and despicable and dangerous of any I've seen," Littman said.
But even though government officials, Jewish groups, and some of Klatt's neighbors have been trying to shut him down for more than a year, Klatt says he and his clients are breaking no laws.
"The right to express your point of view exists in Canada even if a pressure group doesn't like it," he said. "Our court system should uphold the laws we have around speech. We shouldn't be subject to proxy censorship by the Wiesenthal Center or community groups."
For speech to be illegal according to Canadian law, it has to promote hatred against an identifiable group, advocate "genocide" or incite "hatred to such an extent that it will lead to a breach of the peace."
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Corporal Walt Makepeace, stationed in Oliver, said there is an investigation into the material posted on the Fairview site, but no charges have been laid.
Nor should there be, says David Jones, president of Electronic Frontier Canada, a national group defending freedom of expression and the right to privacy in cyberspace.
"People don't realize that it's legal to hate in Canada," he said. "It's unpleasant, but it's not a criminal act. (Klatt's) pages are offensive, but they're legal."
Not so, says Littman.
"It's a clear breach of the law. If the same things were written and published on paper, the police would be on his doorstep the next day. We can't figure out why electronic publishing would be treated any differently."
Klatt is following in the much publicized footsteps of Ernst Zündel, a Toronto-based Holocaust denier who is also on the Canadian legal hotseat for publishing so-called hate literature on the Internet.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission is holding hearings to decide whether Zautndelsite, a California-based site featuring Zautndel's writings - violates Canada's hate laws. Unlike Zautndel, Klatt concedes that some of the information on his Web server is objectionable. But he insists it isn't his job to censor. "I don't see the news media accusing theater owners of having poor morals because of the kind of movies they show in their theaters, or cable company management being responsible for movies on television," he said in an interview after the weekend incidents. "I don't support the content in some of the sites. I just want to allow them to express their viewpoints." (Reuters/Wired)
font size="+1"Holocaust Site Uses New Software to Post Nazi Trial Transcripts on the Internet
10:51 a.m. Mar 24, 1998
NEW YORK, March 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Transcripts from the Nuremberg trials of convicted Nazi war criminals are now available to Internet users, posted to the Web by Nizkor, www.nizkor.org, using Metaphoria Data Transformation Server (DTS) 1.1 -- new software introduced today by Pencom Web Works, www.pww.pencom.com.
Pencom made beta versions of Metaphoria DTS available to Nizkor at no charge, to help the volunteer organization combat anti-Semitic propaganda posted to the Internet by neo-Nazis, skinheads and white supremacists claiming the Holocaust did not happen.
Metaphoria DTS culls and integrates database, spreadsheet, electronic mail, text, graphics and other digital information for display in a Web browser, generating Internet, Intranet and Extranet pages that are tailored on the fly for each user.
Using Metaphoria DTS to automate the process of formatting text for display on the Web, Nizkor posted two transcript volumes and half of a third in one week.
By comparison, it took Nizkor one month to manually convert a fourth volume into transcribed text and then HTML code -- and a year to complete the transcription and posting of a fifth volume, funded by a grant that permitted Nizkor to hire a programmer.
Nizkor estimates manual transcription of the Metaphoria-posted volumes would have taken three months -- plus another three months to convert the transcribed text into HTML.
"The significance is stunning," said Kenneth McVay, director of Nizkor. "We're buried in information, but have no time to process it for posting. It's tedious to convert it manually. By hand, we can add 7,000 to 8,000 pages per year. With Metaphoria, we have the potential for 850,000 pages. Without Metaphoria, we would probably never be able to add that much information in our lifetime.
"Information is currency on the Web, and the plan now is to get more information," said McVay, who launched Nizkor's Web site with 27 pages and 30 megabytes of Holocaust information in 1995 -- on the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birthday, April 20.
Metaphoria DTS is a server-side Java Application Development Platform. It enables application developers to divorce raw data from the way it is presented, creating an environment that connects any kind of network- accessible data to a Web browser. It resides between the server and the data, using scriptable templates to retrieve and present content -- potentially displaying thousands of Web pages based on as few as 10 or 20 templates.
Metaphoria DTS is designed for business users that want to provide quick and easy access to data from multiple sources and, especially, legacy applications -- no matter where the data is stored and how it was created -- to any desktop computer, either across a corporate network or via the Internet.
Users do not need to cobble together expensive, time-consuming, hard-to- develop custom applications, convert incompatible data from diverse applications into one common format, move data to one shared repository, or deal with the nightmare of creating and updating duplicate data in multiple formats.
Pencom Web Works, based in New York, develops sophisticated business applications running in a Web environment, including the deployment of legacy data to the Web, Intranet or Extranet. The company is a startup business unit of Pencom Systems Inc. (PSI) Founded in 1973 as a recruiting firm for the computer industry, PSI today comprises a constellation of technology businesses and a business incubator with combined projected 1998 revenues of $120 million. SOURCE Pencom Web Works
Copyright 1998, PR Newswire
Gunmakers Not Liable for Shooting Death
By Adam Cataldo
NEW YORK (Reuters) - In the first U.S. jury trial of whether gunmakers should be liable for firearms used in crimes, a jury decided Friday a gunmaker and several sellers of gun parts were not liable for the shooting of three people.
The case marked the first time a gun manufacturer and its owners were brought to trial for selling a weapon or gun parts used in a crime.
The verdict came in the trial of a lawsuit filed by the parents of Aaron Halberstam who was killed four years ago when Lebanese taxi driver Rashid Baz opened fire on a van filled with Jewish students on the Brooklyn Bridge. Halberstam, 16, was killed and Nachum Sosonkin and Levi Wilhelm were injured.
Baz was convicted of murder and attempted murder.
Halberstam's parents sued Wayne and Sylvia Daniel of Duckworth, Tennessee, and seven firearm-manufacturing companies owned by the Daniels.
Devorah and David Halberstam claimed the Daniels were negligent in selling gun-making kits for $150 to $200 because anyone could buy them by telephone without a background check.
The Daniels said there was no evidence linking them to the murder.
But defense attorney Daniel Kane compared the lawsuit to suing an automobile manufacturer over a car accident.
``We felt that the case was ill-conceived in its inception that the plaintiffs -- the Center for Handgun Control and the New York Lawyers Committee on Violence had a legislative agenda which they attempted to pursue through the U.S. District Court,'' Kane said.
But Richard Davis, attorney for the Halberstams, said, ''What is clear is that the violent use of this weapon was clearly foreseeable by the defendants.''
The lawsuit alleged that a Cobray MAC 11/9 automatic pistol, one of two weapons found after Baz was arrested, appealed to criminals because it does not carry a serial number and the manufacturer did not keep sales records.
``It was the enlightened consciousness of the people of New York who said (while) they do not like guns ... they do not find the manufacturer, marketer or advertiser of firearms or firearms parts liable for the intervening criminal act of a third party,'' Kane said.
Defense attorneys tried to get Baz to testify that he bought the gun on the street and not by mail order. But in court he refused to answer questions.
The companies named in the lawsuit were S.W. Daniel Inc., Mountain Accessories Corp., Cobray Firearms Inc., Full Metal Jacket, Ultra Force Inc., R.P.B. Industries and Leinad. The companies sold gun kits by mail.
A similar lawsuit filed by New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, whose husband was killed and son injured by gunman Colin Ferguson on board a commuter train in New York, was dismissed.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Harvard Won't Have Holocaust Study
By Robin EstrinBOSTON (AP) -- More than three years after Harvard received a $3 million pledge to create a chairmanship in Holocaust studies, the university has been unable to agree on a candidate, and about half of the gift has been quietly diverted to the medical school.
The impasse apparently resulted from academic infighting over how to teach the Holocaust: as a study of Jewish victims and Judaic culture, or as a historical analysis of the Nazi perpetrators.
The candidacy of Daniel J. Goldhagen, an associate Harvard professor, also disturbed some members of the search committee.
Goldhagen's controversial 1996 best-selling book, ``Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust,'' contends that ordinary Germans, not just the Nazis, were responsible for the killing of 6 million Jews. He attributes the Holocaust to deep-seated German anti-Semitism.
By failing to appoint a professor, some say, Harvard missed an opportunity to take the lead as a center of Holocaust scholarship. Although many universities teach the Holocaust through history, religion or literature courses, few of the country's top schools have Holocaust specialists.
``I think it's appalling that Harvard is not endorsing this field of study and is not standing behind it,'' Deborah Dwork, who runs the new Center for Holocaust Studies at Clark University in Worcester, said Tuesday.
In 1994, Kenneth Lipper, a philanthropist, businessman and former New York deputy mayor, endowed the Helen Zelaznik Chair in Holocaust and Cognate Studies to honor a family member who was killed in the Holocaust. Lipper's only condition was that the professor be hired with tenure.
Harvard would not have offered a degree in Holocaust studies. But students would have been able to take courses specifically on the Nazi annihilation of 6 million Jews. Currently, Harvard has no courses that focus exclusively on the Holocaust.
A committee of Harvard professors began interviewing scholars in 1995 but could not recommend a candidate, said Harvard spokesman Alex Huppe.
Goldhagen was said to be Lipper's top choice, but Harvard officials said that would have had no bearing on the selection.
The candidates also included Christopher Browning of Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash.; Dan Diner, a history professor at German and Israeli universities; Samuel Kassow, a professor at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.; Omer Bartov, a professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.; and Saul Friedlander, a Holocaust scholar who teaches at the University of California at Los Angeles.
The committee wanted to hire Friedlander on a temporary basis while the search continued, but Lipper wasn't interested in a temporary scholar, said Charles Maier, a history professor who presided over the search.
``I am sorry that we do not have a professor in this field, but I think we were right not to be rushed into an appointment that might not have been optimal,'' he said.
A few months ago, Lipper decided he didn't want his gift to remain in limbo. He shifted $1 million plus interest to the Lipper Foundation, a fund he had already established at Harvard's medical school, Huppe said.
Both Harvard and Lipper still hope to establish the Holocaust chairmanship, the spokesman said. But the search has been put on hold.
Lipper did not return several calls for comment, but a friend said Lippero has been frustrated by Harvard's indecision.
``It breaks his heart what's happening at Harvard,'' said Michael Berenbaum, president of director Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.
Harvard's problems highlight the difficulty academia has had in finding a place for the Holocaust in the curriculum.
Instead of treating it as a separate discipline, hndreds of American universities teach the Holocaust as part of other fields, such as European history, Jewish studies, sociology or comparative literature. Yeshiva University in New York, for example, integrates it into its Jewish history department.
Clark University this week became the first U.S. college to have two full-time endowed tenured professorships in Holocaust history. The university launched a Holocaust studies program for undergraduates last year and will admit its first graduate students in September.
© Copyright 1998 The Associated Press
New brain gene therapy for Illinois girl
PHILADELPHIA, March 25 (Reuters) - A four-year-old Illinois girl began an experimental gene therapy on Wednesday for a fatal brain disease that mainly afflicts children of East European and Ashkenazi Jewish origin, hospital officials said.
