HAMAS LEADER OFFERS PARTIAL CEASE-FIRE, DENIES HOLOCAUST

Mashaal offers to stop civilian attacks (JPost)
Hamas has offered Israel a deal in which both sides would refrain from attacking civilian targets, the group's Damascus-based leader Khaled Mashaal said.

In an interview with Sky News broadcast Monday, Mashaal said the offer was identical to one made to Israel 10 years ago.

"We renew our offer to Israel to let the civilians on both sides not be a part of this conflict," he said. "We renew this offer today."

Mashaal asserted that if the IDF refrained from killing any Palestinian civilians, Hamas would only carry out attacks against Israeli military targets.

Mashaal went on to confirm that captured IDF soldier Gilad Schalit was alive...

Mashaal continued by saying that Hamas believed the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was "exaggerated."

"We don't deny the Holocaust, but we believe the Holocaust was exaggerated by the Zionist movement to whip up people," he said. "We don't deny the fact but we don't accept two issues. We don't accept the exaggerating of numbers and we don't accept that Israel uses this to do what it wants."

SWISS WRITER WHO PRAISED HOLOCAUST DENIER WINS U.N. HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL POSITION

Ziegler wins U.N. advisory role (JTA)
A Swiss writer who praised a Holocaust denier won an advisory position to the U.N. Human Rights Council.  Jean Ziegler won 40 of 47 votes Wednesday to become one of 18 "expert" counselors.

His election to the Geneva-based council, dominated by anti-Western authoritarian states, was virtually guaranteed and U.N. Watch, a United Nations monitor, had campaigned to convince Switzerland to withdraw his nomination.

That culminated in a letter this week signed by 24 human rights activists and groups opposing Ziegler. Swiss officials dismissed the effort as politicking.

Ziegler, a leftist theorist, has praised and supported dictators including Cuba's Fidel Castro, Ethiopia's Haile Mengistu, Libya's Moammar Ghadafy, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and North Korea's Kim Il-Sung.

In 1996, Ziegler praised French Holocaust denier Roger Gaurady as "one of the leading thinkers of our time."

In interviews, Ziegler says his critics are puppets of his Western opponents and notes that he had helped expose how Swiss banks hoarded funds deposited by Jews during the Holocaust.

Also elected as an "expert" adviser to the council was Richard Falk, a Princeton emeritus professor who has likened Israel's dealings with the Palestinians to the Holocaust.

NAZI RECORDS GIVEN TO HOLOCAUST GROUPS

Nazi Records Given to Holocaust Groups (SFChron)
The names of some 3.5 million people displaced after World War II have been provided to Holocaust memorial groups and museums in the United States, Israel and Poland by a recently opened archive of Nazi-era documents.

The International Tracing Service of the International Committee of the Red Cross said Tuesday that it had handed over a third round of digitally copied documents to the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the Warsaw-based National Institute of Remembrance.

The archive, based in Bad Arolsen, Germany, said the transfer involved copies of index cards that feature the names of people who were freed from Nazi concentration and labor camps as well as prisoners of war.

The move came after a meeting March 18-19 of representatives of national organizations from the member nations of the International Commission, which oversees ITS.

PALI EXHIBITS DEPICTS ISRAEL PUTTING PALI KIDS IN CREMATORIUM

Palestinian Exhibit Depicts Children in Crematorium - Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook (Palestinian Media Watch)

The Ramallah-based Al Ayyam reported Thursday: "The National Committee for Defense of Children from the Holocaust opened its activities with a Holocaust exhibit. The exhibit includes a large [cremation] oven and inside it small children are being burned [by Israel]."

LVOV CAMP SURVIVOR IS ANGEL OF MERCY

Lvov camp survivor an angel of mercy to Jews in native city (JTA)
The man who believes he is the last living survivor of a Ukrainian concentration camp devotes his life to feeding, clothing and providing medical care to thousands of Jews in his native Lvov region.

