Pope in private audience with head of anti-Semitic radio station

Very disconcerting. From WJC:

Pope Benedict XVI has received members of a Polish delegation that included Tadeusz Rydzyk, the owner of the controversial Polish radio station "Radio Maryja". The Redemptionist priest has repeatedly come under fire for anti-Semitic broadcasts and a recent attack on Polish president Kacynski and his wife.

According to a report in a Polish newspaper that is part of Rydzyk's media group, the group of Polish pilgrims was received by the Pope at his summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, near Rome. The paper "Nasz Dziennik" reports that the Pope thanked the listeners of Radio Maryja for their prayers for him and gave his blessing to the radio station and its work. The Vatican confirmed the meeting, but refused to comment on its meaning. The Pope was free to receive whoever he wanted in private audience, a Vatican spokesman told journalists in Rome.

Last year, anti-Semitic broadcasts by Radio Maryja caused considerable concern in the Vatican, which demanded the intervention of Polish church officials. The church set up a supervisory committee but has since failed to significantly alter the programming of the ultra-conservative broadcaster. In his most recent outburst, Rydzyk attacked the Polish government led by the twin Kacynski brothers of "selling out to Jews"� and called the Polish first lady a "witch".

Today in Jewish History - Tammuz 5

Sponsored by Aish.com:

In 1946, Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, with no other place to go, returned to their hometown of Kielce, Poland -- and were attacked by the townspeople in a bloody pogrom that left 42 Jews dead and 80 wounded. The pogrom began when rumors spread that Jews had kidnapped a Polish child. Polish policemen and soldiers entered the Jewish residences and began the violence; the Jews were then attacked outside by mobs in a fray that lasted five hours. Some 3 million Polish Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust, yet this pogrom -- occurring 15 months after the end of World War II -- was a horrific aftershock.

Exclusive: Images of a lost community

This is the incredible story of a collection of 178 family pictures, which were hidden in the walls of a house in Poland just before the Holocaust, only to be found some 60 years later and be returned to their rightful owners

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Proposal Would Launch State Talks with Poland over Jewish Property

Before the Holocaust there were three and a half million Jews living in Poland, and there was a loss of property estimated to be worth 30 to 40 billion dollars. Unlike Germany, Austria, and France which have arranged for the restoration of stolen Jewish property to their heirs, Poland has not done this.

Minister Rafi Eitan wants to involve the Israeli government in negotiating with Poland and other Eastern Europe countries for restitution of Jewish property.

The Foreign Ministry does not want the government to be involved, fearing it might cause difficulties with relations between Israel and these countries. Eitan believes that the Polish government would accept negotiations with the Israeli government. He wants a detailed survey of Jewish property in Poland and then form a corporation to deal with the claims. This corporation would be owned by the government and the Claims Conference and would handle the claims efficiently while protecting the heirs from fraud.

The IHC recommends that you read this article in full.
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Source: www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/838713.html

Mock Nazi camp in Debica, Poland

The authorities of the Debica region in southern Poland have decided to construct a replica of a Nazi concentration camp. The copy of the camp would be situated in the locality of Pustkow , where a Nazi concentration camp operated during WWII. Some 3 thousand Poles, 7 thousand Jews and 5 thousand Soviet POW were murdered there. The replica of the camp with the main entrance gate, barracks for prisoners surrounded by barbed wire is to stand near the Mountain of Death a memorial to the victims of the Pustkow camp. The initiative would be financed by EU funds and as the authorities of the region says will have an educational and commemorative aim.

Films: NYC Film event "Saved by Deportation: An Unknown Odyssey of Polish Jews"

Received by email:
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From: "Vlady Rozenbaum"

Dear Friends,

Saved by Deportation: An Unknown Odyssey of Polish Jews, is finally out and I am proud to announce that its New York Premiere will take place at the The Makor/Steinhardt Center on March 14 and 15, 2007 at 6 PM and 8 PM. BothRobert and myself will be there for a Q&A session following the screening.

It took Robert Podgursky, a co-producer of this film, and myself, more thenseven years to complete this film, and we consider it 'a labor of love'.This feature documentary (80 min.) has already won the Audience Award forthe Best Documentary at The Washington Jewish Film Festival in WashingtonD.C. in December of 2006.

In 1940, a year before the Nazis started deporting Jews to death camps, Joseph Stalin ordered the deportation of approximately 200,000 Polish Jewsfrom Russian-occupied Eastern Poland to forced labor settlements in theSoviet interior. As cruel as Stalin's deportations were, ultimately they largely saved Jewish lives, for the deportees constituted the overwhelming majority of Polish Jews who escaped the Nazi Holocaust. Saved by Deportation not only tells this story, but it re-traces the path Asher and Shyfra Scharf traveled more than 60 years ago from Poland to Siberia to the former Soviet states of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia.

This little-known storyof survival is both a harrowing adventure and an affirmation of human goodness during times of great darkness.You can find out more about this film and/or order a DVD or VHS copy of thefilm on its website: http://www.savedbydeportation.com

Best
Slawomir Grunberg

Theater address and contact:
35 West 67th StreetBetween Central Park West and Columbus Avenue

To purchase a ticket online go to:
http://www.92y.org/shop/event_detail.asp?productid=T%2DMM5FM05

Log In Productions
4 La Rue Rd.
Spencer, NY 14883Tel: 607 589 4709; Fax: 607 589 6151; Cell: 917 864 0715
e-mail: grunberg@logtv.com

http://www.logtv.com/tv

Reopening of the Yeshiva Chachmei Synagogue in Lublin

From The European Jewish Press:

Poland’s Jewish community celebrated on Sunday the reopening of the Lublin synagogue in the building which once housed the largest rabbi school in Europe before being nearly destroyed in the Holocaust.

Michael Schudrich, Poland’s chief rabbi, performed theopening ceremony at the Yeshiva Chachmei synagogue inthe eastern Poland city. Schudrich said the reopening of the synagogue is asign of the "growing up" of Poland’s Jewish community.

With the affixing of the mezuzah – a special parchment with required Hebrew inscriptions - to the synagogue doorposts and the ceremonial entry of the Torah scroll, the synagogue once again became a place of worship for Poland’s Jewish community, 77 years after its original opening.

Dancing, singing and prayers accompanied the reopening of the first synagogue in Poland since WWII to be renovated entirely through the efforts of the country’s Jewish community and without state or foreign aid.

Around 10,000 Jews live today in Poland. Some 3. 5 Jews lived in Poland prior WWII, one- tenth of the population and the largest Jewish diaspora in the world.

Up to 3 million were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, with the majority of survivors fleeing the country following the wave of post-war anti-Semitism.

Before WWII Lublin was one of the most important centres of the Jewish life, especially in field of education. Jews first settled in the city at the beginning of the 14th century and intensified after 1336, when King Casmir the Great gave the Jews so called “privilege of settlement”.

In 1930 Rabbi Meir Shapiro, creator of the Daf Yomi, founded the biggest Talmudic school in the world in Lublin, the Yeshiva Chachmei. During the Middle Ages Lublin was known as the "Jewish Oxford" due to its tradition of study and community of learned Jews.

Jewish life in the city developed till the outbreak of the war. In 1939 the Jewish population of Lublin was about 40,000 (40 percent of total population).

During the Holocaust Nazis killed not only almost all Jewish residents but destroyed the entire Jewish quarter. Most of Jewish Lublinians were murdered in the Majdanek concentration camp. Until 2003 the building of the former yeshiva was occupied by the Lublin Medical Academy but three years ago it was returned to the Warsaw Jewish Religious Community, to which the around 30-strong Lublin Jewish community belongs.