Doctors at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital inserted a catheter under the child's scalp that will serve as a gene delivery system to her brain for treatment against Canavan disease. There is no known cure for the disease.
Developed by doctors from Jefferson Medical College and Yale University, the treatment system has been tested only in laboratory animals.
Canavan is an inherited neurological disorder that occurs with the degeneration of the fatty myelin sheath that protects nerve endings in the brain. The process is caused by the absence of the Canavan gene and leads to a buildup of toxic compounds in brain tissue.
The symptoms that begin in early infancy, include mental retardation, loss of acquired motor skills, abnormal muscle tone, an abnormally large head, paralysis, blindness and deafness. Death usually occurs between ages five and seven.
Children descended from East European families and Ashkenazi Jews are most susceptible to the rare disorder.
Jefferson researchers won Food and Drug Administration approval to expand their work into a large Phase I clinical trial.
Doctors hope the trial also will lead to treatment for metabolic disorders such as Krabbe disease and provide insight into possible treatments for Parkinson's disease, strokes and epilepsy. REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Greg Rickman, an aide to D'Amato, said April 23 was the day
Greg Rickman, an aide to D'Amato, said April 23 was the day of rememberance for the Holocaust and that it might be possible to further extend the moratorium. ``If significant progress is made at that point, then perhaps (the banks) might be given 30 days more,'' he said. The extension would set a benchmark for the parties negotiating a possible global settlement of Holocaust claims over both looted assets and dormant accounts, the aide said.
Rickman spoke to reporters after meeting with a steering committtee of U.S. public finance officials which is hearing progress reports from the World Jewish Congress (WJC), U.S. and Swiss representatives and the three Swiss banks most at risk of sanctions. They are: Swiss Bank Corp Union Bank of Switzerland and CS Group The committe was expected to soon decide whether to recommend new sanctions against Swiss banks or to extend the moratorium it agreed in December.
In October, New York City stunned the banking community by taking action against one Swiss bank to signal its disapproval of how it treated Holocaust vitims. The city's lead was then followed by a handful of other states before the moratorium went into effect. The WJC, which has led efforts to force Swiss banks to answer claims they failed to return assets deposited by Holocaust victims, said it did not offer the committee any advice on sanctions. Elan Steinberg, WJC executive director, said, ``We gave no recommendation. We laid out where we think things are.''
Asked about the possibility the Swiss government might respond to any new sanctions with its own counter-measures, the D'Amato aide said, ``We strongly suggest that not happen...He (D'Amato) is very weary of imposing sanctions.'' But Rickman reiterated the senator's view that Swiss Bank and Union Bank should not be able to merge their U.S. operations until the Holocaust issues were resolved. He did not say whether the Swiss government would have to sign on to any global settlement of Holocaust claims. ``The banks are the ones holding the assets. The banks should be the ones returning the assets. He (D'Amato) wants justice for these claiments,'' Rickman said.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Swiss bank to settle with famous Holocaust victim
ZURICH, March 25 (Reuters) - A Swiss bank said on Wednesday it hoped to settle soon a Holocaust survivor's claim that it hoarded her family's wealth when she could not produce a death certificate for her father, who perished in a Nazi death camp.
Credit Suisse Is near a settlement with Estelle Sapir, 80, who made headlines around the world with her allegations that the bank turned her away cold-heartedly as she sought her father's money after the war, a bank spokesman said.
But he would not confirm a report in the newspaper Le Temps that Credit Suisse had offered her $50,000 to withdraw from a class-action suit filed in New York on behalf of thousands more Holocaust victims. Sapir now lives in New York.
``We are settling this individual case because a (business) relationship must have existed, but this is just an isolated case,'' the spokesman said.
``We can only confirm that such an individual case exists and we are in the process of resolving it. It is not completely negotiated and it is not signed yet, but we are in the process of resolving it.''
He added that the bank had continually paid out money from dormant accounts to people who come forward and show they are entitled to the funds.
Swiss banking officials said the Sapir case should not be seen as an indication that banks are about to come up with large sums for a global settlement of all Holocaust-era claims against them, as the World Jewish Congress (WJC) has proposed.
Exploratory talks among the banks, lawyers representing class-action claimants and the WJC have yet to lay the groundwork for such a global settlement, people familiar with the talks say.
``The conditions to reach a settlement do not exist at the moment. There is still a lot of work to do,'' one banker said.
``Exploratory talks are under way at the level of lawyers, but such settlements need a lot of time until serious negotiations can even begin,'' he said. ``It would be an illusion to believe this could happen overnight,'' he said.
``There is still nothing,'' another source added.
Finance officials in several U.S. states and cities have given Swiss banks until the end of this month to address Holocaust claims or face the prospect of boycotts.
A steering committee of finance officials meets in New York on Thursday to discuss how to proceed. REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Swiss Banks Deny Global Accord on Holocaust
By Michael Shields
ZURICH, Switzerland (Reuters) - Swiss banks denied Friday they had agreed to negotiate a sweeping settlement of Holocaust claims against Switzerland in order to escape U.S. boycotts, insisting only claims on banks themselves were on the table.
The Swiss government and central bank also made clear they had no part to play in new talks among the big three banks, the World Jewish Congress (WJC) and lawyers for class-action plaintiffs who say the banks hoarded Holocaust victims' wealth.
It would be a mistake to suggest banks were ready to fund a global settlement of charges that neutral Switzerland took in looted art works, laundered Nazis' wealth or exploited slave labor in Swiss companies' foreign subsidiaries, officials said.
``Talking about a real global settlement is way far away, totally a different thing than we are talking about,'' said Paul Rhyn, a spokesman for Credit Suisse Group.
``It is a framework (agreement) now to go ahead and discuss details of the bank-related issues. It is not a global settlement in the common sense of the word,'' he added.
In a letter to WJC Secretary General Israel Singer, the chief executives of the three big banks said they welcomed the direct involvement of the WJC and lawyers for Holocaust victims who are suing the big banks for billions in talks under the aegis of U.S. Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat.
The talks aim for ``an honorable and moral conclusion through a global resolution of Holocaust-era issues directly related to our banks,'' the letter said.
But while WJC officials and Eizenstat emphasized the words ``global resolution,'' Swiss banks stressed the words ``directly related to our banks.''
``It was clearly only related to bank matters,'' one source familiar with the discussions said. ``The agreement was only on structural things. There was no talk of money.''
News of the accord after months of hard bargaining came as U.S. public finance officials were set to recommend Swiss bank boycotts after a moratorium on such moves expires March 31.
The finance officials agreed to hold off on sanctions for now while monitoring the progress of the talks.
Swiss bankers shied from using the word breakthrough to describe developments, but said it was an important step forward to get the WJC and the class-action lawyers together in one forum that could try to thrash out a settlement.
This solves the problem of dealing with several rival claimants who would not all necessarily sign on to a settlement, thus effectively scuppering any hopes for such a deal.
Bern officials stressed that they had not gone back on their refusal to spend taxpayers' money on any settlement.
``This is still a matter of talks among the banks, lawyers in the class-action suits and now the World Jewish Congress,'' added Marietta Kerman, a spokeswoman for the Swiss government task force responding to Holocaust-era charges.
``The Swiss government and Swiss authorities are still not involved in these talks,'' she said.
The Swiss National Bank added that the central bank would not get involved in the talks. ``The answer clearly is that there is no possibility for us to do that,'' an SNB spokesman said.
A first round of talks is supposed to start April 24, but it was still unclear who would take part, officials said.
Swiss Bankers Association spokeswoman Silva Motile said she was disappointed U.S. local government officials had not lifted once and for all the threat of sanctions as a way to press banks into settling wartime claims.
Madeleine Kinin, Washington's ambassador to Switzerland, told Swiss Radio International: ``The ideal conclusion would be a settlement where Switzerland would be in a position as saying we have done the right thing and countries around the world would be able to say justice has been done.
``We must remember this issue is all about survivors and victims of the Holocaust. The longer we delay, the less likely there will be beneficiaries. It is important to reach a conclusion and to reach it soon.''
Officials stressed measures Switzerland and its banks have taken so far to confront its wartime past as a neutral country with close economic ties to fascist countries surrounding it.
Banks have opened their books to independent auditors searching for unclaimed Holocaust-era accounts, published names of dormant account owners, and set up with other businesses and the SNB a humanitarian fund for needy Holocaust victims.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
WJC expects pact to further Holocaust settlement
By Joan Gralla
NEW YORK, March 26 (Reuters) - Switzerland's big banks, facing the prospect of a U.S. boycott, have committed themselves to reaching a global settlement of claims against them for looted or lost Holocaust-era assets, a U.S. official said Thursday.
Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, who has been working to head off a boycott, told a steering committee of state and local public finance officials that a ``breakthrough'' agreement had been reached with the banks that paved the way for them to try to reach a global settlement with Holocaust victims.
``They have clearly committed to engage in a process with the hope of a settlement,'' Eizenstat said.
The steering committee, composed of five public finance officials, is considering whether to recommend a boycott of Swiss banks or continuation of a moratorium against any punitive action that was agreed last December.
Eizenstat released a letter from the big three Swiss banks saying they wanted to try to reach a global settlement of Holocaust issues. It said the banks wanted to reach ``an honorable and moral'' conclusion through a global resolution of Holocaust issues.
Eizenstat said he saw the talks on reaching a global settlement as possibly lasting several months.
World Jewish Congress Secretary-General Israel Singer said he hoped the talks would ultimately lead to ``completion of a process we began on May 2, 1996...which will transfer every penny of dormant and looted assets'' back to Holocaust survivors or their heirs.
About 200 public finance officials agreed to a 90-day moratorium halting any punitive measures against Swiss banks in December. It expires on March 31.
The banks most at risk when the moratorium ends are Swiss Bank Corp., Union Bank of Switzerland and CS Group.
The United States and Switzerland sought earlier in the day to head off potential boycotts by declaring in a joint statement that such a move would be counterproductive.
In the Swiss capital Berne, the Swiss and U.S. governments joined forces to insist that any sanctions against the Swiss would hurt rather than help efforts to settle Holocaust issues.
``Both governments are convinced that the calls for sanctions and boycotts in the U.S. and the most recent echoes for measures by Switzerland against such actions are unjustified and counterproductive,'' they said in a statement.
The measures, if imposed, could throw a wrench in plans to merge Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank Corp. to create the world's second largest bank.
Sanctions and boycotts could also hurt Credit Suisse Group and its investment banking arm Credit Suisse First Boston.
Emotions have run high in Switzerland over the issue, which polarized the country on its role as a neutral during World War II and the actions of its banks and industry. REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
US Official Warns Against Swiss Sanctions
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat has warned U.S. state and local governments against punishing Switzerland for its role in the Holocaust, predicting sanctions would be counter-productive.
Eizenstat said Americans should be applauding Switzerland's actions and encouraging its continued progress on the issue.