NINTENDO TO RELEASE HOLOCAUST VIDEO GAME

Nintendo to Release Holocaust Video Game (JEWCY)

Think a Nintendo game is a good way to teach kids about the Holocaust? A 21-year-old British video game developer does, and the company producing his latest creation hopes to have it ready for distribution in Europe by the end of the year. Luc Bernard's game,Imagination Is the Only Escape, is based on the ways that the Nazis tortured children, and won’t be distributed in the US.

Reactions have been as condemnatory as you’d expect. However, Bernard maintains that he’s not trying to make light of the suffering of children. He promises that there won’t be any on-screen violence, and though Alten8--the company producing the game--originally asked him to remove all swastikas from the game, it subsequently backed off. Bernard says he’s trying to make a game that will be educational and appropriate for young children, and points out that his mother is Jewish and members of his family took care of Jewish orphans after World War II.

SAUDI SCHOLAR THERE WAS NO HOLOCAUST ... KILL ALL THE JEWS!

Saudi Scholar Dr. Walid Al-Rashudi: 50-60 People Perished in Jewish Holocaust. The Killing of All the Jews Will Not Be Satisfactory Compensation for the "Real Holocaust" in Gaza (MEMRI)

Following are excerpts from a speech delivered by Dr. Walid Al-Rashudi, head of the Department of Islamic Studies at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 29, 2008.

Walid Al-Rashudi: One of the important things that we must tell people is that what is going on in Palestine today is a real holocaust. This is the real holocaust. A holocaust is not the burning of 50-60 Jews in Germany or Switzerland, but the Jews continue to call it the Holocaust. In case you don't know, let me tell you that more than 90% of the Muslims in the world do not know that the Jews receive reparations from Germany and Switzerland for the so-called Holocaust affair. We believe that there was indeed a holocaust, but how many died? 50-60 people? Afterwards, they used it to blackmail these two countries.
So what are we supposed to say in the face of the Gaza holocaust? What compensation will satisfy us? By Allah, we will not be satisfied even if all the Jews are killed.

ABBAS: IDF ACTION WORSE THAN HOLOCAUST

Abbas: IDF action worse than Holocaust

(JPost)

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas labeled Israel's actions to counter the constant firing of rockets into the Gaza Strip "worse than the Holocaust."

Abbas said that Israel's response to the continuous bombardment of western Negev towns by Palestinian terrorists was too severe, saying that its operations which have left at least 33 Palestinians dead on Saturday were unacceptable retaliation to the firing of rockets.

The Fatah head was not the only Palestinian leader to be associating the military maneuvers with the Holocaust - exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal described the operations as "the real Holocaust" on Saturday afternoon.

"Israeli actions in Gaza since Wednesday is the real Holocaust," Mashaal told reporters in Damascus, where he lives in exile.

He accused Israel of "exaggerating the Holocaust and using it to blackmail the world."

AUTHOR ADMITS HOLOCAUST BIO FALSE

Author of Best-Selling Holocaust Book Admits Survival Story Not True (FoxNews)
BOSTON — Almost nothing Misha Defonseca wrote about herself or her horrific childhood during the Holocaust was true.

She didn't live with a pack of wolves to escape the Nazis. She didn't trek 1,900 miles across Europe in search of her deported parents, nor kill a German soldier in self-defense. She's not even Jewish.

Defonseca, a Belgian writer now living in Massachusetts, admitted through her lawyers this week that her best-selling book, "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," was an elaborate fantasy she kept repeating, even as the book was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France.

"This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving," Defonseca said in a statement given by her lawyers to The Associated Press.

"I ask forgiveness to all who felt betrayed. I beg you to put yourself in my place, of a 4-year-old girl who was very lost," the statement said.

Defonseca, 71, has an unlisted number in Dudley, about 50 miles southwest of Boston. Her husband, Maurice, told The Boston Globe on Thursday that she would not comment.

Defonseca wrote in her book that Nazis seized her parents when she was a child, forcing her to wander the forests and villages of Europe alone for four years. She claimed she found herself trapped in the Warsaw ghetto and was adopted by a pack of wolves that protected her.

