JUDGE DEPORTS MASSACHUSETTS NAZI

Judge deports Trawniki man (JTA)
A Massachusetts man who belonged to a Nazi unit that helped liquidate the Warsaw ghetto will be deported. Vladas Zajanckauskas, 92, of Sutton, Mass., served at the SS base in Trawniki, Poland, and took part in the April-May 1943 operation dubbed "Operation Rinhard."

In a decision reported this week by the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, which litigated the case, Boston Judge Wayne R. Iskra wrote that Zajanckauskas "admitted that Trawniki men sent to Warsaw stood in the cordon to prevent Jews from escaping."

They also "guarded the transit square where captured Jews awaited transportation to labor and concentration camps, conducted house-to-house searches for hidden Jews, skirmished with resistance fighters, and took part in the shooting of some captured Jews."

Zajanckauskas was one of the "top-ranked" individuals in his sub-unit, the judge wrote.

TAUNTON, MASSACHUSETTS SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER APOLOGIZES FOR NAZI SLURS

Board member sorry for Nazi slurs (JTA)
A member of a school board in Massachusetts apologized for calling a Jewish colleague Hitler and allegedly giving him the Nazi salute. At a meeting last week of the Taunton school committee, Alfred Baptista, who has a history of berating colleagues at meetings, said “Yes, heil Hitler, sieg heil” to committee member Barry Cooperstein, who had admonished him for yelling at the school district’s superintendent, according to the Boston Globe.

Baptista issued a formal apology this week, saying he deeply regretted his remarks and had not meant any harm. "It was a very unfortunate choice of words, and I feel terrible about it," Baptista told the Globe. "I'm not a racist, I'm not an anti-Semite.”

The Anti-Defamation League called the remark “deeply offensive” and community members, including the mayor of Taunton, located about 40 miles from Boston, demanded Baptista publicly apologize or resign. School and city officials said they received dozens of complaints about the incident.

“Comments like this are indicative of a misunderstanding of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi regime and are deeply offensive,” regional ADL officials wrote in a letter calling on Baptista to apologize.

JEWISH SCHOOL VANDALIZED IN MASSACHUSETTS

Jewish school vandalized (JTA)
Vandals sprayed anti-Semitic graffiti on a Jewish school in Worcester, Mass. School workers at the New Jewish Academy and the Flagg Street School found windows smashed and anti-Semitic graffiti spray-painted on walls last weekend and on other occasions over the lasts two weeks, according to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

Police are investigating. “We would like to see this treated as a hate crime if the people responsible are apprehended,” said Robert F. Pezzella, executive assistant to the superintendent for school safety and violence prevention. The New Jewish Academy building is connected to a local synagogue, Cong. Beth Israel.