June 11, 2009
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/us/11shoot.html?scp=2&sq=holocaust%20museum%20shooting&st=cse
WASHINGTON — An 88-year-old white supremacist with a rifle walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, one of the capital’s most visited sites, on Wednesday afternoon and began shooting, fatally wounding a security guard and sending tourists scrambling before he himself was shot, the authorities said.
The gunman was identified by law enforcement officials as James W. von Brunn, who embraces various conspiracy theories involving Jews, blacks and other minority groups and at one point waged a personal war with the federal government.
The gunman and the security guard were both taken to nearby George Washington University Hospital, with Mr. von Brunn handcuffed to a gurney, witnesses said. The guard, Stephen T. Johns, died a short time later. Museum officials said he had worked there for six years; The Associated Press reported his age as 39.
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said Mr. von Brunn was in critical condition. Chief Cathy L. Lanier of the Washington police said the gunman walked into the museum’s main entrance shortly before 1 p.m. and began shooting without warning. At least one security guard was returning fire; a total of five or six shots are believed to have been fired.
Officials and others who track conspiracy theorists have long been familiar with Mr. von Brunn, whose latest address is believed to be in Eastern Maryland, in part because he maintains a Web site. (Wednesday night, only an archived version of the site was available.) He has claimed variously to be a member of Mensa, the high-I.Q. society; to have played varsity football at a Midwestern college, where he earned a degree in journalism; to have been a PT boat commander in World War II; and to be a painter and an author.
Mr. von Brunn has also claimed to have been victimized by a court system run by Jews and blacks.
Before Wednesday, he was best known to law enforcement officials for having walked into the Washington headquarters of the Federal Reserve System on Dec. 7, 1981, with a bag slung over the shoulder of his trench coat. A guard chased him to the second floor, where the Fed’s board was meeting, and found a revolver, a hunting knife and a sawed-off shotgun in the bag.
Mr. von Brunn, who lived in Lebanon, N.H., at the time, told the police he wanted to take board members hostage to focus news media attention on their responsibility for high interest rates and the nation’s economic difficulties. He was convicted in 1983 and served several years in prison on attempted kidnapping, burglary, assault and weapons charges.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization based in Alabama, said Wednesday that Mr. von Brunn is a racist and anti-Semite with “a long history of associations with prominent neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers.”
Rabbis Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Abraham Cooper, an associate dean, said in a statement that the attack at the museum showed “that the cancer of hatred, bigotry and anti-Semitism is alive and well in America.”
“It is deeply disturbing that one of America’s most powerful symbols of the memory of the Holocaust was selected as the site of the attack just days after President Obama accompanied Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to the Buchenwald death camp,” they said.
Opened in 1993, the museum is situated near the Mall and the Potomac River. Since its dedication, it has had nearly 30 million visitors, including more than 8 million schoolchildren and 85 heads of state, the museum says on its Web site.
Like all public buildings in the capital, the museum has heavy security, with visitors required to pass through metal detectors. But someone determined to enter a building with a firearm can sometimes do so. In July 1998, a gunman killed two police officers and wounded a tourist in the Capitol.
Museum officials issued a statement expressing shock and grief over Wednesday’s attack and said the museum would be closed Thursday in honor of Mr. Johns.
On Wednesday evening, President Obama issued a statement saying, in part, “This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms.”
Brian Knowlton and Theo Emery contributed reporting.
Showing posts with label Judaisim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Judaisim. Show all posts
05 June 2009
At Nazi Camp, Obama Calls Holocaust Denial ‘Hateful’
June 6, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/06/world/europe/06prexy.html?hp
By NICHOLAS KULISH, JEFF ZELENY AND ALAN COWELL
WEIMAR, Germany —President Obama traveled to the former concentration camp of Buchenwald Friday, laid a single white rose at a memorial to the dead and, returning emotionally to a theme he addressed in a major speech in Cairo on Thursday, criticized those who denied the Holocaust.
“To this day there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened, a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful,” the President said, echoing his words in Cairo in an address that reached for what he called a “new beginning” in the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world.
By visiting Buchenwald on Friday, he also underscored what he termed in Cairo America’s “unbreakable” bond with Israel. Mr. Obama has been pushing hard during this trip for a two-state solution in the Middle East, and the administration has angered some in Israel by taking a tough stand against Israel’s expanding existing settlements.