``Punitive measures against Swiss banks would be both unjustified and counter-productive,'' Eizenstat told a group of young U.S. Jews in Washington Monday.
``The Swiss have done so much and have gotten so little credit that it far from the time or season for sanctions,'' he said. ``Condemning the Swiss can only discourage them from moving on with the truly remarkable steps they have taken.''
U.S. state and local finance officials agreed in December to postpone any boycott of Swiss banks until March 31, but called upon the banks to address by then Jewish-led criticism of their handling of Holocaust victims' accounts.
Eizenstat spoke out about the issue at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, urging state and local governments to permanently drop their threat of sanctions.
``Switzerland, like every other country examining its past, should be judged today not by what it did or didn't do half a century ago, but by what it is doing today to confront its history and take strides toward justice,'' he said Monday.
``And by that standard, Switzerland, at last, is doing the right thing.''
He cited Switzerland's efforts to raise and begin distributing money to assist needy survivors of the Holocaust, as well as concrete programs by Swiss banks to locate and return dormant bank accounts to their rightful owners.
Switzerland has come under massive international scrutiny for its role as a financial center in World War Two, the flow of assets through its secretive banks, and its wartime refugee policy that turned away thousands of Jews fleeing oppression and genocide at the hands of the Nazis.
Eizenstat said the United States would continue to seek the fullest possible list of dormant accounts; a rigorous and transparent auditing process; an expedited claims process; and large, swift contributions to Holocaust survivors.
To support these efforts, Washington was helping create an Internet website for interested parties to communicate.
Eizenstat called on the world community to complete ``the unfinished business of this century'' and secure a measure of justice for Holocaust survivors by the end of this millennium.
It was vital, he said, to go beyond the question of gold and examine the fate of other assets held by Holocaust victims, including insurance, artworks, securities, jewelry and gems, as well as communal property.
Washington was also reviewing the policies and activities of U.S. government agencies which helped track, collect and dispose of Nazi gold after the war.
The State Department and the Holocaust Memorial Museum would soon announce the date for a U.S.-sponsored conference to follow up on progress made on the assets issue at the London Conference in early December, Eizenstat said.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Jewish leader complains to Pope on Holocaust paper
By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY, March 26 (Reuters) - A Jewish leader told Pope John Paul on Thursday that many Jews felt the Vatican's controversial document on the Holocuast did not go far enough in its self-criticism of Church responsibility for the tragedy.
The Pope, in his address to a joint Jewish and Catholic group that met in the Vatican, made no mention of the landmark document or that many Jews were upset with it.
A separate joint statement by the group said a top Vatican cardinal suggested that a joint team of Catholic and Jewish scholars be formed to review historical material already published by the Vatican on the World War Two period.
Sources on both sides pointed out this did not mean, however, that the Vatican's archives would yet be opened to independent Jewish scholars, as some have demanded.
In his address to the Pope, Geoffrey Wigoder, one of the Jewish members of the inter-religious group that met for four days, forcefully relayed Jewish disappointment with the Holocaust document, which was issued on March 16.
``When the document was issued last week, certain questions were asked in Jewish and other circles,'' Wigoder said. ``It was felt that the self-criticism -- for all its importance -- did not go far enough ...,'' he said.
Jews reacted coolly to the long-awaited Holocaust document, called ``We Remember, a Reflection on the Shoah.''
Many were particularly irritated by its defence of wartime Pope Pius XII, whom it effectively absolved of accusations that he facilitated the Holocaust by remaining silent.
Wigoder also told the Pope many Jews felt ``the connection between the long history of anti-Jewish conditioning under Christian auspices and the widespread indifference and even collaboration throughout Europe during the Shoah was not stated unequivocally and with sufficient clarity.''
The Vatican's document on the Holocaust apologised for individual Catholics who failed to help Jews.
But Jewish leaders said it failed to address the Catholic Church's preaching of anti-Jewish contempt for centuries, which they said made the ground fertile for the worst manifestation of anti-Semitism in the Holocaust.
``However, we can only deeply identify with the basic thrust of the document and the clear warning it issues against all forms of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, derived from the terrible lessons of the Shoah,'' Wigoder told the Pope.
``We full-heartedly join with you in its (the document) closing wish to turn awareness of past sins into a firm resolve to build a new future based on a shared mutual respect.''
The talks with the Vatican's Commission for Religious relations with Jews were arranged before the document was issued, but the paper became a major topic of discussion.
In his brief address, the Pope thanked the group, known as the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee, for fostering dialogue.
``The progress which you have already made shows the immense promise held out by continuing dialogue between Catholics and Jews,'' the Pontiff told the group.
The Pope did not mention his predecessor Pius XII, whom he defended last Saturday when he called Pius ``a great Pope.''
The Vatican's position is that Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, did not speak out more forcefully for fear of worsening the fate of Catholics, as well as Jews, in Germany and Nazi-occupied countries.
Wigoder's address had a number of positive notes, including a call for a continued Jewish-Catholic dialogue and a recommendation that the Pontiff visit Jerusalem in 2000. REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Vatican holds out hope of opening WW2 archives
By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY, March 26 (Reuters) - The Vatican on Thursday held out the hope that its archives may one day be opened up to Jewish scholars who want to examine the World War Two period, when they say the Church turned a blind eye to the Holocaust.
A final statement issued after four days of meetings between Catholic and Jewish leaders said a senior Vatican cardinal had suggested that a joint team of Jewish-Catholic scholars review material that is already in the public domain as a first step.
Many Jewish leaders have for years been calling for the Vatican to open its archives dealing with the World War Two period to an inter-religious group of historians.
``In discussion on the Vatican's record during the Shoah and the Jewish demand for impartial access to the relevant archival material, Cardinal (Edward) Cassidy suggested that a joint team of Jewish and Catholic scholars review the relevant material in the volumes produced by Catholic scholars covering the historical period concerned,'' it said.
``If questions still remained, they should seek further clarification,'' the joint statement added.
Cassidy is head of the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations with Jews, the department which issued a controversial document on the Holocaust earlier this month.
Jews reacted coolly to the long-awaited Holocaust document, called ``We Remember, a Reflection on the Shoah.''
Many were particularly irritated by its defence of wartime Pope Pius XII, whom it effectively absolved of accusations that he facilitated the Holocaust by remaining silent.
The crux of the issue regarding the archives is whether Pius did all he might have done to stop the Holocaust and whether his so-called ``silence'' facilitated it.
Vatican historians, whose work was published in an 11-volume study by three Jesuits from 1965 to 1981, say Pius did not speak out more forcefully for fear of worsening the fate of Catholics, as well as Jews, in Germany and Nazi-occupied countries.
The joint statement issued on Thursday said a team of Catholic and Jewish scholars should first study together the 11 volumes already public.
Jewish leaders who attended the meeting said the section of the statement that spoke of seeking ``further clarification'' if necessary led them to hope the archives may be open one day.
``The door has been opened in terms of joint study, in terms of further exploration into the issues,'' Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the New York board of Rabbis, told Reuters.
``This morning, Cardinal Cassidy did not rule out that if need be. If we have to turn to the archives, so we must to further clarify the Church's role during the Holocaust,'' said Schneier, who took part in the meetings.
``That was a very, very significant step, in what we view as an ongoing process,'' Schneier added.
The Vatican's pre-1922 archives are now open to outside historians. Material from subsequent years is still being classified by church scholars.
``We must set up joint groups of Catholic and Jewish scholars to research further into the historical period as well as into the whole relationship between the theology and the tragedies that took place during the period of the Holocaust,'' said Rabbi David Rosen, head of the Anti-Defamation League in Jerusalem.
``That's a significant step in itself,'' Rosen told Reuters.
Father Pierre Blet, the last surviving member of the team of Church historians, said earlier this month he had no opposition to opening the Vatican's wartime archives to outside historians but he doubted if they would find anything new.
In an article in a Jesuit journal, Blet also rejected accusations that he and the other church historians had intentionally overlooked documents detrimental to Pius.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Polish rabbi seeks removal of cross near Auschwitz
WARSAW, March 25 (Reuters) - Poland's chief rabbi demanded on Wednesday that a large Christian cross be removed from near the former Auschwitz concentration camp built by Nazi German invaders in World War Two, PAP news agency reported.
Menachem Joskowicz, was responding to a sermon on Sunday by Poland's Catholic Primate, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, who said ``the cross has stood and will stand at Auschwitz,'' despite assurances by a government official that it would be moved.
``(The primate) must honour the Jewish religion and nothing should disturb prayers on the holy site of Oswiecim,'' Joskowicz said in a radio interview, using the Polish name for Auschwitz.
``Auschwitz is the place where my family perished, my fellow prisoners... my nation died there, there died culture and human civilisation,'' said Joskowicz.
He argued that Jews could not pray by a cross, PAP said.
The Nazis murdered an estimated 1.5 million people at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex in south Poland, more than 90 percent of whom were Jews gassed in the huge death factory of Birkenau.
Tens of thousands of ethnic Poles were also killed, including many political prisoners murdered at the original Auschwitz camp by which the cross stands.
A simmering dispute over the cross became an open row earlier this year when Krzysztof Sliwinski, the government's ambassador for dialogue with the Jewish Diaspora, said the cross would soon be removed with the consent of the Vatican.
The declaration prompted protests of some right-leaning parties and local community members, which were backed the influential former President Lech Walesa, a devout Catholic.
The eight-metre wooden cross was erected in 1979 outside the Auschwitz camp perimeter near a spot where the Nazis shot Polish political prisoners. Polish-born Pope John Paul II once celebrated a mass beneath it.
The controversy over the Christian symbol reflects divergent sensibilities of Roman Catholics and Jews over how to commemorate victims of the Nazis.
Many Jewish commentators including Joskowicz argue that no religious symbols belong at the scene so that people of any faith can pray there.
Some Catholics who associate their sense of national identity with their faith, say the cross has a place in any part of the country including Auschwitz.
Similar arguments surrounded a convent which was sited in the late 1980s right by the Auschwitz camp and only removed after long angry protests by Jewish organisations.
The Polish government last year agreed with Jewish groups on a plan for better preserving the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex as a memorial, part of a wider effort to improve sometimes strained relations with the worldwide Jewish community. REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Polish Jews seek to calm row over Auschwitz cross
WARSAW, March 27 (Reuters) - Poland's Jewish congregations sought on Friday to calm a row over a large cross at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex where Nazi Germany killed up to 1.5 million people -- the vast majority of them Jews.
Some Polish Catholics, including senior bishops and politicians, have criticised demands by Jewish groups worldwide for the cross's removal, sometimes even accusing them of attacked Polish national values.
``We view the growing atmosphere of conflict over the cross in Auschwitz with pain and sadness,'' said the leadership of the Association of Jewish religious communities in Poland.
``Noisy conflicts are completely inappropriate in the surroundings of that place.''
The association, grouping Poland'a few small remaining congregations of Jews, said Catholic Church decisions on the cross might be a test of a major Vatican document this month on the World War Two Holocaust of Europe's Jews.
