He is probably not criminally responsible for his actions because he had smoked marijuana beforehand, a French judge ruled. Continue reading

The post was put up on De Post Belgian Beer Cafe's Facebook page on Saturday morning advertising a platter and drinks for $45 deal. Continue reading

Determined on a "feeling thermometer" ranging from 0 (freezing) to 100 (very hot), Jews and Catholics achieved a mean rating of 67 and 66 respectively.

Mainline Protestants are just behind at 65.

The lowest ratings are for atheists at 50% and Muslims at 48%. Read more

At some point, however, the refugees no longer knew what to do next. Where would they be safe? How were the Nazis attempting to find them? There was no refugee center, no leadership, no organization and exasperatingly little reliable information. But what did exist was the art of improvisation and the helpfulness of many Danes, who now had a chance to prove themselves.

Members of the Danish underground movement emerged who could tell the Jews who was to be trusted. There were police officers who not only looked the other way when the refugees turned up in groups, but also warned them about Nazi checkpoints. And there were skippers who were willing to take the refugees across the Baltic Sea to Sweden in their fishing cutters, boats and sailboats.

A Small Country With a Big Heart

Denmark in October 1943 was a small country with a big heart. It had been under Nazi occupation for three-and-a-half years. And although Denmark was too small to have defended itself militarily, it also refused to be subjugated by the Nazis. The Danes negotiated a privileged status that even enabled them to retain their own government. They assessed their options realistically, but they also set limits on how far they were willing to go to cooperate with the Germans.

The small country defended its democracy, while Germany, a large, warmongering country under Hitler, was satisfied with controlling the country from afar and, from then on, viewed Denmark as a "model protectorate." That was the situation until the summer of 1943, when strikes and acts of sabotage began to cause unrest. This prompted the Germans to threaten Denmark with court martials and, in late August, to declare martial law. The Danish government resigned in protest. Continue reading

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Image: The Jewish Daily Forward

Her husband is waiting in the living room, surrounded by souvenirs and family photos. Stoliar, his light-blue eyes twinkling, appears much younger than 90. He laughs, chats about the weather, mentions the road conditions up on nearby Mount Hood. He's making small talk, obviously, to avoid the actual topic of this visit.

David Stoliar needs time to bring his thoughts — and himself — all the way back to that night. He's actually never discussed it before with a German reporter. "Nobody has asked me," he says with a shrug, adding emphatically that, after this meeting, he won't ever speak of it again — with no one, no matter what or where they're from.

"Not a good memory," Stoliar states matter-of-factly. "I just want to finish my life in peace."

But memories, of course, can't be dismissed so easily. Especially these memories. The explosion, catapulting him into the water. The screams of the others, fading slowly. The wait for his own certain death on that icy night at sea.

Stoliar's story has always been a taboo of sorts. His ordeal illuminates a forgotten, inconvenient chapter of the Holocaust, which the then-Allies would rather not be reminded of. For, if anything, they chose to look the other way — before, during and after.

"Everybody had an excuse," Marda says.

That chapter found its horrifying conclusion in the Black Sea, near Istanbul, in the wee hours of February 24, 1942. That's when a Soviet submarine sank a Jewish refugee ship en route to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine. All told, 786 people, among them 101 children, either died instantly or slowly froze and drowned in the wintry water.

Only one of them made it. Continue reading

Source

• Spiegel Online

Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders spoke of the threat anti-Semitism poses to non-Jewish communities and even to democratic government.

The hearing was called by Republican Congressman Chris Smith, chairman of the global human rights subcommittee of the House of Representatives.

"When we fight anti-Semitism it is not only a matter of justice for Jewish fellow-citizens, but also of standing up for Christianity, and for Islam, and for the possibility of decent living itself," he said.

Speakers detailed examples of anti-Semitism in Eastern and Western Europe as well as the Middle East, including efforts to ban kosher slaughter and circumcision. State authorities were often slow to respond to anti-Semitic attacks, they said.

"Unfortunately," said Katrina Lantos Swett, chairwoman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, "anti-Semitism remains a phenomenon that knows no national boundaries."

Dr. M. Zuhudi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, said the radical nature of militant Islamist extremism has fueled an exodus of not only Jews but also Christians and moderate Muslims from many areas of the Middle East, creating a "vacuum of religious diversity" and a stifling of intellectual freedom.

Rabbi David Myer, professor of rabbinic literature at the Gregorian Pontifical University in Rome, described the character of legal anti-Semitism in Europe. Attacks on religious practices will lead to attacks on all religious expression, he warned, and this "inevitably ends with attacks against Jews".

John Garvey, president of Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., asserted that a "society that tolerates anti-Semitism cannot maintain a healthy democracy."

This issue is also of particular interest to Catholics, continued Garvey, because "we are one family in the Abrahamic tradition" and so anti-Semitism "is an attack on our family".

In Germany, circumcision has been called "a violation of individual rights and an outmoded and harmful religious practice", he said, observing a connection between this reasoning and the arguments used in the US "for requiring Catholic institutions to cover prescription contraceptives, early stage abortifacients, and sterilisations".

Sources:

Catholic News Agency

Congressman Chris Smith

Image: Catholic News Agency

Dignitaries from all walks of life will converge on Wellington to officially open the centre, with the ceremony including the unveiling of two suitcases belonging to children sent to New Zealand to get away from war.

Director Inge Woolf says it'll be an important day for many.

"We're welcoming guests from all denominations. It's not just going to be Jewish people because the Holocaust didn't just happen to Jews, it happened to the world."

Read More