Her two Brussels-based lawyers said the author acknowledged her story was not autobiographical. In the statement, Defonseca said she never fled her home in Brussels during the war to find her parents.

Defonseca says her real name is Monique De Wael and that her parents were arrested and killed by Nazis as Belgian resistance fighters.

The statement said her parents were arrested when she was 4 and she was taken care of by her grandfather and uncle. She said she was poorly treated by her adopted family, called a "daughter of a traitor" because of her parents' role in the resistance, which she said led her to "feel Jewish."

SARKOZY DROPS HOLOCAUST EDUCATION PLAN

Sarkozy Drops Holocaust Education Plan
(IsraelNN.com) French President Nicolas Sarkozy has dropped his proposal to teach the Holocaust to children following a wave of protests from left wing politicians. He told the annual conference of the French Jewish umbrella group last month that every pupil should be assigned a name of a Jewish deportee during the Nazi rule and then research the family. Critics objected to the plan, arguing that it would cause schoolchildren to suffer trauma.

The government will explore other avenues to "encourage children in classrooms to look at, not other children in particular, but rather a given situation in a given city," according to former government minister and Auschwitz survivor Simone Veil. He agreed with opponents of the proposal, saying it was "unimaginable, unbearable and unjust."

VANDALS STRIKE AUSTRIAN HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL

Vandals strike memorial to Austrian Jews (JTA)
An artwork remembering the suffering of Austrian Jews under the Nazis was destroyed days after it was installed.

Artist Peter Wagner had planted the 70 wooden stakes last week alongside a road in the town of Oberschutzen, near a controversial memorial that serves as a reminder of Germany's annexation of Austria on March 12, 1938.

According to the Kurier newspaper, Wagner's project was called "zone38 -- 70 years after the annexation," and was dedicated to the memory of the Jews of the Oberwart district.

Wagner reported the incident to the police.

Oberschutzen Mayor Gunter Toth said he had noticed that many stakes had been removed but thought it had something to do with traffic regulations.

Wagner said the vandalism was probably a deliberate act by those who disliked being reminded of the past. Austria has been slow to recogize its complicity in the Nazi crimes.

"Someone deliberately did this, removing the stakes so we can't set them back up again," he said.

Wagner's has another art remembrance project scheduled to open nearby in mid-March.

MASS JEWISH GRAVE FOUND IN UKRAINE

Jewish remains found in Ukraine (JTA)
A grave believed to contain the remains of Jews was found in eastern Ukraine.

The grave was found in Dnepropetrovsk area, when workers digging for the foundation of a planned shopping center at the site of a former Jewish cemetery found bones.

Local authorities suspended the construction and assigned a special commission to investigate the case. The commission includes prominent representatives of the Dnepropetrovsk Jewish community.

LAWYER TO JAIL FOR BILKING HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

Lawyer gets jail time for bilking Holocaust survivors (JTA)
An Israeli lawyer got jail time for defrauding Holocaust survivors of $240 million. Tel Aviv District Court sentenced Yisrael Perry on Tuesday to 12 years' imprisonment and another five-and-a-half years suspended. He was also fined $6 million.

Perry was found guilty of defrauding dozens of Holocaust Survivors he had represented in filing post-war government insurance claims in Germany. According to a group of survivors who had taken the lawyer to court, Perry siphoned off $240 million worth of benefits. Perry has denied wrongdoing and plans to appeal his conviction and sentence with the Supreme Court.

SARKOZY DEFENDS HOLOCAUST PROPOSAL

Sarkozy defends Holocaust proposal amid uproar (Reuters)
PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy, facing a tide of criticism over his call for schoolchildren to "adopt" Jewish child victims of the Holocaust, hit back on Friday saying France had to raise children "with open eyes".

In a speech praising faith that also drew fire from secularists, Sarkozy told France's Jewish community on Wednesday that every 10-year-old schoolchild should be "entrusted with the memory of a French child victim of the Holocaust".