It said the best solution might be not to have any religious symbols at Auschwitz ``so as to respect the feelings of as many victims and their relatives as possible. But maybe some other solutions are also conceivable.''
Some commentators have suggested the eight-metre cross should be moved further away and possibly replaced by a smaller obelisk, marked with a cross.
The Jewish statement voiced respect for the importance Christians attached to crosses and said it was not up to Jews to decide the fate of this particular one.
It noted that the new Vatican document said the Holocaust of the Jews was a fact of great importance to the Catholic Church. ``If so, then Auschwitz deserves special treatment as the symbol of that tragedy,'' it said.
``Whatever is decided, it will be hard to undo the harm done by activities of those with extreme views -- unfortunately these are not lacking among Jews or Christians.''
The statement differed in tone from remarks by Poland's chief rabbi when he demanded the cross's removal, saying Jews could not pray by a cross and the only symbols at the site should be the chimneys of the former gas chamber crematoria.
Rabbi Menachem Joskowicz was responding to a sermon last Sunday by Poland's Catholic Primate, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, who said ``the cross has stood and will stand at Auschwitz,'' despite assurances by a government official that it would be moved.
The cross was erected in 1979 by the Auschwitz camp near a spot where the Nazis shot many Polish prisoners. Polish-born Pope John Paul II once celebrated a mass beneath it.
Some crosses and Stars of David planted by Christians have been removed, after Jewish requests, from Birkenau where most of the victims, including large numbers of little children, were gassed by the Germans and their ashes scattered.
The Jewish congregations said their concern was to honour the memory of more than a million Jews, but added: ``We pay tribute to the Poles, Roma and all other victims of the camp. We are deeply conscious that Oswiecim (Auschwitz) is also a symbol of the sufferings of the whole occupied Poland.''
The dispute over the cross is an aftershock of a fierce controversy surrounding a convent which was sited in the late 1980s by the Auschwitz camp and removed only after long protests by Jewish organisations.
The Polish government agreed with Jewish groups last year on a plan for preserving the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex as a memorial, part of a wider effort to improve sometimes troubled relations with the worldwide Jewish community.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Cabinet changes bring Russian regions nearer Moscow
By Philippa Fletcher
MOSCOW, March 25 (Reuters) - President Boris Yeltsin, who created a hiatus by dismissing the government this week, is hoping Russia's vast hinterland will help him fill the gap.
For centuries, leaders in the capital have ruled the provinces with little regard for local views.
Over the next few days, however, leaders of regions several time zones from Moscow may find themselves being wooed by the powers-that-be in the capital.
``We must maintain contacts with the governors. We must keep the governors closer to our hearts,'' Yeltsin said at a meeting with officials in his administration on Tuesday.
Sergei Kiriyenko, the young energy minister thrust into the prime minister's post on Monday, was quick to act on the order.
One of his first moves on taking up the task of forming a new cabinet was to meet Yegor Stroyev, leader of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of parliament, on Tuesday.
On Wednesday Kiriyenko planned to contact individual governors by telephone, the government said.
Although his own power base is outside Moscow, in the Volga city of Nizhny Novgorod, Kiriyenko said his biggest weakness was his lack of knowledge of regional government.
``This is very bad because Russia is a complex country consisting of a multitude of regions. And what one sees from Moscow is totally different from what is seen from a vantage point in some region,'' he told the commercial NTV channel.
He was not exaggerating. The 89 regions which make up the Russian Federation range from tiny, poverty-stricken backwaters like the Jewish Autonomous Republic on the Chinese border to vast, wealthy, independent-minded republics like Tatarstan.
``That is why today and in future I will contact many leaders in the regions,'' Kiriyenko said on Tuesday evening. ``Their point of view is of fundamental importance to me.''
With Kiriyenko's acceptability to parliament unclear -- the communists say he is too inexperienced -- several regional leaders are among candidates tipped to take his place.
The most serious options are Dmitry Ayatskov from the southern Saratov region, Mikhail Prusak from Novgorod in northwest Russia and Konstantin Titov from Samara, also in the south. Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, is also touted by some.
Stroyev's name has been mentioned too, but Nikolai Pavlov, who analyses the regions for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank thinks he is an unlikely choice.
``He would be quite a strong man in that post and would represent a significant danger for the president,'' said Pavlov.
Yeltsin is widely believed to have sacked Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin because his loyal ally had begun to appear a threat. By that logic, he will be looking for a tame successor which would make a governor seem a good choice.
``Any governor, however strong, if he becomes prime minister, will in any case be a weak premier because he will be without his team and apparatus and those links which make a premier strong and independent in politics,'' Pavlov said.
While persuading a governor to swap his regional power base for a lonely and uncertain job in Moscow could prove tough, ensuring they back a candidate may be an easier task.
Indeed, the Sevodnya newspaper felt backing from the Federation Council, which, along with the more argumentative lower house must approve a new prime minister, was already in the bag.
``After an hour's talk with Stroyev he (Kiriyenko) underlined how 'extremely important' the regional leaders views were...For his part the worldly-wise Stroyev gave a favourable assessment of the approval of a new premier,'' it said.
Many regions have become much more self-reliant since communist days -- although Chechnya is the only one to have declared independence -- and some have attracted foreign investors and raised funds by issuing Eurobonds.
Last year Moscow lost most of its direct control over the regions after their leaders -- hitherto appointed by Moscow -- won popular backing in a string of local polls.
But power and money are still concentrated on the capital, and with wage delays piling up and a Russia-wide protest action planned for April 9, the governors want Moscow on their side.
Stroyev asked Kiriyenko to sweep away layers of bureaucracy to give the governors direct access to the government and Yeltsin. His request may be forgotten.
``It would take a long while to get rid of because there are so many vested interests tied up in it,'' said a diplomat who focuses on the regions.
Samara's Titov was also pessimistic.
``Of course, such a reorganisation (of the government) will not leave the regions untouched,'' he told Kommersant Daily. ``But it's too early to say which region has won or lost. In any case, in previous such situations we have always lost.'' REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
FOCUS-Germany's Schroeder vows Holocaust awareness
By Paul Holmes
JERUSALEM, March 24 (Reuters) - Gerhard Schroeder pledged on Tuesday to foster continued awareness of German responsibility for the Holocaust if he becomes chancellor and to maintain a special relationship with Israel.
He also said he thought Europe could play mainly an economic role in Middle East peacemaking.
Schroeder's visit to Jerusalem, in his role as president of Germany's upper house of parliament, included a pilgrimage to the Yad Vashem memorial to victims of the Holocaust and talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
``Historic responsibility is something that transcends generations and must be passed down. One must come to terms with this part of history time and again,'' Schroeder, 53, told a news conference in Jerusalem.
Opinion polls suggest that Schroeder, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) premier of the state of Lower Saxony, will win federal elections on September 27 and end Chancellor Helmut Kohl's 16 years in power.
He also met U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was in Jerusalem as part of his own Middle East tour.
Schroeder, born in 1944, one year before Nazi Germany's defeat in World War Two, said he had sensed some concern in his talks with Israeli officials that his generation wanted to draw a line under the past.
``I got the impression at times that there is a certain concern that my generation...does not take the special relationship as seriously as it deserves or as the generation did that has now left the stage or is about to do so,'' he said.
``I made clear that the generation that grew up in Germany after the war is well aware of the historic responsibility and that we do not refer to the 'mercy of a late birth' because in our view there is no such thing,'' he said.
Those remarks appeared to be a subtle swipe at Kohl, both over his political fortunes and over controversial remarks earlier in his chancellorship when he said the ``mercy of a late birth'' meant he had not had to fight for Hitler.
Kohl, 67, is the first post-war chancellor not to have lived as an adult through Hitler's Third Reich and the extermination of six million Jews in Nazi death camps.
Schroeder paid homage to the victims at Yad Vashem, where he laid a wreath in the memorial's stark Hall of Remembrance.
``I think it would be daring to stand here as somebody who has not experienced it personally and to speak up on behalf of those who have,'' he said afterwards through an interpreter.
``I hope that you do understand that there are moments in life where I feel I would not like to say anything.''
Schroeder held talks later on Tuesday with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in Gaza over stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
``The European role will not have the same weight as the American role but the Europeans do have the interest to support the peace process. The Europeans can play a role particularly in the economic development in the region,'' he told a joint press conference with Arafat.
Arafat said the peace process needed an ``active European role.''
Schroeder said he had differed with Netanyahu over Jewish settlement building on occupied land, a policy Schroeder said he saw as diminishing Palestinian trust in the peace process.
An Israeli statement said Netanyahu had briefed Schroeder on Israel's talks with the Palestinians and on ``the role Israel attributes to the European Union in the political process.''
Netanyahu also ``emphasised the supreme importance of maintaining good relations between Israel and Germany in all areas and the need to expand education on the Holocaust among members of the young generation,'' the statement said.
Schroeder said bilateral relations had to remain good ``regardless of who governs in Germany (or) Israel.'' REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Gore to visit Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt
WASHINGTON, March 25 (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Al Gore will visit Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt April 30 through May 3, his office announced on Wednesday.
Gore will be in Israel April 30-May 1 to attend official celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state.
He will visit Saudi Arabia on May 1-2 for talks with Crown Prince Abdullah and to meet with U.S. troops stationed there as part of the U.S. contingent in the Gulf region.
On May 2-3 Gore will meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and convene a joint U.S.-Egyptian commission designed to boost economic development. REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Displaced Israeli Arabs demand return to villages
By Wael al-Ahmad
AL-GHABSIEH, Israel, March 28 (Reuters) - Around 1,200 Israeli Arabs displaced during the 1948 Middle East war demonstrated near a deserted village on Saturday demanding the right to return to their villages.
Demonstrators near al-Ghabsieh village carried banners naming 416 Arab villages whose 300,000 Palestinian residents were displaced during fighting between Arabs and Jews in 1948.
Witnesses said protesters chanted slogans emphasising their Palestinian identity over their status as Israeli citizens. Israeli police and soldiers prevented scores of cars from reaching al-Ghabsieh.
Israeli-Arab parliamentarians said the demonstration was part of a series of activities by more than 850,000 Israeli Arabs to commemorate Land Day -- March 30, the day in 1976 when Israeli troops fired on Arabs protesting against land confiscations, killing six.
The protest was also part of activities marking the 50th anniversary of what Arabs and Palestinians call the ``Great Catastrophe'' -- the defeat of the Arabs in the 1948 war which created the Palestinian refugee problem and led to the establishment of the state of Israel.
Israel celebrates the same events as part of its 50th anniversary jubilee this year.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians, displaced from their villages and towns during the 1948 war, now live in refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The only visible remnant of Arab life in al-Ghabsieh was a mosque, surrounded by barbed wire placed by Israelis after 1948 to prevent Arabs from returning to the village for prayers. The rest of the village was deserted and wrecked by the war.
