JANUARY 2010 VOLUME 24 NUMBER 2 Lawsuit against Hungary’s MÁV by Holocaust 14TH REUNION OF THE HOLOCAUST AND JEWISH survivors RESISTANCE SUMMER PROGRAM A lawsuit demanding USD 8.92 billion (HUF 1,773 bn) has been recently launched By ELAINE CULBERTSON against Hungary’s state-owned railway company MÁV for its involvement in For the past 25 years, the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors deporting Jews during World War II. The claim that would thrust the country into and Their Descendants, together with the Jewish Labor Committee and the sovereign default swarms with shocking historical errors but there are legal flaws, American Federation of Teachers, has sponsored the unique Holocaust and Jewish as well, index.hu cited experts as saying. During the research the plaintiffs claim Resistance Teachers Program which takes U.S. public secondary school teachers to have lasted for nine years, no historians versed in the Holocaust were contacted to Poland, Israel and, this year, Germany for intensive study about the annihilation in Hungary. Similarly, no Jewish organizations dealing in the compensation of of most of European Jewry during World War II. Jews, nor lawyers experienced in similar international cases were consulted. This year’s Summer Seminar Program will include visits to Auschwitz, “If they had contacted me, I would have kicked them out in no time, because Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen as well as educational activities in Jerusalem, Poland, this is the biggest madness I’ve heard in a long time,” Hungarian historian László Berlin, and Washington, D.C., with the participation of scholars from Israel’s Yad Karsai told index.hu. Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Heirs of Jews killed in the Hungarian Holocaust of 1944 filed a lawsuit at a On February 12-15, 2010, more than 120 alumni of the program came to Chicago court recently against Hungarian state railways MÁV for the company’s Washington for our 14th Alumni Conference. There are many reasons that this involvement in deporting more than 437,000 Jews to their deaths in the Auschwitz- remarkable conference will be remembered by all who attended, not the least of Birkenau death camp. which was the opportunity to interact with members of the American Gathering. “MÁV knew exactly what it was doing [...] and supervised and managed As the years go by and the number of survivors dwindles, these eyewitnesses every aspect of the transportation process,” the plaintiffs said. “Without the trains to the Holocaust remain our most valuable resource, and those survivors that provided by MÁV, hundreds of thousands of Jews could not have been transported were in attendance were eager to share their stories with our teachers in formal to Auschwitz.” and informal settings. MÁV is charged with “aiding and abetting the Nazi genocide of 1944” and At the official opening of our with “looting the plaintiffs’ possessions.” conference, Dr. Steven Meed, “MÁV employees had dug ditches in advance to receive the dead bodies and son of our program’s founder, bury them. The persons who showed signs of mental illness were led to the edge Vladka Meed, extended of the ditches and then shot by MÁV employees.” greetings on behalf of his mother Karsai, head of the Hungarian research team for Jerusalem-based Yad and the entire Meed family. It Vashem, said the oversimplified document contains serious historical fallacies was a particularly poignant that question the claim’s authenticity. moment for all of us, as we continued on p. 14 realized that Vladka Meed would Israeli Postage Stamp Honors not be able to accompany teachers on the summer program Holocaust Remembrance Day or attend our gatherings because BY DANIEL KEREN of the difficulties she is Sixty years after the conclusion of the experiencing due to advancing American Gathering Board Members: Second World War and the liberation age. So many of us have vivid standing (clockwise) Michael Korenblit, of the final concentration camps in memories of being with her and Bernard Kent, Rositta Kenigsberg and Europe, the United Nations General of listening to her testimony. It Joyce Celnik. Assembly in 2005 passed a resolution was through her perseverance th that designated January 27 as an and strongly held belief that teachers should emphasize the spiritual resistance of annual International Day of Jews during the Holocaust that a new way of teaching about this subject was Commemoration in memory of the inaugurated. Though she always claimed she was not a teacher, her leadership th victims of the Holocaust. January 27 by example was pedagogically perfect. Steven Meed’s lovely metaphor of being was the day that troops from the former witnesses to the witnesses helped all of us to maintain our focus and commitment. Soviet