In his visit to the former concentration camp, Mr. Obama said the site was the “ultimate rebuke” to those who deny or seek to minimize the Holocaust.
“These sights have not lost their horror with the passage of time.”
“More than half a century later, our grief and our outrage over what happened have not diminished. I will not forget what I have seen here today.”
The camp where 56,000 people died also bears a particular significance for Germans, embodying the contradiction of a civilized society’s descent into organized barbarism. The camp sits just a few miles outside the city of Weimar, one of the country’s leading cultural centers and home to the great German writers Goethe and Schiller.
With his hands behind his back and a thoughtful expression on his face, Mr. Obama walked through the former concentration camp, flanked by Chancellor Angela Merkel and Elie Wiesel, a Nobel peace prize winner, writer and Holocaust survivor, who survived a death march from Auschwitz to Buchenwald and was at the camp when it was liberated in April 1945.
Mr. Wiesel spoke movingly about the death of his father a few months before the liberation of the camp, calling the visit “a way of coming and visit my father’s grave. But he had no grave. His grave is somewhere in the sky, which has become in those years the largest cemetery of the Jewish people.”
Mr. Obama claims a personal connection to the concentration camp. His great-uncle, Charles Payne, helped liberate a sub-camp of Buchenwald called Ohrdruf.
Mrs. Merkel, who like Mr. Wiesel and Mr. Obama laid a long-stemmed white rose in memory of the dead, spoke of the German responsibility “to do everything possible that something like that never happens again.”
She added, “I bow before all the victims.”
Earlier the two leaders met for talks in Dresden, where President Obama declared that “the moment is now” to press for a Middle East settlement. He put Israelis and Palestinians on notice that it was up to them to make “difficult compromises.”
President Obama said he was dispatching his top Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, to the region next week to follow up on issues raised during the Cairo speech. Time was of the essence, he said, for Israelis and the Palestinians to step up their efforts.
“The moment is now for us to act on what we all know to be the truth, which is that each side is going to have to make some difficult compromises,” Mr. Obama said. “We have to reject violence. The Palestinians have to get serious about creating a security environment that is required for Israel to feel confident. Israelis are going to have to take some difficult steps.”
“Ultimately, the United States can’t force peace upon the parties,” he added, “but what we’ve tried to do is to clear away some of the misunderstandings so we can at least begin to have frank dialogue.”
On other issues, the two leaders said they would work closely on trying to persuade Iran to abandon what the West fears is a nuclear program to build an atomic bomb but which Tehran says is for civilian purposes.
But there was no indication of major progress on Washington’s desire for Europeans to accept prisoners from Guantánamo Bay as Mr. Obama moves to redeem a pledge to close the detention center in Cuba.
“I don’t anticipate it’s going to be resolved in the next two or three months,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Obama’s one-day visit to Germany is laden with symbolism. Dresden, in the former East Germany, is for many Germans, a symbol of the suffering of civilians. Germans perished in large numbers when the British and American air forces fire-bombed the city in February 1945, only months before the end of World War II. Military experts still debate whether the onslaught was necessary with the German Army already in retreat.
The bombing destroyed the baroque Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady, which the president visited Friday. The church was not rebuilt until after the fall of Communism. Some $218 million, more than half of it private donations, was spent on reconstructing it, and the new church was consecrated in 2005.
Mrs. Merkel suggested Friday that the city symbolized the progress Germany has made since the collapse of the former East Germany.
The meeting between her and Mr. Obama renewed speculation about how friendly they really were beyond the diplomatic smiles and handshakes.
But Mr. Obama dismissed the suggestion that his relationship with Chancellor Merkel was strained. Asked by a German television reporter about it, he playfully admonished the press.
“Stop it, all of you,” Mr. Obama said. “We have more than enough problems out there without manufacturing problems.”
He smiled and looked over to his German counterpart, saying: “It is a great pleasure to be with my friend once again, who I always seek out for intelligent analysis and straight talk.”
Indeed, Mr. Obama said on Friday: “Germany is a close friend and a critical partner to the United States, and I believe that friendship is going to be essential not only for our two countries but for the world if we are to make progress on some of the critical issues that we face, whether it’s national security issues or economic issues or issues that affect the globe like climate change.”
Specifically, he alluded to the global financial crisis, which created major differences between the United States and Germany. Mr. Obama said it was “going to be very important to coordinate between Europe and the United States as we move to strengthen our financial regulatory systems.”