A young man who tried to raise the Palestinian flag on the mosque was stopped by police.
``In April 1948 when the Jewish militias attacked us, one of the village citizens raised the white flag but they killed him along with nine others. Residents were terrified by their terrorism and fled the village,'' said Mohammad Aslan, 95, who now lives in another village 500 metres (yards) away.
``We returned to the village nine months later but they drove us out. I still dream of returning,'' he told Reuters.
Israeli Arabs, a minority in Israel, have historically complained of discrimination at the political, social and economic levels. They demand equality with Jews and improved services. REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Berlin mayor questions need for Holocaust memorial
BERLIN, March 28 (Reuters) - The mayor of Berlin on Saturday urged the German government to consider whether it was necessary to erect a new memorial in the capital city to honour the six million Jews killed by the Nazis.
Eberhard Diepgen, in an article for the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel, said that in the more than 50 years since the end of World War Two the city had built more than 45 memorials to victims of Nazi terror.
``That's why one has to ask whether Berlin needs more and more memorials to do justice to the memory of the Holocaust victims,'' he said.
Diepgen said he expected a new memorial to be agreed upon once ``a convincing concept has been found.''
``But one has to ask whether contemporary art has the means to create a memorial that is sufficiently expressive.''
The German government reaffirmed its intention this week to go ahead with plans for a Holocaust memorial in Berlin, despite opposition which has threatened to derail the whole project.
The monument is due to get the final go-ahead this month once the Bonn government, the city of Berlin and a private group who initiated the 15 million mark ($8 million) project select a winning design.
The groundbreaking ceremony is to take place on January 27, 1999 -- 54 years to the day after the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. But if one of the parties pulls out, it could be put on hold indefinitely.
Diepgen said there were good arguments for keeping the focus on the existing memorial at the ``Neue Wache'' building near the Brandenburg Gate.
Built in 1817 by architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the Neue Wache was renovated and made Germany's central memorial site in 1993.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl favours a design for a new memorial by New York-based architect Peter Eisenman and sculptor Richard Serra. They envisage creating a graveyard-like labyrinth of 4,000 concrete pillars up to 7.5 metres (24 feet) tall.
The final design has not been chosen yet.
Plans for the monument, to be built in central Berlin between the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz, have provoked an emotional debate which goes to the heart of Germany's efforts to come to terms with its past.
A group of prominent Germans, including author Guenther Grass, urged Kohl in an open letter to abandon the project earlier this year. REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
German Town Deletes Hitler from Honor Roll
DRESDEN, Germany (Reuters) - An east German town Friday struck Adolf Hitler off its list of honorary citizens.
The local council in Wurzen, southGermany, took the step after a historian unearthed evidence of Hitler's honorary citizenship while examining old files about the town.
A spokesman for the council said Wurzen, like thousands of other German towns, had granted the Nazi leader honorary citizenship during the Third Reich.
The matter had been forgotten when the town was part of communist East Germany.
``We wanted to make a clean break,'' the spokesman said. ``It was just a formality. There was a unanimous decision with no discussion.''
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Father of German sportscar Porsche dies
By Rolf Soderlind
VIENNA, Austria (Reuters) - Ferdinand Porsche, founder of German sportscar maker Porsche AG and one of the designers of the Volkswagen Beetle under Adolf Hitler's rule, died Friday in Austria, the company said. He was 88.
A company statement said Porsche died in the Austrian mountain resort of Zell am See, where he acquired a holiday home in the 1930s.
Porsche's home office in Stuttgart, Germany, said he would be buried privately in Zell am See and that an official funeral service would take place later in Stuttgart.
Erwin Teufel, premier of the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, said Porsche was ``an extraordinarily significant and creative engineer and an outstanding business personality.''
``He created a company with a world reputation,'' Teufel said.
Porsche, known as Ferry to friends and associates, was born near to engineer and car racer Ferdinand Porsche and his wife Aloisia, on Sept. 19, 1909.
Ferry, who drove a car for the first time at the age of 10, moved with the family to Stuttgart where he came to work in his father's engineering company.
The young Porsche was one of the brains behind what became known as the people's car, producing the prototype Volkswagen in Hitler's Nazi Germany in 1936.
Four years earlier, he helped build the classic 16-cylinder Auto-Union racing car.
In 1935, Porsche married Dorothea Reitz of Stuttgart. They had four sons.
During World War II, Porsche designed tanks for Hitler's armies. After the war, the company started work on what became the first Porsche sportscar.
``I originally set out to make a car that would be fun,'' he once said.
He took the design of the Volkswagen -- a rear-engine, air-cooled, lightweight car -- and squeezed more power out of it, producing the first Porsche, the 356, in 1948.
The 356, which critics said looked like an upside-down soap dish, went into full production two years later.
The company sold 77,000 of the model until it was phased out in 1963 when the 911, another rear-engine, air-cooled car, became the backbone of the company's sales.
The company, which originally thought it might only manage to make 50 cars, rolled vehicle number 1 million off the assembly line in Stuttgart in July 1996.
Through half a century, Porsche cars have piled up more than 22,000 racing victories.
The cars have followed a clear line from the original designs of Ferry Porsche.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
German anti-euro lobby takes to the streets
By Clifford Coonan
FRANKFURT, March 28 (Reuters) - Around a thousand Germans, fearful that the forthcoming single currency may threaten their national sovereignty, staged a demonstration here on Saturday to voice their concerns about the euro.
A mixed bag of neo-nazis, anarchists and pensioners attended the demonstration at Frankfurt's historic St Paul's Church, site of Germany's first parliament in 1848.
The meeting was organised by the anti-euro Freie Buerger (Free Citizens) organisation and was addressed by former EU official Manfred Brunner.
``We demand a referendum on the euro. Let politicians examine their consciences on this,'' Brunner said, as neo-nazis chanted ``Germany for the Germans'' and anarchists blew whistles and shouted ``Nazis out.''
Opinion polls have shown that nearly two-thirds of Germans are against the introduction of the euro. Chancellor Helmut Kohl has ruled out the possibility of a referendum and there is no constitutional provision for one to take place.
``Whether it is a hard or a soft euro, Germany will have to pay for it,'' Brunner told the demonstration, which was due to march to the Bundesbank after the demonstration.
The Bundesbank issued an upbeat report on European Economic and Monetary Union members on Friday.
Right-wing extremists within the crowd waved banners saying ``The euro is our misfortune,'' echoing the Nazi slogan ``The jews are our misfortune,'' while others held placards saying ``Kohl can keep the euro, the people want the euro.''
Brunner was keen to distance himself from any associations with Hitler's Nazis, saying: ``The Nazis were just national socialists, in the same mould as the socialists who messed up East Germany.''
As he spoke, left-wing demonstrators blew whistles to drown out his speech and shouted ``Nazis out'' and ``International solidarity.''
Quoting sources as diverse as the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, the British essayist Thomas Carlisle and Germany's Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Brunner said Europe should be a ``friendly collection of different cultures.''
He said that Germans wanted to protect themselves against ``anti-European federalists.''
The Freie Buerger is just one of a host of small, disparate groups springing up to defend the German mark, viewed by many as a powerful symbol and guarantee of the country's legendary post-World War Two stability and wealth.
These groups are generally viewed by the German media as a kind of lunatic fringe, but they reflect a growing fear among Germans that Europe's planned single currency will not match the fabled strength of the mark.
For most Germans the deutschemark, which was introduced in 1948 in the chaotic aftermath of the war to replace the spent Reichsmark of the imperial and Nazi eras, is more than just a currency, it is a symbol of national pride.
Among measures being taken to stop the introduction of the euro is a legal challenge in the Karlsruhe Constitutional Court by four German professors, who include a former Bundesbank council member.
((Frankfurt Newsroom +49 69 756525, frankfurt.newsroom+reuters.com)) REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Dutch state may be sued over wartime Jewish art
AMSTERDAM, March 26 (Reuters) - The Dutch government on Thursday declined to comment on reports the heirs of a Jewish art dealer forced to flee the country during World War Two planned to seek legal damages over paintings sold to Nazi occupiers.
The heirs of Jacques Goudstikker, whose multi-million guilder (dollars) art collection was bought for a song by occupying Nazis in 1940, told Dutch daily De Volkskrant they would take the government to court after it turned down their claim for 150 paintings now hanging in Dutch museums.
``We have not received a summons and therefore we have no comment,'' a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Culture said.
Goudstikker's heirs in the United States, the Von Sahers, lodged their claim with the Dutch state in January, disputing a settlement made in 1952 with the art dealer's widow.
According to the Von Sahers, the post-war deal made with Desi Goudstikker took advantage of her weak emotional and financial position.
But Dutch Culture Minister Aad Nuis said late on Wednesday he was rejecting the claim.
Documents and correspondence relating to the affair showed that after the war Desi Goudstikker had taken a ``conscious and well-considered'' decision against seeking restitution for her legal rights with regard to the paintings, Nuis said.
By contrast, she had successfully pursued a claim for restitution of other assets of her husband's company which had been sold illegally to a German banker.
``One of the most striking factors in this case is the high degree of selection in requesting legal restitution,'' Nuis said in a statement.
``All the documents I have seen show that at every turn extremely careful consideration was given to whether -- and, if so, to what degree -- use should be made of the possibility for legal restitution.''
The ministry said that after the war Goudstikker's widow had been given a choice between recovering the family assets through legal proceedings for the restitution of legal rights or keeping the money paid for them while renouncing ownership.
It said archive material on the case showed expert advisers had counselled Desi to renounce ownership of Flemish Old Masters and Italian renaissance paintings sold to Field Marshall Hermann Goering and keep what she had left of the two million guilder ($970,000) sale price.
This was because the Goering paintings had not all been recovered and some of those that had appeared badly damaged.
The ministry cited a 1950 memo to Desi from her lawyer urging her to renounce ownership of the Goering paintings.
Documents further showed the Dutch state had accepted the partial claim for legal restitution under protest, it added.
But the ministry said it would reconsider any claim if any new substantive information came to light.
``The state considers each claim on its individual merits,'' it said.
It said the Dutch government had recently returned two 17th century Old Masters to the heirs of their wartime owners in response to claims. ($ - 2.058 Dutch Guilders)
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Dutch far right in drugs-for-votes probe
NIJMEGEN, Netherlands, March 24 (Reuters) - Dutch police said on Tuesday they were holding three members of an extreme right-wing party on suspicion of trying to buy nomination signatures from heroin addicts for money and drugs.
A police spokesman said the three men from the Centre Democrats party -- one a former Arnhem city councillor -- had allegedly been offering addicts in the south city 25 guilders (around $11) or a dose of heroin in return for their signatures on a party nomination form.
Under the Dutch electoral system, parties must collect a minimum of 30 signatures in each of 19 electoral districts in order to put up a candidate. The Netherlands will hold general elections on May 6.
``The men are being held under the opium act after one was found to be carrying a portion of heroin,'' police spokesman Peter Bekker told Reuters.
