Year: 2000

New Zealand school apologizes for thesis that denied Holocaust

Dated:

SYDNEY, Australia, Dec. 24 (JTA) — A New Zealand university has apologized to the Jewish community for awarding a master’s degree to a student who had written a thesis denying the Holocaust.

The 1993 thesis by Joel Hayward is cited regularly by neo-Nazis and other Holocaust deniers as evidence that they have academic support for their positions.

[…]

In 1998, Fredrick Toben, whose advocacy of Holocaust denial has been found to be unlawful by both the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and the Federal Court of Justice in Germany, tried to submit Hayward’s thesis as his defense against charges that Holocaust denial was not a legitimate academic subject.

Canterbury University awarded a degree to the author of the thesis, “The Fate of Jews in German Hands,” but after a study has concluded that it had a “perverse and unjustified conclusion.”

The university’s vice chancellor, Daryl Le Grew, apologized to the Jewish community but said the university had no power to revoke the granting of the degree.

The president of the New Zealand Jewish Council, David Zwartz, said the council is “deeply concerned that after all that has happened the Jewish community is left with a Holocaust denial thesis.”

“There is a fundamental difference in our attitudes,” Zwartz said. “The university has been concerned with how the thesis came to be awarded a first-class honors M.A., and how it can prevent such things happening again. The Jewish council doesn’t want it to happen again, but it is also concerned with the effect the thesis has and will have in the future in encouraging Holocaust deniers to think they have academic support for their poisonous views.”

[…]

Source: jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/20001224Schoolapologizesfo.html
By Jeremy Jones
Published: 12/24/2000

Gas chambers at Bergen-Belsen

Dated:

Sigi Ziering; Tycoon Survived Nazi Camps

  • Executive Became a Philanthropy and High-Tech Leader

By: MYRNA OLIVER TIMES STAFF WRITER

Obituaries

Los Angeles Times, Home Edition

Tuesday, November 14, 2000

Metro Section: Metro

Page B-6

SEE CORRECTION APPENDED

It must have been the “training” of the Holocaust, the self-described workaholic speculated to Fortune magazine a couple of years ago. “Unless you work,” he said, “you are destined for the gas chamber.”

And work he did — as a teenager relocated to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia, then to Fuhlsbuttel prison near Hamburg, Germany, and on to a Kiel concentration camp. He survived the Nazis but never stopped working until about a year ago, when he was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Sigi Ziering, who turned a chemist’s bright idea into Diagnostic Products Corp., one of Los Angeles’ most successful international high-tech companies, died Sunday. He was 72.

[…]

Toward the end of the war, the Zierings were moved to the Fuhlsbuttel prison. Every week, they watched Nazis load 10 or so Jews into a truck destined for Bergen-Belsen and the gas chambers. “With German precision,” Ziering told Fortune in 1998, “the guards went at their job alphabetically — and never got to Z.”

Later, the Zierings were marched to a Kiel concentration camp, where males were routinely murdered if they failed a physical test — running a mile carrying a heavy piece of wood. Ziering and his brother passed.

[…]

—- START OF CORRECTION —-

For the Record;

Los Angeles Times Saturday, November 18, 2000 Home Edition; Metro; Part B; Page 6; Metro Desk; 1 inches; 22 words;

Type of Material: Correction

Bergen-Belsen — The obituary of Sigi Ziering in Tuesday’s Times incorrectly stated that there were gas chambers at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

—- END CORRECTION TEXT —-

First the Holocaust, Now This

Dated:

The Elderly Jews of South Florida … and 62 Years Ago Tonight

[…]

To many of you, World War II and the Holocaust probably seems like ancient history. The truth is, there are tens of thousands of people who lived through that horror, escaped the ovens, and are now living out their final years in South Florida. None of us can imagine what they went through; first to survive, and then to somehow make it to a country where they believed they would be free and their voice would be heard. These immigrants worked hard to raise families in America, contribute to our society, and make this country a better place for all of us. They took their citizenship duties very seriously, to the point where many of us have probably rolled our eyes a time or two over their extreme patriotism and love of America. Silly old people!

[…]

Yours,

Michael Moore

www.michaelmoore.com

Posted 11.10.00

Manipulating Memory May Provide a Way to Forget Fear

Dated:

Depending on your favorite poet, memory is sweet (Cowper), pleasing (Pope), green (Shakespeare) or fond (Moore). If you prefer science to poetry, though, memory is, above all else, faulty. Memory’s essential imperfection is no secret. Everybody sometimes suffers from forgetfulness. And psychologists have long known that not only do people forget, they also misremember. Still, scientists are only beginning to learn just how strangely flawed human memory can be. One new study, for example, suggests that the worst thing you can do for a memory is recall it. In other words, practice makes imperfect. If you use a memory, you can lose it.

Continue reading →

Brothers reunited after 61 years

Dated:

By Sima Stein
The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

JERUSALEM (August 18) — It is not every day that brothers who have been separated for over 60 years are reunited. On Wednesday, Lazar Sheiman, 78, and his brother Leonid, 79, both Holocaust survivors, met at Yad Vashem for the third time since their first reunion with each other last month after 61 years.

“It’s not every day that miracles happen,” said Leonid. “I feel like I’ve found a new brother.”

“We reminisce about stories from home,” he said when asked what brothers who have been separated for 61 years speak about. “There has been nothing hard about this meeting,” he said. “It has all been easy.”

[…]

The brothers last saw one another in their hometown of Tomaszow in 1941, as the German Army advanced on Soviet-occupied Poland. Leonid was drafted into the Red Army, and Lazar was recruited into the youth groups deployed on work details throughout the Soviet Union.

Lazar immigrated to Israel from Poland in 1957, and Leonid in 1995 from Ukraine. For the past five years they were unaware they were living only 80 kms. from each other — Lazar in Herzliya and Leonid in Kiryat Gat.

It was only in response to his daughter’s suggestion that Lazar filled out a form at Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names earlier this year that ultimately connected him with his long-lost brother. Each thought he was the sole survivor of a family of two parents, five boys, and one girl.

“I was sure there was no one,” Lazar said.

The brothers communicate in Russian, since Leonid does not yet speak Hebrew. Though neither plans to move closer to the other, both intend to meet and speak often, “to make up for lost time.”