“We affirmed that we are not going to engage in protectionism. And, as all of us do, we have to make sure we keep our borders open and that companies can move back and forth between the United States and Europe in providing goods and services to our respective countries.”
Nicholas Kulish reported from Weimar, Germany; Jeff Zeleny Dresden ; and Alan Cowell from Paris.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/06/world/europe/06prexy.html?hp
By NICHOLAS KULISH, JEFF ZELENY AND ALAN COWELL
WEIMAR, Germany —President Obama traveled to the former concentration camp of Buchenwald Friday, laid a single white rose at a memorial to the dead and, returning emotionally to a theme he addressed in a major speech in Cairo on Thursday, criticized those who denied the Holocaust.
“To this day there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened, a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful,” the President said, echoing his words in Cairo in an address that reached for what he called a “new beginning” in the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world.
By visiting Buchenwald on Friday, he also underscored what he termed in Cairo America’s “unbreakable” bond with Israel. Mr. Obama has been pushing hard during this trip for a two-state solution in the Middle East, and the administration has angered some in Israel by taking a tough stand against Israel’s expanding existing settlements.
In his visit to the former concentration camp, Mr. Obama said the site was the “ultimate rebuke” to those who deny or seek to minimize the Holocaust.
“These sights have not lost their horror with the passage of time.”
“More than half a century later, our grief and our outrage over what happened have not diminished. I will not forget what I have seen here today.”
The camp where 56,000 people died also bears a particular significance for Germans, embodying the contradiction of a civilized society’s descent into organized barbarism. The camp sits just a few miles outside the city of Weimar, one of the country’s leading cultural centers and home to the great German writers Goethe and Schiller.
With his hands behind his back and a thoughtful expression on his face, Mr. Obama walked through the former concentration camp, flanked by Chancellor Angela Merkel and Elie Wiesel, a Nobel peace prize winner, writer and Holocaust survivor, who survived a death march from Auschwitz to Buchenwald and was at the camp when it was liberated in April 1945.
Mr. Wiesel spoke movingly about the death of his father a few months before the liberation of the camp, calling the visit “a way of coming and visit my father’s grave. But he had no grave. His grave is somewhere in the sky, which has become in those years the largest cemetery of the Jewish people.”
Mr. Obama claims a personal connection to the concentration camp. His great-uncle, Charles Payne, helped liberate a sub-camp of Buchenwald called Ohrdruf.
Mrs. Merkel, who like Mr. Wiesel and Mr. Obama laid a long-stemmed white rose in memory of the dead, spoke of the German responsibility “to do everything possible that something like that never happens again.”
She added, “I bow before all the victims.”
Earlier the two leaders met for talks in Dresden, where President Obama declared that “the moment is now” to press for a Middle East settlement. He put Israelis and Palestinians on notice that it was up to them to make “difficult compromises.”
President Obama said he was dispatching his top Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, to the region next week to follow up on issues raised during the Cairo speech. Time was of the essence, he said, for Israelis and the Palestinians to step up their efforts.
“The moment is now for us to act on what we all know to be the truth, which is that each side is going to have to make some difficult compromises,” Mr. Obama said. “We have to reject violence. The Palestinians have to get serious about creating a security environment that is required for Israel to feel confident. Israelis are going to have to take some difficult steps.”
“Ultimately, the United States can’t force peace upon the parties,” he added, “but what we’ve tried to do is to clear away some of the misunderstandings so we can at least begin to have frank dialogue.”
On other issues, the two leaders said they would work closely on trying to persuade Iran to abandon what the West fears is a nuclear program to build an atomic bomb but which Tehran says is for civilian purposes.
But there was no indication of major progress on Washington’s desire for Europeans to accept prisoners from Guantánamo Bay as Mr. Obama moves to redeem a pledge to close the detention center in Cuba.
“I don’t anticipate it’s going to be resolved in the next two or three months,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Obama’s one-day visit to Germany is laden with symbolism. Dresden, in the former East Germany, is for many Germans, a symbol of the suffering of civilians. Germans perished in large numbers when the British and American air forces fire-bombed the city in February 1945, only months before the end of World War II. Military experts still debate whether the onslaught was necessary with the German Army already in retreat.
The bombing destroyed the baroque Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady, which the president visited Friday. The church was not rebuilt until after the fall of Communism. Some $218 million, more than half of it private donations, was spent on reconstructing it, and the new church was consecrated in 2005.