The proposal unleashed a storm of protest from teachers, psychologists and his political foes who said it would unfairly burden children with the guilt of previous generations and some could be traumatized by identifying with a Holocaust victim.

More than 11,100 French Jewish children were deported from France to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps in eastern Europe during the German World War Two occupation....

But Sarkozy, speaking in Perigueux in central France, brushed off the uproar.

"It is ignorance that produces abominable situations. It is not knowledge," he said in a speech. "Let us make our children, children with open eyes who are not complacent."

"Believe me, you will not traumatize children by giving them the gift of the memory of a country ... Any psychologist will tell you: you have to tell a child the truth," he said.

SEE ALSO: Sarkozy: jury on Durban still out (JTA)
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France would not participate in the second U.N. Durban conference on racism if it seemed a repeat of the 2001 anti-Semitic debacle.

"France will not allow a repetition of the excesses and abuses of 2001," Sarkozy told CRIF, the umbrella body of French Jewish groups, in an address this week.

He suggested that the European Union, which will be under France's presidency ahead of the 2009 conference, would follow France's lead.

"I say to you: if ever our legitimate demands are not taken into account, we will disengage from the process," he said. The United States this week issued a similar warning.

U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog that monitors how the international body deals with human rights abusers, said this week it had confirmed reports that South Africa plans to once again host the conference.

The 2001 Durban conference devolved into an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hate-fest led by Iran and radical Muslim and Arab groups.

HOLOCAUST THEMED RIO CARNIVAL FLOAT

Holocaust-themed Rio Carnival float causes strain (Reuters)
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - A Carnival float with a pile of model dead bodies commemorating the Holocaust is causing unease before the lavish parades in Rio de Janeiro this weekend.

The Viradouro samba organization, or school, plans to feature the grim display when it marches in the Sambadrome parade strip on Sunday, despite objections from a local Jewish group.

"Really, it makes no sense addressing this theme with drums and dancing girls," said Sergio Niskier, president of the Israelite Federation in Rio de Janeiro state, referring to the slaughter of Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two.

"There are still survivors of that horror who have the marks of that tragedy on their skin," he said.

WORLD REMEMBERS VICTIMS OF HOLOCAUST

World Remembers Victims of Holocaust
At former Nazi death camps and many other places worldwide - in Europe, Israel, the U.S. and the UN - people remembered victims of the Holocaust on Jan. 27, declared by the UN in 2005 to be International Holocaust Remembrance Day. (VOA News)

Holocaust Inversion - Manfred Gerstenfeld
63 years after the liberation of Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 1945, one of the most perfidious forms of contemporary anti-Semitism is Holocaust inversion - the portrayal of Israelis and Jews as modern-day Nazis. The charge is that Israel supposedly behaves toward the Palestinians as Germany did to the Jews in World War II. Portraying Jews as Nazis, Israeli prime ministers as Hitler, and the Star of David as equal to the swastika is almost routine in the Arab world. In the Netherlands you can buy T-shirts and greeting cards showing Anne Frank wearing a kaffiyeh. In other words, the Palestinians are the new Jews, which makes the Israelis the new Nazis.

Holocaust Memorial Day should not only be a day of commemoration. Its meaning is undone when at the same time new versions of the old anti-Semitic demonizations are gaining ground. The writer is chairman of the board of fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. (Wall Street Journal)

MASS GRAVE FOUND IN GERMANY

Mass grave uncovered in Germany (JPost)
Construction workers have uncovered at least 36 bodies in the central city of Kassel, police said Wednesday, which city officials believe could be the remains of slave laborers from a Nazi armaments factory.

The first four skeletons were found last week at a construction site at the University of Kassel, said police spokeswoman Sabine Knoell. Another 26 were found on Monday and Tuesday, and a further six to seven were being unearthed Wednesday, she said.

"It could well be that more skeletons will be found," she said. "We are prepared for anything."

Some of the remains appeared to have been laid out in rows, though that was not always the case, she said.

