Turkey asks Israel to withdraw from NATO drill, event cancelled ... Read more

Abbas reverses course on Goldstone report ... Read more

Egyptian journalist may be tossed from union for meeting with Israel's ambassador ... Read more

Gathering of Survivors lauds Czech government for prosecuting vandals of Holocaust sites ... Read more

Dunst to be first of four Holocaust survivors in UCSD lecture series ... Read more

Turkey asks Israel to withdraw from NATO drill, event cancelled

ANKARA, Turkey (WJC) —A NATO air force drill set to take place in Turkey this week has been cancelled Turkish military officials approached the Israel Defense Forces and demanded that Israel withdraw its participation, due to the participation of its air force in last winter's military offensive in Gaza. Israel has understandings with NATO which allow it to be included in such drills. The United States and Italy then withdrew from the drill in protest, which led to its cancellation on Sunday. Israel has taken part in the annual air force exercise several times in recent years.

"The exercise was postponed due to a Turkish decision to change the composition of the participants and not allow the Israel Air Force to participate, a decision we were informed of only several days ago," according to a statement from the IDF. Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, publicly acknowledged on Monday that his country excluded the Israel Air Force because of the Gaza war. "We hope that the situation in Gaza will be improved, that the situation will be back to the diplomatic track," Davutoglu told CNN.

Jerusalem is now reviewing the sales of advanced weapons systems to Turkey, the newspaper ‘Haaretz’ reports. Diplomatic relations between the two countries have deteriorated after Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza in January 2009, and the traditionally close cooperation between the Israeli and Turkish militaries has been downgraded.

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Abbas reverses course on Goldstone report

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Authority (WJC)--Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called for a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council to endorse the Goldstone report, which accuses Israel of war crimes in Gaza and was deferred until March 2010 earlier this month, following the withdrawal of a Palestinian request to get it approved immediately. In a televised address, Abbas said: “Since we felt that we would not be able to gather enough support, we asked for the postponement of the draft resolution until the upcoming session of the Human Rights Council.” The Palestinian leader already ordered an "investigation" into how his own government arrived at the decision and added that he had now instructed his officials to push for a special session of the Human Rights Council to bring forward the debate.

The move was an apparent reaction to strong criticism from Hamas, whose Damascus-based leader Khaled Meshal had said the decision to back deferring the vote was "a scandal" and "the final straw", and Hamas could "not accept any more mistakes". Hamas announced it had delayed reconciliation talks mediated by Egypt to end the split between Abbas’ Fatah and Hamas. The Goldstone report also strongly criticizes the Islamist group’s actions in Gaza.

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Egyptian journalist may be tossed from union for meeting with Israel's ambassador

CAIRO (WJC)—Egypt's Journalists Union is investigating whether to expel a prominent member for meeting with Israel’s ambassador in Cairo. The group will investigate Hala Mustafa, editor-in-chief of the state-run monthly magazine ‘Democratiya’. It is the first investigation of its kind even though the group has banned contact with Israelis for nearly 25 years, despite the 1979 peace treaty between the two countries. Observers believe the move is fuelled by anger in Egypt that Culture Minister Farouk Hosni lost his battle to become new director-general of UNESCO, which he and others have blamed on a “Jewish conspiracy”.

Mustafa, who met with Israeli Ambassador Shalom Cohen on 14 September, criticized the union, saying the ban against traveling to Israel or meeting with Israelis for work or personal reasons was "obsolete." She said Cohen visited her office to discuss a symposium they were organizing that would include Egyptian, American and Israeli participants. "There is a reality on the ground that we have to deal with: we have a peace with Israel," said Mustafa. "If people want to boycott Israel, they should do so on an individual basis, but according to our law we have normal relations."

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Gathering of Survivors lauds Czech government for prosecuting vandals of Holocaust sites

NEW YORK (Press Release)—The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants commends the government of the Czech Republic for the stiff penalties handed out to Miroslave Dano, Libor Mirga and Petr Hricko for vandalizing the Holocaust Memorial at Terezin. The three were convicted for causing more than $100,000 worth of damage when they stole 824 bronze plaques from the site in 2008 and sold them to a scrap dealer. Mirga and Hricko, who fled to London, were sentenced in absentia to 4 1/2 and 3 1/2 years respectively. Dano, in police custody, was sentenced to four years.

Nearly 220,000 people from throughout Europe were imprisoned by the Nazis at Terezin and the concentration camp innearby Litomerice. Just one third of them survived to see the end of World War II.


