Israelis are divided over NATO\’s military campaign against Serbia — and opinions and policy are being informed as much by history and the Holocaust as by current political realities.
There\’s good news and bad news in Catholic-Jewish relations.
The congressional spat over the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group described as a slicked-up white supremacist organization with links to extremist groups around the world, is in danger of devolving into political farce.
Between 1939 and 1944, when the Lodz ghetto was the largest and most notorious Nazi slave labor camp, a bourgeois Austrian named Walter Genewein, the ghetto\’s chief accountant, procured a Movex 12 camera that was confiscated from a Jewish prisoner.
Six years ago, Carol Solomon attended Yom Kippur services in Copenhagen. Flipping through the back of the English language prayerbook, she came upon a poem, translated from Hebrew, called \”The Letter of the Ninety-Three Maidens.\” Based on an actual letter that was found after the Holocaust, it tells of young girls at a Jewish school in Cracow who took poison rather than allow themselves to be defiled by Nazi soldiers. Historians question the letter\’s authenticity. But for Solomon, \”something about this story just captured my heart.\”
Once again, the anniversary of the Holocaust is upon us (April 13), and, once again, the commemoration taunts me. \”Go preach the goodness of God.\” \”Go praise the crown of God\’s creation made but little lower than the angels.\” \”Speak to the world of faith and hope in the wake of the terrifying knowledge: 1.5 million children murdered because of their Jewishness, nine out of every 10 European rabbis slaughtered, one third of a people decimated.\”
In the living room of her Newport Beach home, Flory Van Beek reaches up to a shelf and takes down a plain-white book the size of an encyclopedia and engraved with a Star of David. \”This was published by the Dutch government,\” she says. \”It has the names of the almost 140,000 Dutch Jews who died during the war.\” Flory flips through the book, searching for her mother\’s name.
Next week\’s reopening of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust at its new location on Museum Row coincides with a string of events that will commemorate Yom HaShoah.
For Italian expatriates Lotte Katz Singer of Beverly Hills and Ann Signett of the San Fernando Valley, life is surprising as well as beautiful.
Thirty-three Israeli political parties signed up by Tuesday night\’s registration deadline to run in the May 17 Knesset elections, breaking the previous record of 27 parties. In addition to the large political parties, several special-interest parties and newcomers to the political scene registered, including the Casino Party, which seeks to legalize gambling, and the Green Weed Party, whose platform calls for the legalization of marijuana and other recreational drugs.
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