Mrs. Merkel suggested Friday that the city symbolized the progress Germany has made since the collapse of the former East Germany.
The meeting between her and Mr. Obama renewed speculation about how friendly they really were beyond the diplomatic smiles and handshakes.
But Mr. Obama dismissed the suggestion that his relationship with Chancellor Merkel was strained. Asked by a German television reporter about it, he playfully admonished the press.
“Stop it, all of you,” Mr. Obama said. “We have more than enough problems out there without manufacturing problems.”
He smiled and looked over to his German counterpart, saying: “It is a great pleasure to be with my friend once again, who I always seek out for intelligent analysis and straight talk.”
Indeed, Mr. Obama said on Friday: “Germany is a close friend and a critical partner to the United States, and I believe that friendship is going to be essential not only for our two countries but for the world if we are to make progress on some of the critical issues that we face, whether it’s national security issues or economic issues or issues that affect the globe like climate change.”
Specifically, he alluded to the global financial crisis, which created major differences between the United States and Germany. Mr. Obama said it was “going to be very important to coordinate between Europe and the United States as we move to strengthen our financial regulatory systems.”
“We affirmed that we are not going to engage in protectionism. And, as all of us do, we have to make sure we keep our borders open and that companies can move back and forth between the United States and Europe in providing goods and services to our respective countries.”
Nicholas Kulish reported from Weimar, Germany; Jeff Zeleny Dresden ; and Alan Cowell from Paris.
19 April 2009
Research on Lesser-Known Nazi Sites Is Now Public
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/world/middleeast/20holocaust.html
By ETHAN BRONNER
Published: April 19, 2009
JERUSALEM — In the Ukrainian town of Berdichev, Jewish women were forced to swim across a wide river until they drowned. In Telsiai, Lithuania, children were thrown alive into pits filled with their murdered parents. In Liozno, Belarus, Jews were herded into a locked barn where many froze to death.
Holocaust deniers aside, the world is not ignorant of the systematic Nazi slaughter of some six million Jews in World War II. People know of the gas chambers in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen; many have heard of the tens of thousands shot dead in the Ukrainian ravine of Babi Yar. But little has been known about the hundreds — perhaps thousands — of smaller killing fields across the former Soviet Union where some 1.5 million Jews met their deaths.
That is now changing. Over the past few years, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and research center in Israel has been investigating those sites, comparing Soviet, German, local and Jewish accounts, cross-checking numbers and methods. The work, gathered under the title “The Untold Stories,” is far from over. But to honor Holocaust Remembrance Day, which starts Monday evening, the research is being made public on the institution’s Web site.
“These are places that have been mostly neglected because they involved smaller towns and villages,” said David Bankier, head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem. “In many cases, locals played a key role in the murders, probably by a ratio of 10 locals to every one German. We are trying to understand the man who played soccer with his Jewish neighbor one day and turned to kill him the next. This provides material for research on genocide elsewhere, like in Africa.”
For the purposes of this project, a killing field entailed at least 50 people, Lea Prais, the project director, said. The murdering began in June 1941 with the German invasion of the Soviet Union. From the Baltic Republics in the north to the Caucuses in the south, Nazi death squads combed the areas.
The first evidence for what took place was gathered right after the war by Soviet investigating committees largely focused on finding anti-Soviet collaborators.
The new research checks those versions against German records, diaries and letters of soldiers, and accounts by witnesses and the few surviving Jews, some of whom climbed out of pits of corpses. Sometimes, the researchers said, the Soviets seemed to have exaggerated, and that is noted on the Web site. One goal of the project is to gain greater specificity of the numbers killed.
One little-known case comes from a German sailor who filmed actual killings in Liepaja, Latvia. The film has been on view for some years at the Yad Vashem museum. But the new Web site has a forgotten video of a 1981 interview with the sailor, Reinhard Wiener, who claimed to have been a bystander with a movie camera.
According to part of his account, “After the civilian guards with the yellow armbands shouted once again, I was able to identify them as Latvian home guardsmen. The Jews, whom I was able to recognize by now, were forced to jump over the sides of the truck onto the ground. Among them were crippled and weak people, who were caught by the others.
At first, they had to line up in a row, before they were chased toward the trench. This was done by SS and Latvian home guardsmen. Then the Jews were forced to jump into the trench and to run along inside it until the end. They had to stand with their back to the firing squad. At that time, the moment they saw the trench, they probably knew what would happen to them. They must have felt it, because underneath there was already a layer of corpses, over which was spread a thin layer of sand.”
