1.

The New York Times

Sigmund Strochlitz, 89, Leader in Holocaust

Causes, Dies
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: October 21, 2006

Correction Appended

Sigmund Strochlitz, a Holocaust survivor who worked with his close friend Elie
Wiesel to create the National Holocaust Memorial Museum and who led the way
in starting the annual “day of remembrance” now observed in every state, died on
Oct. 16 at his home in New London, Conn. He was 89.

2. The New York Times

NATIONAL BRIEFING WEST; California:

Wiesel Stalking Suspect Pleads Not Guilty
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 4, 2007

A man accused of stalking the Nobel Prize-winning Holocaust scholar Elie Wiesel
and dragging him from a hotel elevator pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity
Tuesday, his lawyer said. The man, Eric Hunt, 22, was charged with attempted
kidnapping, false imprisonment, battery, stalking, abuse of an elderly person and
hate crimes after the February incident at the Argent Hotel in San Francisco. Mr.
Wiesel, 78, has said that he had not been so afraid for his life since he was held at
Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
 The New York Times

California: Elie Wiesel Is Attacked

By JESSE McKINLEY
Published: February 10, 2007

Elie Wiesel, left, the Holocaust survivor, author and winner of the Nobel Peace
Prize, was attacked at a San Francisco hotel last week by an unknown assailant,
the police said yesterday. Sgt. Neville Gittens, a police spokesman, said Mr.
Wiesel, 78, was attending a conference when a man approached him in an
elevator and asked to interview him. After a brief discussion, the man dragged
Mr. Wiesel off the elevator and tried to restrain him, but Mr. Wiesel screamed,
and the attacker fled. Mr. Wiesel was not injured. No arrests were made, though
Sergeant Gittens said the police had a “person of interest” in the case. The
Associated Press reported that a Holocaust denier calling himself Eric Hunt had
claimed credit on an anti-Semitic Web site for accosting Mr. Wiesel, but the
police could not confirm whether he was the suspect.

3. Boston Globe

Holocaust survivors appeal to Vatican

November 11, 2008

VATICAN CITY - One of the most influential groups of Holocaust survivors accused
Nazi-era Pope Pius XII yesterday of keeping "silent in the face of absolute evil" and
asked the Vatican to freeze his sainthood process.
The New York-based group, the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and
their Descendants, announced a global campaign to lobby Vatican ambassadors so that
Pope Benedict will put the sainthood process for his predecessor on hold.
"What we as survivors and their children seek to convey to our friends at the Vatican is
our moral anguish and deep pain at this moment," Elan Steinberg, the group's vice
president, said. "There were many individuals and representatives of the Church whose
shining heroism during the terrible years of the Holocaust should be recognized, but Pope
Pius was not among them," said Steinberg, who is also director emeritus of the World
Jewish Congress.
Some Jews have accused Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of turning a blind eye to
the Holocaust. The Vatican says he worked behind the scenes and helped save many Jews
 The New Yorker

Another Legacy of the Holocaust

by Gerald Posner October 24, 1994
Gerald Posner, The Talk of the Town, “Another Legacy of the Holocaust,” The New Yorker,
October 24, 1994, p. 39
Topf, JA. & Sohne;
Klarsfeld, Serge
ABSTRACT: Talk story about heirs of the German company J.A. Topf & Sohne, which built
the crematoriums at the Nazi death camps, who were pressing for restitution of their family's
factory and villa and its surrounding park land, in the town of Erfurt, which had been
expropriated by the Communist government of the Soviet Occupied Zone after the war.
Despite the passage of five decades, issues relating to Nazi war crimes still arise with some
frequency at the World Jewish Congress. Tells about the WJC's recent actions, and the Nazi
history of the company. Technicalities in the newest German restitution law--enacted shortly
after reunification--do not allow the Topf descendants to reclaim their property, although they
could be entitled to compensation for it. (The parkland is valued at more than $2 million.)
Serge Klarsfeld, a Paris-based Nazi-hunter who has followed the case with great interest,
said, "We do not think they have a moral right to ask for money, since money from the Topf
brothers was earned with the ashes of Jews." Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize winner,
agrees that the moral issue is the overriding one. "It is both grotesque and disturbing," he
says, choosing his words carefully. "Instead of trying to hide their connection with those who
built the infamous Auschwitz ovens, the owners' heirs insist on making it public. Is money
more important than memory? Is it that all shame has vanished in some circles in Germany?"