He said police were called to an addicts' day-care centre in central Nijmegen after clients told staff of the men's offer.
Bekker said the three were also found to be carrying a list of signatures. The men had yet to give a statement, he added.
The Dutch extreme right currently holds three seats in the 150-member parliament, but were wiped from the political map during local elections earlier this month. They gained only one municipal seat, on a council in a Rotterdam suburb.
The Centre Democrats traditionally campaign on an anti-crime, anti-drugs and anti-foreigner platform. REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Stone-throwing youths attack Danish rightist leader
COPENHAGEN, March 24 (Reuters) - The leader of a Danish far-right anti-immigration party which did well in this month's general election was bombarded with stones, pieces of wood and tomatoes in a Copenhagen suburb on Tuesday, Ritzau news agency reported.
Pia Kjaersgaard, leader of the Danish People's Party (DPP), was forced to seek shelter in a bank after youths attacked her while she was giving a radio interview.
She had also been scheduled to visit a club for immigrants in the working-class area where many refugees and other immigrants live.
Kjaersgaard left the bank in a police car amid a rain of debris and tomatoes despite efforts by police to cordon off the streets around the bank, Ritzau said.
The DPP increased its representation in Denmark's 179-member parliament to 13 seats from four in the March 11 election after campaigning for tighter immigration rules.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
British Jews snub Cook over Israel row -- paper
LONDON, March 27 (Reuters) - Britain's Jewish community has cancelled a dinner with Foreign Secretary Robin Cook in protest over his diplomatic clash with Israel during a visit earlier this month, a newspaper said on Friday.
The Jewish Chronicle said the Board of Jewish Deputies had withdrawn an invitation to Cook to address its annual fund-raising dinner in May and put the event off until the end of the year.
``Considering the strength of feeling in the community, we did not think we should have him at our dinner,'' Board president Eldred Tabachnik told the newspaper.
``Hopefully we will be able to ask him later, when things have cooled down.''
Cook's trip to Israel turned into a diplomatic disaster when he shook hands with a Palestinian official during a visit to the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in East Jerusalem.
Prime Minister Benjamim Netanyahu cancelled an official dinner in protest, prompting an ugly series of exchanges between officials.
Tabachnik said he hoped British Prime Minister Tony Blair would start repairing bilateral ties when he visits the region next month.
``As far as Mr Cook is concerned, I am afraid he will have a problem for years to come,'' he told the paper.
A Foreign Office spokesman denied that Cook had been snubbed, saying the dinner had been postponed for operational reasons. REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
German enclave in Chile opposes police action
PARRAL, Chile, March 26 (Reuters) - Leaders of a secretive German enclave in southern Chile on Thursday condemned police action on the site.
``Our settlement has turned into a true concentration camp,'' said a statement given to Reuters by enclave member Hernan Escobar, the spokesman for the youth of the settlement.
Police entered the sprawling Dignity Colony, also known as Villa Baviera, on Tuesday in search of its fugitive leader, Paul Schaefer, who is wanted for nine counts of child rape.
Since then about 60 police officers have monitored around the clock everyone who enters and leaves the compound. The enclave is home to about 300 people, mostly of German ancestry.
``At this moment an unknown quantity of police officers is on the nearby property where they are breaking installations, stealing private property and basically committing all the actions that constitutionally they are supposed to stop,'' the statement said.
Schaefer, 77, a former Nazi corporal, has been running from Chilean police since August 1996. He founded the complex in the Andean foothills 200 miles (320 km) south of Santiago in 1961 after fleeing from Germany. The enclave has been charged in the past with tax evasion and police have launched several unsuccessful raids on the compound in search of Schaefer. Last November they found a network of underground tunnels, which former members of the settlement say Schaefer used as hide-outs. REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Annan and wife moved by Holocaust museum visit
By Janine Zacharia
JERUSALEM, March 25 (Reuters) - After a teary-eyed tour through Israel's memorial to victims of the Holocaust, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on the world on Wednesday to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.
Annan, who was in Israel on the sixth leg of his Middle East tour, visited the Yad Vashem memorial with his wife Nane. She is a niece of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis.
``In the memory of the six million Jews who perished during World War Two the lesson is not only a Jewish one, but a universal one. Never again should humanity allow this to happen,'' Annan wrote in the visitors' book.
Wallenberg was arrested by Soviet forces in 1945. His fate remains a mystery. Many campaigners eager to clarify what happened to him believe that Wallenberg, who would be 85 years old today, may still be alive.
Nane Annan blinked back tears as she and her husband stood for an extended moment in front of a carob tree planted in her uncle's memory on Yad Vashem's Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles, dedicated to non-Jews who saved Jews from extermination.
``This obviously has been a very moving experience for my wife, for myself in particular, and for all of my team,'' Annan said at the end of his visit.
Inside Yad Vashem's museum, Annan wiped away a tear while viewing pictures painted by children in the Lodz ghetto in Poland. He also recognised a photograph taken at Buchenwald of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, a personal friend.
Annan recalled this year's 50th anniversary of the U.N. declaration of human rights, drawn up after the Holocaust, and lamented the small number of people who had helped the Jews.
``As we recognise this anniversary...one wonders what would have happened if during World War Two we had that universal standard, would many more people have stood up and challenged?
``If there had been more (Oskar) Schindlers, more Raoul Wallenbergs, would we have saved many more? And the question I always ask is how come there were so few, so few who dared to risk their lives to save others. Why did so many turn away?''
After the visit, Nane Annan met representatives of Israeli groups fighting to get the issue of Wallenberg's fate raised at the U.N. General Assembly.
``I was born in October 1944 so I am a testimony to the time that Raoul has been away. Of course he was always present although he was absent ... the simple courage that he had was also equally present,'' Nane Annan said.
Rabbi Stewart Weiss, active in the fight to put Wallenberg on the world agenda, said it was not pure coincidence that ``God made Nane the wife of the U.N. Secretary-General.''
``It is divine manipulation,'' he said.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
French Conservatives Told to Quit
Tuesday, March 24, 1998; 8:07 p.m. EST
PARIS (AP) -- Five French conservatives who won regional presidencies after striking deals with the extreme-right National Front have been told by their party to quit or risk being expelled.
Francois Leotard, president of the conservative Union for French Democracy (UDF), said Tuesday the party's executive committee had given the officials a week to resign. They are currently suspended.
``If they don't, procedures will be put in place to exclude them, of course,'' Leotard said in an interview with television channel France-2.
France's right wing has been in disarray since the anti-immigrant National Front struck alliances with conservatives in regional elections, which began March 15. The alliances helped rightist candidates win five regional presidencies the left had expected to capture.
The national leadership of the UDF and the conservative Rally for the Republic (RPR) had told its members not to make deals with the Front.
President Jacques Chirac on Monday called the National Front ``racist and xenophobic'' and said he would seek to change electoral laws to diminish the party's grip on French politics.
The National Front has called for the deportation of some African and North African immigrants, blaming them for an increase in crime and the country's high unemployment rate. Last year, at a news conference in Germany, Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen called the Nazi gas chambers ``a detail of history.''
A UDF statement criticized the officials for making the pact, ``regardless of the profound differences between their policies and those of the Front.''
The bargaining has shocked France's political establishment, raising fears that the line between the extreme right and the mainstream was fading.
However, further voting Monday saw a backlash.
Conservatives foiled Le Pen's ambitions to win the presidency of Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azure, in southern France. Two other conservatives elected with votes of Le Pen's party resigned elsewhere.
© Copyright 1998 The Associated Press<
France's UDF to debate whether to disband
By Bernard Edinger
PARIS, March 26 (Reuters) - The head of France's centre-right Union for French Democracy (UDF), caught in a political crisis, said on Thursday he had called its five squabbling groups to meet next week to decide whether to keep the coalition alive.
The unlikely coalition of centrists, progressives, die-hard conservatives and free marketeers is in a storm after five of its politicians made deals with the far-right National Front to hold on to local council posts following regional elections.
On Thursday, despite the threat of expulsion from the UDF, four of the five were resisting calls to resign from regional chairmanships they won with Front backing.
``We will meet early next week to see whether the founding pact of the UDF should be repudiated, or broken, and for what reasons,'' UDF president Francois Leotard told reporters.
Francois Bayrou, head of the UDF's centrist wing, on Wednesday called for the UDF, created in 1978 by former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, to be dissolved and replaced by a new grouping.
The suggestion was opposed by Leotard and former finance minister Alain Madelin, another UDF leader. All three make little secret of their ambitions to run for president of France in 2002.
Jean-Marie Le Pen's anti-immigrant National Front took 15.5 percent of the vote in regional council elections on March 15, gaining kingmaker status in centre-right strongholds threatened by gains from the left.
Five outgoing UDF council heads made behind-the-scenes deals to keep their seats in defiance of party leaders.
There was some similar but milder flirting in the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR) where rank-and file militants have long been attracted by the Front's tough law-and-order, anti-immigrant platform.
But the fiery Le Pen, hitherto ostracised by mainstream politicians, overreached himself when he demanded centre-rightists help him become president of the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur (PACA) region.
The notion that Le Pen could preside over a key area including the wealthy French Riviera was too much for Gaullist President Jacques Chirac.
In one of the most forceful performances of his career, Chirac went on television to condemn tactical alliances with the Front, which he damned as a ``racist and xenophobic party'' dangerous for France's democracy and reputation.
Protest marchers called for the resignation of council presidents elected with National Front backing.
Former defence minister Charles Millon, another presidential hopeful, was elected president of the Lyon area regional council with Le Pen's backing.
With the wind turning, Millon earlier this week denounced Le Pen as a ``1920s fascist'' but refused to resign from his chairmanship despite protest in which thousands marched daily.
Millon was quoted by the French press as saying he only entered into his tacit alliance with Le Pen on the advice of Giscard d'Estaing and he called on the former president on Thursday, apparently hoping for help in climbing down from his limb.
Millon refused to speak to reporters after the meeting.
Giscard d'Estaing later told France 3 television he had not advised Millon one way or the other but had merely offered him questions ``to think about.'' REUTERS
Pressure mounts on five French rightists to resign
PARIS, March 24 (Reuters) - Pressure mounted on Tuesday on five right-wing French politicians to resign their newly won jobs as regional chairman because they had accepted help from the far-right National Front to win the election.
One of the five announced he was prepared to step down after rightist President Jacques Chirac denounced the controversial power deals, which broke a longstanding taboo against working with the party of xenophobic firebrand Jean-Marie Le Pen.
A majority of deputies from the centre-right Union for French Democracy (UDF), the party of the five men in question, urged them to step down.
``We debated the matter this morning. There was a majority in favour of their immediate resignation,'' deputy Dominique Paille told reporters following the closed-door meeting.
``I believe they should step down before today's meeting of the UDF executive committee'' which was to start at 5.30 p.m.(1630 GMT), he said.
Jean-Pierre Soisson, new regional council chairman in Burgundy, told BFM radio he would meet fellow conservatives on Wednesday to reach a collective decision on his future.