Ms. Prais, the project director, said one of the discoveries that most surprised her is the way in which Soviet Jews who survived the war made an effort to commemorate those who perished. In distant fields and village squares they often placed a Star of David or some other memorial despite fears of overt Jewish expression in the Soviet era.
“The silent Jews of the Soviet Union were not so silent,” she said.
The slaughter that some of them had escaped defies the imagination. One case Ms. Prais and her colleagues have cross-referenced involves what happened in the town of Krupki in Belarus, where the entire Jewish community of at least 1,000 was eliminated on Sept. 18, 1941.
A German soldier who took part in the mass murder kept a diary that was found on his body by the Allies, she said. In it, he wrote of having volunteered as one of “15 men with strong nerves” asked to eliminate the Jews of Krupki. “All these had to be shot today,” he wrote. The weather was gray and rainy, he observed.
The Jews had been told they were to be deported to work in Germany but as they were forced into a ditch, the reality of their fate became evident. Panic ensued. The soldier wrote that the guards had a hard time controlling the crowd.
“Ten shots rang out, ten Jews popped off,” he wrote. “This continued until all were dispatched. Only a few of them kept their countenances. The children clung to their mothers, wives to their husbands. I won’t forget this spectacle in a hurry....”
By ETHAN BRONNER
Published: April 19, 2009
JERUSALEM — In the Ukrainian town of Berdichev, Jewish women were forced to swim across a wide river until they drowned. In Telsiai, Lithuania, children were thrown alive into pits filled with their murdered parents. In Liozno, Belarus, Jews were herded into a locked barn where many froze to death.
Holocaust deniers aside, the world is not ignorant of the systematic Nazi slaughter of some six million Jews in World War II. People know of the gas chambers in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen; many have heard of the tens of thousands shot dead in the Ukrainian ravine of Babi Yar. But little has been known about the hundreds — perhaps thousands — of smaller killing fields across the former Soviet Union where some 1.5 million Jews met their deaths.
That is now changing. Over the past few years, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and research center in Israel has been investigating those sites, comparing Soviet, German, local and Jewish accounts, cross-checking numbers and methods. The work, gathered under the title “The Untold Stories,” is far from over. But to honor Holocaust Remembrance Day, which starts Monday evening, the research is being made public on the institution’s Web site.
“These are places that have been mostly neglected because they involved smaller towns and villages,” said David Bankier, head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem. “In many cases, locals played a key role in the murders, probably by a ratio of 10 locals to every one German. We are trying to understand the man who played soccer with his Jewish neighbor one day and turned to kill him the next. This provides material for research on genocide elsewhere, like in Africa.”
For the purposes of this project, a killing field entailed at least 50 people, Lea Prais, the project director, said. The murdering began in June 1941 with the German invasion of the Soviet Union. From the Baltic Republics in the north to the Caucuses in the south, Nazi death squads combed the areas.
The first evidence for what took place was gathered right after the war by Soviet investigating committees largely focused on finding anti-Soviet collaborators.
The new research checks those versions against German records, diaries and letters of soldiers, and accounts by witnesses and the few surviving Jews, some of whom climbed out of pits of corpses. Sometimes, the researchers said, the Soviets seemed to have exaggerated, and that is noted on the Web site. One goal of the project is to gain greater specificity of the numbers killed.
One little-known case comes from a German sailor who filmed actual killings in Liepaja, Latvia. The film has been on view for some years at the Yad Vashem museum. But the new Web site has a forgotten video of a 1981 interview with the sailor, Reinhard Wiener, who claimed to have been a bystander with a movie camera.
According to part of his account, “After the civilian guards with the yellow armbands shouted once again, I was able to identify them as Latvian home guardsmen. The Jews, whom I was able to recognize by now, were forced to jump over the sides of the truck onto the ground. Among them were crippled and weak people, who were caught by the others.
At first, they had to line up in a row, before they were chased toward the trench. This was done by SS and Latvian home guardsmen. Then the Jews were forced to jump into the trench and to run along inside it until the end. They had to stand with their back to the firing squad. At that time, the moment they saw the trench, they probably knew what would happen to them. They must have felt it, because underneath there was already a layer of corpses, over which was spread a thin layer of sand.”