According to preliminary exams by the coroners' office, the corpses are somewhere between 50 and 100 years old. Knoell would not speculate, however, on whether they could have died during wartime bombing or were possible victims of Nazi crimes.

"But we are, naturally, in contact with historians," she said.

The area where the skeletons were found was home to a factory that built locomotives and tanks during World War II, where thousands of slave laborers were forced to work by the Nazis, said Kassel archivist Frank-Roland Klaube.

The evidence speaks against them being factory workers buried quickly after an Allied bombing attack, he said.

"Among other things, there were no rings or watches found on the corpses," he said.

It is also known that in other areas of Kassel the SS shot and hastily buried other victims in the final days of the war, Klaube said. Still, there have been no reports of mass murders on the site of the new discovery, he added.

The area was the site of a military hospital until 1870, and it could be that the bodies were people who died there, he said. But that would mean that the bodies are older than it is currently believed.

Experts are testing the remains to try to determine how and when they died, Knoell said.

"We are very curious to see what the experts find," she said. Results are not expected until next week at the earliest.

ROMNEY, THE MORMONS AND THE HOLOCAUST

Romney, the Mormons, and the Holocaust (Pajamas Media)
I wouldn’t have bothered to bring up this issue—disturbing as it is—when it looked like the Romney campaign was cratering. But now that it looks like he has as good a chance as any of the GOP candidates I think it’s worth knowing. It has to do with moral leadership which Mitt seems to be proclaiming every time he opens his mouth.

I’m surprised at how many people were unaware of this Mormon practice which was only—officially—curbed in 1995, although according to this article from the Salt Lake Tribune the practice continued beyond the curb on its “inappropriate” use.

The practice, sometimes known as “Temple work” involves a Mormon “standing in” for a dead person to allow said dead one to be baptized as a Mormon and enter Mormon heaven. It became an issue when it turned out that many Mormons were retrospectively baptizing Holocaust victims such as Anne Frank and other dead Jews including Einstein and Freud as Mormons in this way. Not only that, some Mormons had baptized less savory figures in history including Stalin, Mao, Ivan the Terrible—and even Hitler himself (along with Eva Braun so they could share Mormon heaven together).

While the Church did not encourage the baptism of Nazis, the doctrine was not changed until 1995 by which time Eichman, Himmler and Heydrich joined the Furher among the baptized. I know: this sounds too strange and offensive to be true, but Mormons are big on conversions and it’s a lot easier to convert the compliant dead than the living.

As I mentioned, in 1995, after protest from Holocaust survivor groups, the Church sought to end the practice of baptizing “inappropriate” dead people, and it deserves credit for this action however belated, but the practice continued for at least some years thereafter.

We know that Mitt Romney didn’t speak up publicly against his church’s second class citizenship for people of color, although he claimed to have wept with joy in 1978 (when he was 31) and this doctrine was discarded. Did he speak up at all against the shameful posthumous baptism of Holocaust victims? Of Hitler? How does he feel about it now? Why has no one raised the issue during the campaign?

Not the issue of the practice which was ludicrous and lamentable, but the issue of whether Mitt Romney felt any responsibility to dissociate himself from, or protest the practice. It’s what they call a character question. It has to do with “moral leadership”.

Does anyone have an answer? Doesn’t anyone care?

SEE: ROMNEY CONDUCTED "BAPTISMS FOR THE DEAD"

HOLOCAUST ARCHIVES OPENED

Nazi-era archives opened (JTA)
Ending a decade-long political and legal struggle to open the records of the Bad Arolsen archive, the U.S. Holocaust museum has launched a search service to enable survivors and others to access millions of Nazi-era documents.

HOLOCAUST ARTIFACTS TO BE SHOWN

Tragic Bond 
For more than 60 years, Auschwitz survivor Meyer Hack hid a grim secret -- artifacts he found while processing clothes confiscated from new arrivals. They will appear in Watertown, Mass., in an unusual collaboration between the local Armenian and Jewish communities. (Boston Globe)