In a televised speech on Monday evening, Chirac denounced the five for harming France's image by playing ``political games'' with a party he branded ``racist and xenophobic.''
``I have heard Chirac's message,'' said Soisson, who denied having made any formal deal with National Front councillors whose votes assured his victory over a Socialist candidate.
``Should I quit as chairman? That is a decision that will be taken collectively tomorrow evening,'' he said.
Conservative leaders in another four of mainland France's 22 regions have either quit immediately after being voted in with Front help or withdrawn from leadership races to avoid having their names associated with the controversial Front.
The decision to grant the far-right party a king-making role in the regional elections has thrown France's right-wing into disarray and unleashed a bitter debate about dealing with the extreme right.
Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's Socialist Party, which emerged with relative majorities in 12 regions but has only won five chairmanships so far, has also called on all five renegade conservatives to quit.
The heaviest pressure has focused on former defence minister Charles Millon, the new Rhone-Alpes council chairman whom Chirac himself telephoned to plead in vain against a power deal there.
Millon's one-time ally, former Prime Minister Raymond Barre, said Millon had committed ``a serious political error.''
Protesters denouncing him as a ``collabo'' -- the word for collaborators with the Nazis during World War Two -- have marched in Lyon, the region's capital, and the council's first meeting quickly degenerated into a shouting match.
Commentators have singled Millon out as the most shocking example of the compromises some mainstream conservatives are ready to make with the far-right.
((Paris newsroom, +33 1 4221 5339, fax +33 1 4236 1072, paris.newsroom+reuters.com)) REUTERS
French right mulls new party after far-right deals
PARIS, March 25 (Reuters) - French rightist leaders pondered on Wednesday whether they should form a new political party after five fellow conservatives made unprecedented deals with the anti-immigrant National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Four of the politicians from the centre-right Union for French Democracy (UDF) were resisting calls to resign from regional chairmanships to which they were elected with help from the far-right grouping.
The fifth, Jean-Pierre Soisson, agreed to step down as chairman of the central Burgundy region rather than risk expulsion from the UDF party.
At a UDF strategy meeting in the French capital, former education minister Francois Bayrou, president of a party wing called Democratic Force, urged the creation of a new party within the next month or two to replace the UDF.
``Profound change is required. A page has turned,'' Bayrou told reporters.
``French democracy needs a big, strong party on the right and centre-right which is unified and responsible,'' said Bayrou.
Herve de Charette, leader of the Popular Party for French Democracy (PPDF), another UDF component, said he agreed.
``Tomorrow the PPDF will be willing to dissolve itself into a great coalition of the centre,'' de Charette said in remarks broadcast on the radio, adding that a great party of the centre must be built.
But UDF leader Francois Leotard, weakened after losing his own regional election bid, said he would call party leaders to a second meeting ``to take the next step in renovating the UDF and the opposition of which it is a part.''
``A new party will certainly not take care of the problems,'' former minister Daniel Hoeffel told reporters.
Alain Madelin, head of the UDF Liberal Democracy wing, said he had been ``very surprised'' by Bayrou's appeal as UDF members had seemed to agree on reform of the existing structure rather than its abandonment.
Soisson, announcing that he would step down as elected head in Burgundy, said: ``The decision has been taken. In line with the unanimous wishes of the elected officials of Burgundy's republican right, I have resigned from the regional chairmanship.''
An estimated 3,000 to 4,000 people marched through the southwestern city of Toulouse in protest at the refusal of UDF politician Jacques Blanc to step down as chairman of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, which he won with National Front votes.
Leftist leaders have called for protest marches across the country on Saturday to demonstrate ``the rejection of fascism in France.''
France's rightist opposition, which also includes President Jacques Chirac's Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR), had been badly weakened last June when, in a stunning upset, it lost power in parliamentary elections to a leftist coalition of Socialists, Communists and Greens.
RPR leader Philippe Seguin said on Wednesday he saw no reason for his party to ``commit suicide.''
``The RPR will continue...We refuse to commit suicide by disappearing or dissolving,'' he told a party meeting in Paris.
He said RPR activists could ``hold their heads high'' as no deals were made between the Gaullists and the Front in the regional elections.
The UDF on Tuesday had given the five rebels a week to resign from their newly won regional posts or be forced out of the party after they defied orders and cut deals with the Front.
Both Chirac and Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin have endorsed major reforms in the French political system since the UDF politicians accepted National Front support to win control of five of mainland France's 22 regional councils.
That broke a longstanding taboo against working with the Front, which routinely wins about 15 percent of the vote in national elections. Le Pen embraces racial inequality and has said Nazi gas chambers were ``a mere detail of history.''
In televised remarks on Monday evening, Chirac had accused the five UDF politicians of harming France's image by playing ``political games'' with a party he branded ``racist and xenophobic.'' ^REUTERS@
Second French regional head quits in Le Pen row
PARIS, March 27 (Reuters) - One of five centre-rightist politicians just re-elected president of a French regional council thanks to backing from Jean-Marie Le Pen's extreme rightist National Front party, resigned on Friday under mounting pressure.
Bernard Hareng of the Union for French Democracy (UDF) party had been re-elected president of the Centre region, based around the city of Orleans southwest of Paris, exactly a week ago.
He was one of five outgoing UDF council heads who made behind-the-scenes deals with Le Pen's group to keep their seats in defiance of party leaders.
Hareng was the second of the five to resign after Burgundy region president Jean-Pierre Soisson quit on Wednesday.
Hareng said in a bitter statement: ``Media pressure -- and even physical pressure -- in direct contradiction of the normal functioning of a democratic institution, provoked defections among my backers which no longer allow me to carry out my programme. I therefore draw the inevitable conclusion.''
Thousands of angry protesters marched through Orleans on Wednesday calling for Hareng's resignation.
Three other regional presidents were still holding out including former defence minister Charles Millon, president of the Rhones-Alpes area around Lyon, who vowed on Friday not to quit.
The local, tactical alliances with Le Pen sparked a major crisis in the UDF with party head Francois Leotard saying he had called its five squabbling groups to meet next week to decide whether to keep the coalition alive.
Francois Bayrou, head of the UDF's centrist wing, called on Wednesday for the UDF, an unlikely coalition of centrists, progressives, die-hard conservatives and free marketeers, to be dissolved and replaced by a new grouping.
Bayrou's suggestion was opposed by Leotard and by former finance minister Alain Madelin, another UDF leader. All three make little secret of their ambitions to run for president of France in 2002.
Le Pen's anti-immigrant National Front took 15.5 percent of the vote in nationwide regional council elections on March 15, gaining kingmaker status in centre-right strongholds threatened by gains from the left.
FOCUS-Protests throughout France against far-right
By Crispian Balmer
PARIS, March 28 (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people protested in cities throughout France on Saturday against the far-right National Front and regional conservative leaders who have allowed it to slide a toe into the mainstream of the country's political life.
A sea of people filled wide boulevards in Paris in the day's largest demonstration. Police said the crowd numbered 20,000.
Organisers estimated that as many as 50,000 people turned out to demand that Jean-Marie Le Pen and his anti-immigration National Front remain beyond the pale of political alliances.
``This is an exceptional demonstration because we're living in exceptional times,'' said the leader of the ruling Socialist party, Francois Hollande. ``This is not about the risk, but the reality of an alliance between the right and extreme right.''
Smaller protests were staged in just about every other major French city against the Front, which polled 15.5 percent of the vote in this month's regional elections but is denounced by opponents as a throwback to Hitler's Nazis and their collaborator allies.
``We have to remain vigilant. Democracy has been trampled underfoot,'' said Robert Hue, head of the Communist Party.
The National Front denounced Saturday's marches, as an act of ``repression'' and an assault on democracy.
After the regional council elections two weeks ago, centre-right politicians in five of mainland France's 22 regions ignored orders from their national party leaders and formed alliances with the Front.
In the subsequent outcry, two of the five renegade regional presidents resigned, but three stayed put.
The marches were organised by about 50 leftist groups and unions. Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Moslem leaders also threw their weight behind Saturday's demonstrations, publishing a joint, toughly worded statement in La Croix newspaper to condemn the anti-foreigner Front.
``The leaders of the main religious movements in France are concerned about the place that has now been taken in French political life by the party that has never hidden its racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic ideas,'' the religious leaders said.
``Sixty years after a period when certain ideological aberrations and the indifference of many powers contributed to make the Holocaust possible...the leaders of the main religious movements draw the attention of all the French to rediscover the founding values of democracy,'' they added.
Front leader Le Pen says the Nazi gas chambers will be remembered as a ``mere detail of history.''
Jean-Christophe Cambadelis, the number two in the Socialist Party and organiser of Saturday's demonstrations, said he hoped the marches would persuade the three remaining regional presidents to think again.
``Resignations would force the National Front to look at why it is unacceptable. Sending the Front back into its ghetto would spark a strong crisis within its leadership,'' Cambadelis said in an interview with Liberation newspaper.
All three regional presidents come from the centre-right Union for French Democracy party and their decision to accept National Front votes has pushed their party into disarray with some UDF leaders calling for the group to be disbanded.
``There is a crisis in the right...which concerns us as well because being in favour of the republic and democracy we cannot pretend that the alliance with the extreme right is just a matter for the right,'' Prime Minister Lionel Jospin was quoted as saying by aides at a Socialist party meeting on Saturday. REUTERS
Long Way Home'' wins best documentary feature Oscar
By Jeffrey Hodgson
LOS ANGELES, March 23 (Reuters) - ``The Long Way Home,'' a film about the lives of Holocaust refugees just after the Second World War, won the Academy Award for the best documentary feature on Monday.
The film tells the story of tens of thousands of concentration camp survivors and their attempts between 1945 and 1948 to get to what is now Israel. The documentary also examines how the world often turned its back on the plight of these refugees.
``This is for the survivors of the Holocaust, who walked away from the ashes, rebuilt their lives, and helped create the state of Israel. God Bless them,'' said Rabbi Marvin Hier accepting the award. Hier coproduced the film through Moriah Films Production at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, of which he is founder and dean.
It was the second Academy Award for Hier, who won in 1981 for his feature documentary ``Genocide.''
``The Long Way Home'' was the second film of the night dealing with Holocaust subject matter to win an Oscar. The first was ``Visas and Virtue,'' which won in the short film live action category.
``Visas and Virtue'' tells the story of a Japanese diplomat who provided visas to Lithuanian Jews to help them escape the German concentration camps.
``The Long Way Home'' won out over contenders including Spike Lee's ``4 Little Girls.'' Lee's film tells the story of the 1963 racially-motivated bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama church which killed four children.
Writer-director Lee is better known for his feature films which include ``Malcolm X,'' ``Clockers'' and ``Jungle Fever.'' It was Lee's second nomination for an Oscar. The first was a screenwriting nomination in 1989 for ``Do the Right Thing.'' REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
ThunderWave Announces Agreement With German Government, Goethe-Institut to Create Holocaust Multimedia Tools
ROCKVILLE, Md., March 30 /PRNewswire/ -- "So that we never forget," as the theme of the U.S. Holocaust Museum intones.
