Page 4-THE NEWS-August, 1987
WORLD BEAT
•edited by Marta Garelik
Yad Vashem Honors
Swiss Man Who Never Told
of WWII Heroism
GENEVA (JTA) - The Yad
Vashem’s “Medal of the Just”
has been conferred posthu
mously in Jerusalem on Frie
drich Born of Switzerland,
who died in 1963. A delegate
of the International Red Cross
in Budapest during World
War II, Born worked with
Swedish diplomat Raoul Wal
lenberg to rescue Hungarian
Jews from deportation to Nazi
death camps.
Unlike Wallenberg, whose
deeds have been honored by
Jews and non-Jews the world
over, Born’s activities re
mained a secret, even to his
family, for more than 40 yezirs.
Born worked in close colla
boration with Wallenberg and
in consultation with the Swiss
Consul in Budapest, Carl
Luntz. Wallenberg saved Jews
by sheltering them in the
Swedish Embassy and provid
ing Swedish documents. Born
recruited 4,000 Jews as em
ployees of the Red Cross, issu
ing them ICRC papers. He
pressured Hungarian govern
ment officials and confiscated
hospitals and homes where he
hid many Jews under the Red
Cross flag.
Study of Destruction
of Grodno's Jewry Presented
to Yad Vashem
JERUSALEM (JTA) - A
five-volume documented stu
dy of the destruction of the
Jewish community of Grodno,
a city in northeast Poland, was
presented to the Yad Vashem
Archives by Nazi-hunters
Serge and Beate Klarsfeld.
The study includes trial and
pre-trial documents from war
crimes proceedings conducted
in West Germany which the
German authorities had re
fused to release until now. The
Klarsfelds said they are “the
most important collection on
the Holocaust ever put
together,”
OWNED BY
GARY & MAXINE SILVERSTEIN
Portugal Awards One of Its
Highest Honors to
Aristides de Sousa Mendes
WASHINGTON (JTA) -
Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a
Portuguese consul general
who disobeyed his country by
issuing thousands of visas to
Jews fleeing Nazi-occupied
France, was posthumously
awarded one of Portugal’s
highest honors, the Order of
Freedom. The award caps a
longtime effort by de Sousa
Mendes’ family and U.S. Con
gressmen to pay tribute to the
man who died penniless after
his efforts cost him his career.
De Sousa Mendes held the
post of Portuguese consul
general in Bordeaux in 1940
when thousands of refugees
were trying to flee France. He
was instructed by his govern
ment, ruled by the dictator
Antonio Salazar, a friend of
Hitler, not to issue visas. He
disobeyed the instructions and
issued some 30,000 visas with
about a third going to Jews,
before being stripped of his
power and sent back to Lis
bon. He was ousted from the
diplomatic corps and not al
lowed to practice his profes
sion of law.
German Institution Fires
Scholar Who Claimed
Hitler Created Israel
BONN (JTA) - A West
German scholar in charge of
editing a government-spon
sored scientific edition of the
letters and diaries of Theodore
Herzl has been dismissed be
cause of his recently published
thesis that Hitler “created the
State of Israel.”
Nolte maintained that the
Jews would eventually come
to appreciate Hitler as the in
dividual who contributed more
than anyone else to the crea
tion of the State of Israel. He
also wrote that Americans
would appreciate Hitler as the
man who brought their coun
try to the status of a
superpower.
The Deutsche Forschunge-
meinscaft (DFG), the govern-
ment-backed institution man
aging the project, has engaged
another scholar to complete it.
Frans Josef Strauss, leader
of the conservative Christian
Social Union Party in Bavaria,
told the Catholic Students As
sociation in Munich that the
time has come for Germans to
“lay to rest the ghosts of the
past.” A people cannot live
with what he called “a crimi
nalized history.” The Ger
mans, he said, have “the same
right to normality as other
people.”
