A recent report from Britain’s Department for Education and Skills found that students weren’t being taught about the Holocaust or the Crusades for fear of offending students. As someone who works for an institution who’s mission is to teach tolerance through the experiences of those who lived through the Holocaust, I find it difficult to see how this does anything but exacerbate the problem. If the students have issues with one another, your role (as an educator) becomes to diversify and enlighten your classroom; not hide your head in the sand and hope it goes away.
Holocaust settlement
U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels issued a ruling on Tuesday that will close a case against Assicurazioni Generali, an Italian insurance company, which may well be the last large lawsuit against a European company brought by Holocaust survivors and their families in the United States.
Under the deal, Generali would accept new claims until March 31, even though it has already paid $135 million to settle claims. So far, 3,300 people have made fresh claims, which might entitle them to payouts under an international commission’s formula. Lawyers said an average of $25,000 was expected to be paid out per claim.
Samuel Dubbin, a lawyer for six of the victims, said he didn’t “think the true voice of the survivors or victims had a chance to be adequately heard by the court.”
Iran asks for proof
The Iranian World Holocaust Foundation has called for documented proof that six million Jews were killed during World War II. The foundation was created after Iran’s controversial conference last year.
“They should hand over the proof for the dossier on the organized massacre of Jews in Europe during World War II to the independent international fact-finding committee affiliated to this foundation,” the IRNA state news agency quoted Ramin as saying.
Considering the vast number of documents that are available (the world over), it seems like this should be easily resolved with a field trip. Of course, one has to wonder what the World Holocaust Foundation will do once they do that.
Otto Frank letters
A series of desperate letters from Otto Frank (Anne Frank’s father) have surfaced at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York and will be released next month.
Otto Frank wrote the letters in 1941 in a despairing effort to get his family out of Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, before finally hiding the family, including Anne, in secret rooms in an Amsterdam office building for two years until they were betrayed, Time magazine said Thursday.
The family was sent to Nazi prison camps where Anne, her sister Margot, and their mother Edith died before the war’s end. But Otto Frank survived and returned to Amsterdam where he recovered his daughter’s diary of their time hiding from the Nazis.
There are approximately 80 documents in all and YIVO plans to make them public on February 14.
Mass grave unearthed
In a case that could easily appear on Prime Time television, residents of Menden, Germany have unearthed a mass grave that’s believed to be from the Holocaust. The grave, containing 51 bodies, appeared to be made up of mentally or physically handicapped victims.
Twenty-two of the skeletons appeared to be of children ranging from newborns to 7-year-olds. Some showed signs of physical or mental disabilities, such as those associated with Down syndrome, he said.
Maass, a prosecutor at the Dortmund-based Central Office for Investigation of Nazi-era Crimes, said he had begun a criminal investigation for at least 22 counts of murder. He declined to say who tipped off authorities about the grave.
An unnamed witness is said to have alerted prosecutors to the gravesite’s location, but nothing further has been released on the circumstances of this information. Despite the difficulties of successfully prosecuting a 60 year-old case from World War II, Maass stated that he was going forward with the investigation.