Ms. Prais, the project director, said one of the discoveries that most surprised her is the way in which Soviet Jews who survived the war made an effort to commemorate those who perished. In distant fields and village squares they often placed a Star of David or some other memorial despite fears of overt Jewish expression in the Soviet era.
“The silent Jews of the Soviet Union were not so silent,” she said.
The slaughter that some of them had escaped defies the imagination. One case Ms. Prais and her colleagues have cross-referenced involves what happened in the town of Krupki in Belarus, where the entire Jewish community of at least 1,000 was eliminated on Sept. 18, 1941.
A German soldier who took part in the mass murder kept a diary that was found on his body by the Allies, she said. In it, he wrote of having volunteered as one of “15 men with strong nerves” asked to eliminate the Jews of Krupki. “All these had to be shot today,” he wrote. The weather was gray and rainy, he observed.
The Jews had been told they were to be deported to work in Germany but as they were forced into a ditch, the reality of their fate became evident. Panic ensued. The soldier wrote that the guards had a hard time controlling the crowd.
“Ten shots rang out, ten Jews popped off,” he wrote. “This continued until all were dispatched. Only a few of them kept their countenances. The children clung to their mothers, wives to their husbands. I won’t forget this spectacle in a hurry....”
12 February 2009
Pope Condemns Holocaust Denial
By REUTERS
Published: February 12, 2009
Filed at 7:31 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/02/12/world/international-us-pope-jews-holocaust.html?hp
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, trying to defuse a controversy over a bishop who denies the Holocaust, said Thursday "any denial or minimization of this terrible crime is intolerable," especially if it comes from a clergyman.
The pope also confirmed for the first time that he was planning to visit Israel. Vatican sources say the trip is expected for May. It would be the first by a pope since John Paul visited in 2000.
Benedict made the comments in his first meeting with Jews since the controversy over traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson began in late January. Williamson denies the full extent of the Holocaust and says there were no gas chambers.
The pope told Jewish leaders: "The hatred and contempt for men, women and children that was manifested in the Shoah (Holocaust) was a crime against humanity. This should be clear to everyone, especially to those standing in the tradition of the Holy Scriptures ..."
The German pope recalled his own visit to the death camp at Auschwitz in 2006 and, in some of the strongest words he has ever spoken about the Holocaust and relations with Jews, said:
"It is my fervent prayer that the memory of this appalling crime will strengthen our determination to heal the wounds that for too long have sullied relations between Christians and Jews."
PRAYER FOR FORGIVENESS
He repeated the prayer that the late Pope John Paul used when he visited Jerusalem's Western Wall in 2000 and asked forgiveness from Jews for Christians who had persecuted them in past centuries.
Benedict then added in his own words: "I now make his prayer my own."
Catholic-Jewish relations have been extremely tense since January 24, when Benedict lifted excommunications of four renegade traditionalist bishops in an attempt to heal a schism that began in 1988 when they were ordained without Vatican permission.
Williamson, a member of the ultra-traditionalist Society of St Pius X (SSPX), told Swedish television in an interview broadcast on January 21: "I believe there were no gas chambers."
He said no more than 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, rather than the 6 million accepted by most historians.
The Vatican has ordered him to recant but he so far has not done so, saying he needs more time to review the evidence.
"This terrible chapter in our history (the Holocaust) must never be forgotten," the Pope told the Jewish delegation from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
In his address to the pope, Rabbi Arther Schneier, who hosted the pontiff at his synagogue in New York last year, emotionally told the pontiff:
"As a Holocaust survivor, these have been painful and difficult days, when confronted with Holocaust-denial by no less than a bishop of the Society of St Pius X ....
"Victims of the Holocaust have not given us the right to forgive the perpetrators nor the Holocaust deniers. Thank you for understanding our pain and anguish ..."
Both the pope and Schneier expressed the hope that dialogue between Catholics and Jews could emerge from the crisis even stronger.
While the excommunications of the traditionalist bishops have been lifted, they and members of the SSPX will not be fully readmitted to the Church until they formally accept the teachings of the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council.
One of that historic gathering's key documents was a declaration called "Nostra Aetate" (In Our Times). It repudiated the concept of collective Jewish guilt for Christ's death and urged dialogue with other religions.
(Editing by Diana Abdallah)
Published: February 12, 2009
Filed at 7:31 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/02/12/world/international-us-pope-jews-holocaust.html?hp
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, trying to defuse a controversy over a bishop who denies the Holocaust, said Thursday "any denial or minimization of this terrible crime is intolerable," especially if it comes from a clergyman.