East German Leader Orders
Rebuilding of Jewish Cemetery
BONN (JTA) - The Adass
Israel cemetery in East Berfin,
almost completely destroyea
by the Nazis, will be rebuilt at
the direct orders of East Ger
man leader Eric Honecker.
More than 100 persons, in
cluding survivors of the
original Adass Israel congre
gation, attended ceremonies
recently rededicating the buri
al ground. They were told by
Klaus Gist, the minister in
charge of religious affairs, that
his government is committed
to perpetuating the memory of
Jewish life in Germany.
Germany Probes 81
for Nazi Crimes
BONN (JTA) — Preliminary
investigations are pending in
the cases of 81 individuals
suspected of Nazi atrocities
during World War II, and
more than 1,000 cases have
come to court this year or were
turned over to state prosecu
tors, the Federal Office for the
prosecution of Nazi Criminals
in Ludwigsburg reported.
But according to legal ex
perts, only a small percentage
of the suspects will be tried
and even fewer are likely to be
sentenced. That is because as
time passes it has become
more difficult to prove an in
dividual’s involvement in Nazi
atrocities, the experts said.
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Anti-Semitism in Spain
The Jerusalem Post (Letter
to the Editor) — Sir,—The
great show of friendship be
tween Spain and Israel, put on
at the recent trade show in Tel
Aviv has prompted me to
write.
We recently spent a month
in Spain. In Madrid, we saw
the odd swastika—isolated we
thought. We took a tour bus to
Toledo and there were told by
our guide that “15th century
Jews were expelled from Spain
because they had all the mon
ey and not very many were ex
pelled.” He then added: “And
they still have all the money!”
An elderly German couple on
the tour with us (not Jewish)
were appalled and disgusted.
Spray-painted on a wall near
the entrance to the old Jewish
quarter in Cordoba we read:
“No a Israel” (No to Israel).
We saw many swastikas
spray-psiinted on road signs
along the Costa del Sol.
Barbie Trial Prompted Rash of
French Anti-Semitic Graffiti
PARIS (JTS) - The trial of
Nazi war criminal Klaus Bar
bie has produced a flood of
anti-Semitic graffiti and pam
phleteering all over over
France, much of it aimed at
high school students in the
Paris area.
The most frequent claim is
that the Holocaust was a
Jewish hoax. A synagogue in
Nantes, a city of 223,000 in
northwestern France, had its
walls daubed with the words
“Free Barbie” and “Hitler will
live for 1,000 years.”
Elsewhere, anonymous tracts
have appeared stating that
“No Jews were killed by the
Germans who deported them
to Eastern Europe because the
Jews were the enemy of
Germany.”
Life Sentence Given to
French Neo-Nazi Killer
PARIS (JTA) - A self
avowed neo-Nazi was sentenc-
' ed to life imprisonment for the
murder of a 75-year-old wo
man whose only “crime” ac
cording to the UUer was that
“she was Jewish.” The Nice
Criminal Court found no ex
tenuating circumstances in
the case of Raynald Liekens,
23.
Liekens told police and re
peated in court that he
stabbed Henriette Cerf to
death in the summer of 1984
because she was Jewish and I
had to “prove to myself my
Nazi convictions.”
The defense claimed that
Liekens had been influenced
by the “racist climate” which
exists in France and by the
anti-Semitic propaganda to
which he had been exposed.
Holocaust Memorial Vandalized
NEW YORK (JTA) - One
day after a suburban Chicago
Holocaust memorial was dedi
cated, it was defaced with
spray-painted swastikas and
defamatory phrases. Police in
the suburb, Skokie, focus of a
confrontation between Holo
caust survivors and neo-Nazis
in 1978, are investigating the
crime.
A $1,000 reward for infor
mation leading to the arrest
and conviction of those re
sponsible was offered by the
American Jewish Committee,
the Roman Catholic Archdio
cese of Chicago and the
Church Federation of Greater
Chicago. The three groups re
leased a joint statement say-
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