"Vandalism against places of Holocaust martyrdom have become all-too-frequent in Europe and are especially painful to those who suffered through the horrors of that time," said

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American Gathering President Sam E. Bloch. "It is reassuring that authorities in Eastern and Central Europe recognize the critical importance of punishing those who would vandalize the sites where thousands upon thousands were murdered, and desecrate the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. We are gratified that neo-Nazis, skinheads and other thugs now know that their despicable actions have consequences."

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Dunst to be first of four Holocaust survivors in UCSD lecture series

LA JOLLA, California (Press Release)—The Holocaust Living History Workshop, sponsored by the UC San Diego
Libraries and the Judaic Studies Program, will host four presentationsduring fall quarter by local Holocaust survivors. The Holocaust Living History Workshop is an educational outreach program designed to preserve the memory of victims and survivors of the Holocaust.

Four San Diego-based survivors will present their stories, including Lou Dunst on Oct. 14, Benjamin Midler on Oct. 28, Max Schindler on November 4, and Gussie Zaks on Nov. 18.  At these events, members of the campus community and the public will have the opportunity to meet the survivors
and hear their stories, as well as learn about other survivors' testimony from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, which includes the personal stories of more than 50,000 survivors of the Holocaust.  All presentations are free and open to the public, and will take place at 5 p.m. in the UCSD Geisel Library Instruction Room (Room 276) on the main floor of the Geisel Library building.

At the Oct. 14 presentation, Lou Dunst will discuss his experiences as a survivor of the ghetto at Mátészalka and the Auschwitz, Mauthausen, andEbensee concentration camps.  Dunst arrived in San Diego in 1951, where he has thrived as a successful merchant and real estate investor.  Active in
the San Diego community, Dunst has spent many hours sharing his story with various schools and community groups.  He has also taken San Diego-area teens to Poland and Israel on "March of the Living" trips.

Benjamin Midler, who will recount his experiences on Oct. 28, survived the Bialystok ghetto and the Bli¿yn, Majdanek, Ohrdruf, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Potsdam-Babelsburg, and Oraniensberg concentration camps. He also fought during the formation of Israel after WWII, and has a published memoir, "The Life of a Child Survivor from Bialystok, Poland."

On Nov. 4, Max Schindler, who was liberated from the Theresienstadt ghetto, will discuss his experiences as a survivor of the Mielec, Bendsburg, Wieliczka, Kraków-Plaszów, and Tätzschwitz concentration camps.
After the war, he went to the United Kingdom through a program for refugee children. He now resides in San Diego.

Gussie Zaks, who survived the Bergen-Belsen, Flossenbürg, Blechhammer (Auschwitz IV), Saybusch, and Neusalz concentration camps, will presenther personal recollections on Nov. 18.  Zaks travels throughout the San Diego region, speaking to students, synagogues and other community groups.

 She is also the president of the New Life Club for Holocaust survivors in San Diego.

The UC San Diego Libraries are one of only three university libraries onthe West Coast to have access to the USC Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive, founded by film maker Steven Spielberg to document the stories of Holocaust survivors for his movie, Schindler's List.  In 1994, Spielberg established the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History
Foundation, a non-profit organization, to collect and preserve more than 50,000 firsthand accounts of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust.  The foundation became the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education in 2006.

The Holocaust Living History Workshop, launched in 2007, aims to teach thehistory of the Holocaust through two methods of face-to-face contact, both with Holocaust survivors and their children and through the Visual History
Archive.  Student volunteers have received special training on how tosearch through the testimonies in the massive Archive, and then teachsurvivors and their families-from multiple generations-how to use the database.  These families can then use the archive to conduct their own searches in order to learn about other people, and in some cases relatives, who had similar Holocaust experiences.

The archive of 52,000 digital oral histories recorded by Holocaustsurvivors and other witnesses is the foundation for the Holocaust LivingHistory Workshop, a program that has brought together UC San Diego students, San Diego holocaust survivors, and their children.  TheWorkshop, which was established to expand the usefulness and the impact of
the Archive, has proven to be a powerful tool for discovering familyhistory and preserving memories for survivors, their families, and members of the community.

The Visual History Archive includes the testimonies of Holocaust survivorsfrom 40,000 specific geographic locations in languages ranging from Bulgarian and Greek to Japanese and Spanish, can be accessed by members of
the public from any computer on the UC San Diego campus.

To find out more about UC San Diego'sHolocaust Living History Workshop,contact Marina Triner (lib-mtriner@ad.ucsd.edu or 858.534.7661) or go to:
http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/sites/hlhw Interested members of the public arealso invited to attend one of the weekly Visual History Archive training open-houses, held on Wednesdays from 5-7pm in the Geisel Library Electronic Classroom (Room 274).

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