Category: Holocaust

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Italian court modifies ex-Nazi’s sentence

Survivors and members of the Jewish community were outraged recently when they heard that Erich Priebke, a former Nazi officer who was convicted of war crimes and has been serving a house arrest life sentence, was given permission to leave each day to work at his attorney’s office.

Priebke has been in prison or house arrest since he was extradited to Italy in 1994 from Argentina. He was convicted of war crimes three years later for his role in the massacre of 335 civilians at the Ardeatine Caves on the outskirts of Rome.

Priebke has admitted shooting two people and helping round up the victims, but has always insisted he was just following orders and should not be held responsible.

The massacre Priebke took part in took place after a partisan attack killed 33 Nazis in Rome.

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USHMM hosts educational seminar

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is holding a seminar this week for United Nations information personnel. The series is designed to promote the idea that public outreach and education can prevent future genocides.

At a groundbreaking seminar at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., participants will examine topics as diverse as the genesis of famous anti-Semitic texts and genocide in the Internet era.

The seminar, “The History of the Holocaust: Confronting Hatred, Preventing Genocide and Cultivating Moral Responsibility,” is the result of a new partnership between the museum and the UN Department of Public Information (DPI).

Information Officers from UN Information Centres in Paraguay, Colombia, Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil and the United States are taking part to support educational initiatives on the Holocaust by Member States, mandated in a 2005 General Assembly resolution.

They are exploring how intolerance can lead to the breakdown of democratic values and, in its extreme form, turn into mass killing, according to DPI’s outreach division.

It’s good to see USHMM creating programs for the UN, but I can’t help but wonder if it woudn’t be more affective if the actual UN representatives and their staff were attending.

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Record keeping

As a librarian with a Holocaust organization, I wind up receiving a fair number of inquiries about raw facts that are often easily answered by current events. For example, this weekend I was forwarded a message from a patron who was asking if the 6 million victims reported for the Holocaust referred only to Jewish victims, and how it was possible to be so precise about the number.

Naturally, I told her that it’s impossible to be completely precise about the total but explained that we believe the number of Jewish victims to be between 5.6 and 6.3 million because the Nazis were meticulous record keepers (and many records were duplicated in various locations). In fact, it’s that record keeping that has been at the forefront of Holocaust discussions for the last six months, as the archives in Bad Arolsen continues to flit through the spotlight.

If the Nazis had been a little less bureaucratic we would have wound up with the same kind of situation we’re seeing in Darfur, where the number of deaths are (by necessity) an estimate. I went on to recommend a number of sources to her and commented that if she wanted a nice snapshot of the technocracy behind the Third Reich, she should check out IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black.

When I finished answering her email, I found myself wondering if this isn’t one of the reasons we’re less invested in other genocides. The Holocaust wasn’t the first act of genocide — and as we’ve seen in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Darfur, Timor, and Cambodia — it certainly isn’t going to be the last, but the level of documentation was certainly beyond what we’ve seen before or since.

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Yom HaShoah sacrifice

As the country watched the massacre at Virginia Tech unfold yesterday, the Jewish world was observing a holiday — the Holocaust Martyrs’ Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah). It’s an occasion to remember those who died during the Holocaust. Ironically, a survivor was one of the victims:

As Jews worldwide honored on Monday the memory of those who were murdered in the Holocaust, a 75-year-old survivor sacrificed his life to save his students in Monday’s shooting at Virginia Tech College that left 32 dead and over two dozen wounded.

Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, threw himself in front of the shooter, who had attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, “but all the students lived – because of him,” Virginia Tech student Asael Arad – also an Israeli – told Army Radio.

Several of Librescu’s other students sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he blocked the gunman’s way and saved their lives, said the son, Joe.

“My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.”

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UK teachers clarification

Deborah Lipstadt, of History on Trial, posted an entry to clean up the reports going around that the U.K. has dropped Holocaust Education from their curriculum. I don’t believe I implied that in my recent post, but just to clarify my statements along with Lipstadt’s post, it’s the teachers who are avoiding the topic, it’s not an educationally mandated curriculum shift.