The pope also confirmed for the first time that he was planning to visit Israel. Vatican sources say the trip is expected for May. It would be the first by a pope since John Paul visited in 2000.
Benedict made the comments in his first meeting with Jews since the controversy over traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson began in late January. Williamson denies the full extent of the Holocaust and says there were no gas chambers.
The pope told Jewish leaders: "The hatred and contempt for men, women and children that was manifested in the Shoah (Holocaust) was a crime against humanity. This should be clear to everyone, especially to those standing in the tradition of the Holy Scriptures ..."
The German pope recalled his own visit to the death camp at Auschwitz in 2006 and, in some of the strongest words he has ever spoken about the Holocaust and relations with Jews, said:
"It is my fervent prayer that the memory of this appalling crime will strengthen our determination to heal the wounds that for too long have sullied relations between Christians and Jews."
PRAYER FOR FORGIVENESS
He repeated the prayer that the late Pope John Paul used when he visited Jerusalem's Western Wall in 2000 and asked forgiveness from Jews for Christians who had persecuted them in past centuries.
Benedict then added in his own words: "I now make his prayer my own."
Catholic-Jewish relations have been extremely tense since January 24, when Benedict lifted excommunications of four renegade traditionalist bishops in an attempt to heal a schism that began in 1988 when they were ordained without Vatican permission.
Williamson, a member of the ultra-traditionalist Society of St Pius X (SSPX), told Swedish television in an interview broadcast on January 21: "I believe there were no gas chambers."
He said no more than 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, rather than the 6 million accepted by most historians.
The Vatican has ordered him to recant but he so far has not done so, saying he needs more time to review the evidence.
"This terrible chapter in our history (the Holocaust) must never be forgotten," the Pope told the Jewish delegation from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
In his address to the pope, Rabbi Arther Schneier, who hosted the pontiff at his synagogue in New York last year, emotionally told the pontiff:
"As a Holocaust survivor, these have been painful and difficult days, when confronted with Holocaust-denial by no less than a bishop of the Society of St Pius X ....
"Victims of the Holocaust have not given us the right to forgive the perpetrators nor the Holocaust deniers. Thank you for understanding our pain and anguish ..."
Both the pope and Schneier expressed the hope that dialogue between Catholics and Jews could emerge from the crisis even stronger.
While the excommunications of the traditionalist bishops have been lifted, they and members of the SSPX will not be fully readmitted to the Church until they formally accept the teachings of the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council.
One of that historic gathering's key documents was a declaration called "Nostra Aetate" (In Our Times). It repudiated the concept of collective Jewish guilt for Christ's death and urged dialogue with other religions.
(Editing by Diana Abdallah)
23 December 2008
Hanukkah Receives Kosher Pop Welcome
By JON PARELES
Published: December 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/arts/music/23mati.html?_r=1
Matisyahu deployed what may be the only large, mirrored, rotating dreidel in show business — a Jewish answer to a disco ball — at Webster Hall on Sunday night, the first night of Hanukkah. It was also the first of eight New York City shows for Matisyahu in his third annual Festival of Lights series, bringing different opening acts and guests each night. A large menorah was set up for a mid-concert lighting ceremony, with the blessings declaimed in Hebrew by an audience volunteer.
Matisyahu, who was born Matthew Miller, sings explicitly devotional songs about God, Moshiach (the Messiah) and Orthodox Jewish identity. By setting them to reggae, rock and hip-hop beats, and after working his way up the jam-band circuit, he also reaches listeners with their minds on more secular pursuits, like dancing and drugs. Simcha Levenberg, the M.C. who introduced him, drew big laughs with jokes about marijuana and LSD, although Matisyahu’s song “King Without a Crown” insisted, “If you’re trying to stay high, then you’re bound to be low.”
Matisyahu has built a career on analogies between Rastafarian roots reggae and Hasidic songs. Both are concerned with faith and survival struggles and have lyrics phrased in Biblical allusions; both draw on modal scales and melismatic vocal lines that can sound Middle Eastern. Near the end of the concert Matisyahu sang long, cantorial phrases while rocking back and forth, as if davening, or praying. Yet if his lyrics weren’t so clear about their references to Jewish history and the majesty of God, most of the time Matisyahu would simply be one more reggae-loving rocker.