ThunderWave, a leading multimedia software developer, will work with the German government's Press and Information Office and the Goethe-Institut, the Archiv fuer Kulturpolitik, along with several leading Holocaust education organizations, to create multimedia educational tools to assist American and Canadian teachers in ensuring that the lessons of the Holocaust are passed on to the new, media-savvy generation. The educational package will allow North American teachers to benefit from innovations and unique methods being used effectively in Germany today, via media that will capture the attention of today's students.
This is the first program in which the German government and U.S. Holocaust educators will cooperate in the creation of an educational tool to pass on the knowledge of the Holocaust to a new generation. This project is the result of the first concentrated effort to consolidate Holocaust education projects developed by educators throughout Germany.
ThunderWave and its partners, with the support and input of the educational arms of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Association of Holocaust Organizations, will create a bilingual (English and German) Web site and a CD-ROM for distribution and use by the U.S. and Canadian educational communities. The educational tools will target teachers of grades seven through 12, and will be distributed by the Goethe-Institut and the American Association of Holocaust Organizations.
ThunderWave will use its unique experience in combining multiple media such as video, audio and photography to create a visually exciting, stimulating product that is useable in a variety of curricula. The materials are expected to be ready for distribution for the fall of 1998.
Various institutions in Germany, including schools, museums, Holocaust memorial sites, social organizations and a range of civic and community groups offer education about the Holocaust. These institutions have developed increasingly sophisticated instruction since the 1950s, most often for history classes. Students in many cases are encouraged to conduct their own research on the history of the Holocaust in their local communities. The multimedia package under development will highlight many such recent projects.
In the United States, although several states mandate the teaching of the Holocaust, there is no centralized educational effort. Students may learn about the Holocaust in a range of courses from social studies to English literature to Germany language studies. In both countries, educators and others are finding that the present generation, which is a further step removed from World War II, has an increasing desire and interest in learning more about various aspects of the Holocaust.
"Making information about these projects available to teachers in the United States and Canada is more than just a teacher training exercise - it is a work of reconciliation," said Count Hagen Lambsdorff, of the Press and Information Office of the German government. "We are working with ThunderWave and the Goethe-Institut to showcase and package a range of 60 programs being used in all 16 German states, because we believe they will help American and Canadian teachers adapt these materials to their classrooms." Up to now, lessons about German history and the Holocaust in U.S. schools normally stop with the end of World War II. The new Germany and the fact of regular teaching about the Holocaust in German schools are virtually unknown in many parts of the U.S.
"The Goethe-Institut wanted to participate in this project because one of our main goals is to encourage a cultural dialogue between countries, and among various divergent groups such as artists, educators, and leader of cultural organizations," said Regina Wyrwoll, head of the Goethe-Institut's media division. "By working with this team of experts in their various fields, including ThunderWave, various educational groups and the government of Germany, we expect to greatly further one of the most important dialogues of our day."
"We've seen that our medium is extremely well-received by young people raised with computers in the classroom, daily interactive sessions on the Internet, wireless devices to communicate creatively with their friends, and a wide array of TV, video and movie entertainment for recreational diversion," said Yechiam Halevy, president of ThunderWave. "Our technology as used by the Holocaust Museum and the new Getty Center continues to draw a new, young audience, that now can be extended globally through the Internet."
The Goethe-Institut is a worldwide, non-profit, organization promoting the German language and culture. It is partially funded by the Foreign Ministry of Germany. There are 13 Goethe-Institutes in the United States and Canada and some 140 Goethe-Institutes in 76 countries. The Goethe-Institutes carry out cultural programs, offer German courses and provide further training for German teachers, as well as modern libraries and multimedia information centers with up-to-date information on Germany and German culture in the host countries. The activities of the Goethe-Institut abroad emphasize partnership and dialogue. The Institute, in cooperation with host country organizations, treats issues and works on projects that reflect the current situation in each country. It provides information on German arts, science, politics and a broad concept of culture.
The German government's Press and Information Office provides information about contemporary Germany for opinion leaders worldwide.
ThunderWave Inc. is an interactive software developer specializing in server-based multimedia systems. The privately held company, established in 1993, is based in Rockville, Maryland. ThunderWave, a member of the American Association of Museums, is a recipient of the Computerworld/Smithsonian media arts award. The company was recently awarded a patent for its streaming technology. Its clients include the CRB Foundation, and the Jewish Community Center of the Upper West Side. ThunderWave is the developer of the networked interactive installations at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Wexner Learning Center in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. SOURCE ThunderWave Inc.
Copyright 1998, PR Newswire
font size="+1"U.S. to Host Second Meeting on Nazi Looting
03:54 p.m Apr 01, 1998
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States announced plans Wednesday to hold a conference Nov. 9-12 on art, insurance and other assets looted by the Nazis from Holocaust victims.
The conference, to be held in Washington, would build on a meeting last year in London and seek broad consensus for further action in returning stolen assets to Holocaust survivors and their families, Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat and Miles Lerman, chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, said in a statement.
The London conference, which focused mostly on gold looted by the Nazis, called for establishment of a fund to provide relief to needy survivors of Nazi persecution.
The United States also pledged to examine other Nazi-looted assets and provide a more complete picture of the complex issues surrounding them.
In their announcement, Eizenstat and Lerman said the Washington conference ``will fulfill that pledge and will deepen international research of the era, bringing together historians and other experts to share information on Nazi misappropriation of artwork, insurance policies and other assets.''
They also hoped the conference ``will act as a catalyst to help reach consensus on further action and complete the unfinished business on this issue'' by the end of the century.
A seminar will be held in Washington in June to organize the agenda for the November conference.
As with the London conference, the Washington meeting was expected to draw government officials from more than 40 countries, as well as historians, experts and representatives of major nongovernmental organizations, including those representing Holocaust survivors.
Organizers said it would aim to strengthen the international commitment to open national archives and other records for research on Nazi-looted assets as well as share the results of already-completed scholarly work on the subject.
The announced dates for the conference followed an agreement last week by Swiss banks to start negotiations with the World Jewish Congress and lawyers for class-action plaintiffs on a global settlement of claims emanating from the Holocaust.
Separately, a bipartisan group in Congress introduced legislation to set up a U.S. presidential advisory commission on the collection and disposal of Holocaust-era assets in the United States from 1933 to 1945.
``It is important that we know what art, gold, jewelry, bank accounts and other valuables were taken from Holocaust victims and ended up in the United States,'' Senate Banking Committee Chairman Alfonse D'Amato said at a news conference. The New York Republican has been instrumental in pressuring Swiss banks to search records for Holocaust-era assets.
Speaking for the administration, Eizenstat endorsed the creation of the commission and said it ``will further strengthen the moral authority and diplomatic credibility of the United States ... on this issue.''
The 23-member commission would include private citizens and lawmakers and officials from of federal agencies. It would submit its report and recommendations to the president and Congress by the end of 1999.
Jewish leaders are seeking compensation for assets of Holocaust victims that were looted during the Second World War.
Last week's agreement, which Swiss officials stressed was far from an actual settlement, averted for the time being the imposition of sanctions on Swiss banks by state and local American officials.
The Clinton administration strongly opposes any boycott or sanctions move, arguing that Switzerland has made good progress on the issue and punitive action would be counterproductive.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Four suits filed for Holocaust-era insurance claims
LOS ANGELES, April 3 (Reuters) - Four Holocaust survivors have filed suits against three major European insurance companies for unpaid claims dating back to the Nazi era, their lawyer said on Friday.
``It's gratifying to know the law would allow us to rectify the wrongs of 50 years ago,'' said attorney William Shernoff.
The four suits, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday, alleged breach of contract, unfair business practices and bad faith against Italy's Assicurazioni Generali and two German firms, Victoria Insurance Co. and Allianz Insurance Co. None of the suits sought specific damages.
Earlier this year, Shernoff's law firm filed a $135 million lawsuit against Generali on behalf of another Los Angeles family, alleging it wrongfully denied them insurance benefits.
The four latest suits filed involve:
+ Beverly Hills doctor Julia Sladek, who is the only heir to her father's Generali life insurance policy. He was head of an electric company in the then-Czechoslovakia and purchased insurance before the war to protect his wife and son who subsequently died in a Nazi concentration camp. All claims have been rejected by Generali, although Sladek had the actual policy, her attorney said.
+ Gabrielle Lansing, a 73-year-old woman whose grandfather was the director of Victoria Insurance and a leader of the Jewish community in prewar Berlin. Her suit was filed on behalf of her mother, Stahl's 100-year-old daughter-in-law, Sophie.
+ Nicholas Babos, 76, is the sole survivor of a family that perished in the Holocaust. His father had purchased insurance for his only son and Generali has rejected all claims, according to the suit.
+ Eugene Hofstadter, whose father was a cantor of a synagogue in Slovakia. The older Hofstadter purchased life insurance and dowry policies for his 11 daughters through Phoenix Insurance Co., which was taken over by Allianz. All claims by the family have been rejected, the suit said. REUTERS
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Hitler Cousins Seized by Stalin Pardoned
By Robert Eksuzyan
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has granted posthumous pardons to several cousins of Adolf Hitler who died in Soviet prisons after being arrested at the end of World War II, the military prosecutor's office said Friday.
``They were rehabilitated in December,'' Sergei Ushakov, a spokesman for the military prosecutor, told Reuters. ``After a study of the archives, it was concluded they had no links to Hitler's crimes and were innocent victims of repression.''
``Rehabilitation'' and ``repression'' are key words used in formal pardons for the millions convicted on trumped-up charges under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Ushakov was confirming a report Friday in the newspaper Noviye Izvestia, which he believed was the first mention in the media of the pardons for a handful of Austrian farmers.
The paper named them as Hitler's cousin Maria Koppensteiner, nee Schmidt, whose mother Theresia was the sister of Hitler's mother Clara Poelzl, her husband Ignaz Koppensteiner, brothers Johann and Eduard Schmidt and Johann's son, also called Johann.
Though she had last met the future Fuehrer when he visited her home village of Spittal in 1906 when she was just six, Maria was arrested by the Red Army's anti-espionage unit Smersh in the spring of 1945 when they overran that part of Austria.
Sensing a propaganda coup, the Soviets, who were thwarted in efforts to capture Hitler himself when he took his own life, also rounded up the other members of her family. Except for the younger Johann Schmidt, all had spent the war on their farms.
Despite intensive interrogations and investigations, however, the Soviets found to their discomfort that not only had their prisoners had virtually no contact with Hitler but, apart from the younger Schimdt who served in the SS, they had taken almost no part in the Nazi political movement, the paper said.
They found that the Koppensteiners had employed a Ukrainian prisoner on their farm in 1942 -- but had paid him for his work.
The Koppensteiners did, however, occasionally receive small