Union liberated the infamous Knowing that we can never really sufficiently address the topic of Jewish Auschwitz death camp. resistance, there are always nuances that are brought to our attention and that On January 27th, officials of Israel influence our curricula. With respect to that, we concentrated on this topic this Post released a special sheetlet of nine year, beginning with a focus on the many forms of resistance evidenced in the different horizontal 6.70 shekel postage film Defiance. stamps to mark International Holocaust Viewing this film about the legendary Bielski Brigade, an epic tale of family, Remembrance Day, highlighting the heroism of those Sharei Hapleitah, survivors honor, vengeance and salvation in World War II, and then hearing from the of the Holocaust, who uniquely utilized their collective memories of their horrible screenwriter Clay Frohmann and working with Mitch Braff and the vast array of continued on p. 8 cont’d on p. 13 American Gathering of NON-PROFIT Jewish Holocaust Survivors U.S. POSTAGE 122 West 30th Street, Suite 205 PAID NEW YORK, N.Y. New York, New York 10001 PERMIT NO. 4246 April 2010 visit our website at www.americangathering.com TOGETHER 1 Exploiting Torah Scrolls: A Morally TOGETHER Reprehensible Scam BY MENACHEM Z. ROSENSAFT April 2010 Volume 24 Number 2 c•o•n•t•e•n•t•s Some years ago, there was Binjamin Wilkomirski, the author of a purportedly Lawsuit Against Hungary’s MAVS by Holocaust Survivors..................................................1 autobiographical account of his years as a Jewish orphan during the Holocaust Israeli Postage Stamp Honors Holocaust Remembrance by Daniel Keren.........................1 but who actually is a Swiss-born Christian clarinetist. Then there was the case of 14th Reunion of the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Program by Elaine Culbertson....1 Herman Rosenblat whose heartwarming tale of a little girl tossing him an apple Exploiting Torah Scrolls by Menachem Rosensaft.....................................................................2 every day for seven months across the electrified barbed wire fence of a Nazi Address by PM Netanyahu at Auschwitz.................................................................................3 concentration camp turned out to be a hoax. And now we have Rabbi Menachem Visiting Rome Synagogue, Pope Honors Memory of Holocaust Victims..............................4 Evolution of International Holocaust Day by Ruth Ellen Gruber..........................................4 Youlus, the Washington DC area bookstore proprietor who moonlights as a self- We Are Still in the Shadow of the Holocaust by Michael Gove ..........................................4 proclaimed rescuer of Holocaust-era Torah scrolls, and whose stranger-than- Holocaust War Victims Tracing Center.....................................................................................5 fiction tales were debunked earlier this year in a lengthy Washington Post Teaching Holocaust Common Denominator in Israel.............................................................5 Magazine exposé by Martha Wexler and Jeff Lunden. Database of Polish Citizens Repressed Under German Occupation......................................5 In 2007, on the website of Save a Torah, his 501(c)3 tax exempt organization, Providing End-of-Life Care with Dignity and Compassion by David Nussbaum...............6 Youlus claimed to have found and restored “Torah scrolls hidden, lost or stolen Journalistic Ethics Still Apply to Ad Space by Rachel Racoosin..........................................6 during the Holocaust” which he then “resettled” in more than 50 Jewish Of Killing Fields and Looted Graves by Jeanette Friedman..................................................7 communities throughout the world. On a promotional video featured on the same American Gathering Announces New Vice Presidents..........................................................7 website, he said that “we’ve done over 500 today.” And in a recent Washington Holocaust Study Creates Antisemitism.....................................................................................8 Post interview, Youlus boasted of having rescued not 50 or 500 but 1,100 such Ex-Neo-Nazi Admits Role in Auschwtiz Sign Theft by Theunis Bates..................................8 Auschwitz Remains a Symbol by Richard Greenberg..... .......................................................9 Torah scrolls. Conservation Bid as Auschwitz Crumbles by Roger Boyes................................................10 Youlus also gave his Torah scrolls dramatic histories. Two were allegedly Catholic Scholars Protest the Vatican by Steve Lipman.......................................................10 found buried in a “Gestapo body bag” in a Ukrainian