In “Jerusalem,” which drew heartfelt singalongs, he worries about assimilation, singing, “Cut off the roots of your family tree/Don’t you know that’s not the way to be.” But the roots of his music are Afro-Caribbean and African-American. He uses Jamaican reggae and dancehall toasting, sometimes delivered with a Jamaican accent; he also uses hip-hop cadences and showed off his vocal beatboxing.
His band also segues into rock, for chiming marches that borrow their idealistic sound from U2. Matisyahu is less concerned with a musical heritage than with a religious one.
Album by album Matisyahu has expanded his music. Along with basic roots reggae he now uses faster, tongue-twisting dancehall toasting and the electronic beats and brooding chords of hip-hop. And he’s looking farther: Matisyahu joined Crystal Method, the thumping, rock-tinged electronica duo that opened the show, to sing and rap on a song from their next album, due in March.
Matisyahu rarely improves on his sources. His voice is thin and sometimes nasal, closer to Jack Johnson than to Bob Marley or Sting; his rhymes can be as awkward as they are earnest. But his band — which was augmented, for a few songs, by an Israeli oud player — carries simple vamps through multiple transformations, from meditations to shredding guitar solos. It’s music for believers, with a groove for everyone else.
Matisyahu is at Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, East Village, Tuesday and Thursday , and at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 North Sixth Street, at Wythe Avenue, Saturday through Dec. 30. Tickets: (212) 307-7171 or ticketmaster.com.
Published: December 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/arts/music/23mati.html?_r=1
Matisyahu deployed what may be the only large, mirrored, rotating dreidel in show business — a Jewish answer to a disco ball — at Webster Hall on Sunday night, the first night of Hanukkah. It was also the first of eight New York City shows for Matisyahu in his third annual Festival of Lights series, bringing different opening acts and guests each night. A large menorah was set up for a mid-concert lighting ceremony, with the blessings declaimed in Hebrew by an audience volunteer.
Matisyahu, who was born Matthew Miller, sings explicitly devotional songs about God, Moshiach (the Messiah) and Orthodox Jewish identity. By setting them to reggae, rock and hip-hop beats, and after working his way up the jam-band circuit, he also reaches listeners with their minds on more secular pursuits, like dancing and drugs. Simcha Levenberg, the M.C. who introduced him, drew big laughs with jokes about marijuana and LSD, although Matisyahu’s song “King Without a Crown” insisted, “If you’re trying to stay high, then you’re bound to be low.”
Matisyahu has built a career on analogies between Rastafarian roots reggae and Hasidic songs. Both are concerned with faith and survival struggles and have lyrics phrased in Biblical allusions; both draw on modal scales and melismatic vocal lines that can sound Middle Eastern. Near the end of the concert Matisyahu sang long, cantorial phrases while rocking back and forth, as if davening, or praying. Yet if his lyrics weren’t so clear about their references to Jewish history and the majesty of God, most of the time Matisyahu would simply be one more reggae-loving rocker.
In “Jerusalem,” which drew heartfelt singalongs, he worries about assimilation, singing, “Cut off the roots of your family tree/Don’t you know that’s not the way to be.” But the roots of his music are Afro-Caribbean and African-American. He uses Jamaican reggae and dancehall toasting, sometimes delivered with a Jamaican accent; he also uses hip-hop cadences and showed off his vocal beatboxing.
His band also segues into rock, for chiming marches that borrow their idealistic sound from U2. Matisyahu is less concerned with a musical heritage than with a religious one.
Album by album Matisyahu has expanded his music. Along with basic roots reggae he now uses faster, tongue-twisting dancehall toasting and the electronic beats and brooding chords of hip-hop. And he’s looking farther: Matisyahu joined Crystal Method, the thumping, rock-tinged electronica duo that opened the show, to sing and rap on a song from their next album, due in March.
Matisyahu rarely improves on his sources. His voice is thin and sometimes nasal, closer to Jack Johnson than to Bob Marley or Sting; his rhymes can be as awkward as they are earnest. But his band — which was augmented, for a few songs, by an Israeli oud player — carries simple vamps through multiple transformations, from meditations to shredding guitar solos. It’s music for believers, with a groove for everyone else.
Matisyahu is at Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, East Village, Tuesday and Thursday , and at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 North Sixth Street, at Wythe Avenue, Saturday through Dec. 30. Tickets: (212) 307-7171 or ticketmaster.com.
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