4.At temple, a reminder of hate

Newton congregation shaken after swastika is painted
on sign
A Newton police officer speaks with Rabbi Eric Gurvis (right) near the swastika-marred
sign at Temple Shalom in Newton. (Randy H. Goodman for The Boston Globe)
By Megan Woolhouse
Globe Staff / November 16, 2008

NEWTON - Yesterday was supposed to be a day of prayer and celebration at Temple

Shalom in West Newton, but a spray-painted swastika on the sign at its entrance marred
the ceremonies.
Some parents and young people on their way to a bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah saw the
swastika. Others missed it in the swirl of activity and wondered why police were
swarming the area.
Rabbi Eric S. Gurvis decided to address the incident from the pulpit. "There was an
audible gasp," he said.
Gurvis said he read several liturgical psalms as planned before the crowd, and then went
to another prayer service in the same building and told them what happened before
reading passages from Psalms.
"We're preaching for openness, understanding, peace, justice, and tolerance, and here is
this act of injustice," he said in a phone interview later. "Even if it was a prank, it's not
funny. It's a hate crime."

Vast Nazi archive opens to public

Maria Raabe is seen in the correspondence archive at the International Tracing Service
(ITS) in Bad Arolsen, Germany, in this Nov. 9, 2006 file photo. The vast archive of
German war records opened its doors to the public Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007 giving
historians and Holocaust survivors who have waited more than 60 years access to
concentration camp records detailing Nazi horrors:By Arthur Max

Associated Press Writer / November 28, 2007

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands—After more than 60 years, Nazi documents stored in a vast

warehouse in Germany were unsealed Wednesday, opening a rich resource for Holocaust
historians and for survivors to delve into their own tormented past.

The treasure of documents could open new avenues of study into the inner workings of
Nazi persecution from the exploitation of slave labor to the conduct of medical
experiments. The archive's managers planned a conference of scholars next year to map
out its unexplored contents.
The files entrusted to the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International
Committee of the Red Cross, have been used to find the fate of missing persons or
document atrocities to support compensation claims. The U.S. government also has
referred to the ITS for background checks on immigrants it suspected of lying about their
past.
Inquiries were handled by the archive's 400 staff members in the German spa town of
Bad Arolsen. Few outsiders were allowed to see the actual documents, which number
more than 50 million pages and cover 16 linear miles of gray metal filing cabinets and
cardboard binders spread over six buildings.
On Wednesday, the Red Cross and the German government announced that the last of the
11 countries that govern the archive had ratified a 2006 agreement to open the files to the
public for the first time.
"We are there. The doors are open," said ITS director Reto Meister, speaking by
telephone from the Buchenwald concentration camp where he was visiting with a
delegation of U.S. congressional staff members.
Survivors have pressed for decades to open the archive, unhappy with the minimal
responses -- usually in form letters -- from the Red Cross officials responding to requests
for information about relatives.
"We are very anxious," said David Mermelstein, 78, an activist for survivors' causes in
Miami, Fla., who wants to scour the files for traces of his two older brothers whom he
last saw as he passed through a series of concentration camps.
"Now I hope we will be able to get some information. We have been waiting, and time is
not on our side," said the retired businessman.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the Yad Vashem Memorial in
Jerusalem began receiving digital copies of the entire archive in August, allowing
survivors and historians more access points.
Izzy Arbeiter, 82, the head of a survivor's organization in the area of Boston, Mass., said
he hoped to go to the museum next month to browse the files.
"My goodness, I don't know where I would start, there are so many things I am interested
in," he said. "The history of my family, of course. My parents. One of my brothers is
missing. We never knew what happened to him."