Israeli president warns of anti-Semitism
By Steven Gutkin, Associated Press Writer March 15, 2005
JERUSALEM --Israel's president warned Tuesday of renewed anti-Semitism as he participated in the opening of a $56 million Holocaust museum that focuses on the personal tragedies of the 6 million Jews who perished in the Nazi genocide.
Leaders from some 40 nations attended the ceremony at the Holocaust History Museum at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem memorial, which took 10 years to complete. The building, designed by Israeli-American architect Moshe Safdie, spans more than 45,000 square feet -- four times larger than the museum it replaces.
Hundreds of police patrolled Jerusalem to protect the visitors, among them 15 heads of government and state. Major thoroughfares were closed to traffic and a bomb squad carried out numerous sweeps.
On hand for the inaugural ceremonies were U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan; the presidents of Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Lithuania, Poland, Serbia & Montenegro and Switzerland; prime ministers from France, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Romania; and foreign ministers from Germany, Norway and Spain.
Israeli president Moshe Katsav cut the ribbon opening the building and then called on European nations to fight renewed expressions of anti-Semitism.
"We are concerned about Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism," he said. Europe "must accept the burden of the memory and lessons of the Holocaust for the future it is building. It owes this to the millions of Jews who were murdered on its soil."
Annan said the main task now is to prevent a repetition of the Holocaust anywhere.
"A United Nations that fails to be at the forefront of the fight against anti-Semitism and other forms of racism denies its history and undermines its future," he told dignitaries, bundled in winter coats on a cloudy, chilly Jerusalem night for the outdoor ceremony.
Representing the United States was New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
"Freedom is something we constantly have to fight for and if we ever compromise our standards, we see just how far it goes," Bloomberg told reporters. "We cannot allow intolerance any place against any people."
Bloomberg, who was born in 1942, said that as a young boy, his father tried to explain to him what had happened to the Jews of Europe during World War II.
"I do remember us sitting around the table and my father trying to explain to me what had gone on in Europe when it came up in the history books," Bloomberg said. "You can't understand how anyone could do that to other human beings. I don't know if there is an explanation."
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said the opening of the museum was "a moment of commemoration for the 6 million murdered by Nazi Germany."
"Of course, Germany is my country, so it's also a historical and moral responsibility to never forget what happened and the responsibility of my country for the Shoah," he added, using the Hebrew word for Holocaust.
To give a human dimension to Holocaust statistics, some 90 personal stories are woven into the museum's displays, which also feature some 280 works of art.
A video projected onto the wall of the entrance shows daily Jewish life in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Visitors can walk through a typical living room of a Jewish family in Germany in the 1930s. A life-size replica of the Warsaw Ghetto's Leszno Street features cobblestones, a 1940s tram track and lampposts replete with shrapnel holes from the Jewish uprising -- all donated by the Polish capital.
The museum displays a three-tiered wooden barracks where concentration camp inmates slept, a cattle wagon that transported Jews to their deaths, and a small fishing boat that ferried Danish Jews to safety in Sweden.
Underground galleries on either side of a 600-foot central walkway topped by a skylight guide visitors through the history of Adolf Hitler's Final Solution: prewar life, anti-Semitic laws, roundups, deportations, mass executions, death camps.
Israel's Yediot Ahronot newspaper said in an editorial Tuesday that the new museum will help restore a sense of individuality to the anonymous murders of the Holocaust.
"The Nazis took away the Jews' individuality before they took away their lives," the paper said. "There isn't a visitor to the museum who can emerge without feeling a sense of personal closeness and personal loss."
World Leaders Dedicate Israel Holocaust Museum
By Megan Goldin March 15, 2005
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - World leaders inaugurated a museum at Israel's Holocaust memorial on Tuesday in a show of international determination to keep alive the memory of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis and prevent future genocide.
"The Holocaust was not just a Jewish experience. It is an experience of great importance to the whole world," said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who attended the ceremony at the Yad Vashem memorial with 40 foreign leaders and dignitaries.
"We have all drawn the lessons from it," he said.
The Ghanaian statesman's wife is the niece of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved 100,000 Jews in Hungary during World War II. Wallenberg was arrested by Soviet troops who liberated Budapest and was never heard of again. French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski were among those in Jerusalem to dedicate the museum designed by Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie. Funded by Israel and the Jewish community abroad, the $56 million project seeks to portray the Holocaust on a more personal level through displays of the artifacts, diaries and photographs of victims and Nazi persecutors.
Yad Vashem's old museum, on a pine tree-covered Jerusalem hilltop, had been overshadowed in recent years by more innovative museums abroad dedicated to the Holocaust.
KEEPING MEMORY OF HOLOCAUST ALIVE
"We gave the victims an identity. We gave them a voice. We gave them a face," said curator Yehudit Inbar.
"We did the same thing to the Nazis ... For each one we showed who they were -- that they were not monsters but people who did monstrous things."
The idea of collecting survivors' stories came when an elderly survivor brought Inbar crumbling spectacles her mother had given her on their arrival at Auschwitz death camp just before the mother was sent to the gas chamber.
Two braids of hair which a mother cut from the head of her 11-year-old daughter before the girl was deported from Germany to her death are also on display beside her photograph.
The hair, given to non-Jewish neighbors for safekeeping, was recovered after the war by the girl's brother.
Yad Vashem made the museum project a priority as the number of now elderly Holocaust survivors diminishes.
The museum's philosophy is encapsulated by its Hall of Names in which the names and some of the photographs of three million of the Jewish dead surround a watery abyss.
Yad Vashem recently set up an Internet site where the personal histories of three million Jewish victims can be found.
Notably Missing:
George Walker Bush and Condolezza Rice were nowhere near the Dedication of the Holocaust Museum.
Bush offers Hezbollah an olive branch
15/03/2005 - 18:09:07
President George Bush held out an olive branch to Hezbollah tonight, saying the militant Shiite Muslim group could be part of the political mainstream in Lebanon despite its terrorist past.
“We view Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation,” Bush said after an Oval Office meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah.
“I would hope that Hezbollah would prove that they are not by laying down arms and not threatening peace.”
Hezbollah has been flexing its political muscle in Lebanon, organising two huge pro-Syrian rallies.
http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=136854570&p=y36855z76
Condoleezza Rice arrives in India
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived on Tuesday on a less than 24-hour visit, during which she will hold talks with External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh on bilateral, regional and international issues.
S Jaishankar, joint secretary (Americas) in the external affairs ministry, and US Ambassador David Mulford received Rice on arrival at the Palam Air Force Base by a special aircraft.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1280735,0008.htm
