Admissions against interest

Man Who Warned of Holocaust Dies

GENEVA (AP) — Gerhart Riegner, who tried to alert the world about the planned Nazi Holocaust and later led the World Jewish Congress, died Monday. He was 90. Riegner died of pneumonia in a Geneva hospital, according to his spokeswoman Edda Bournot.

Too close to Israel

I used to live two blocks from the World Trade Center, and saw this tragedy coming years ago. Each year that passed, I was thankful and amazed it hadn’t happened yet.

At age 10, Nadia Larsen asked her father about his family, separated by World War II, because she longed to know her roots.

All he told her was that she came from “blue blood,” but the girl replied that her blood was red.

Lucy Dawidowicz, the late Holocaust historian, recalled that one day she received a phone call from a young man affiliated with Larry King’s American national talk-radio program. She was asked if she would be prepared to debate Robert Faurisson, a well-known anti-Semite who denies that Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Dawidowicz replied that Faurisson should not be provided a platform for his virulent anti-Semitism.

(CNSNews.com) — A Jewish rabbi has told the annual meeting of an international Catholic organization that “[Pope] Pius XII saved more Jewish lives than any other person, including Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler,” contrary to press accounts over the last several years that claimed Pius XII did little or nothing to prevent the holocaust. Several Jewish organizations have also criticized Pius XII for his alleged failure to act.

Durban, South Africa (CNSNews.com) — U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called on Israel Friday to stop using the Holocaust as a reason to continue what he said were policies of occupation, displacement, and extra-judicial killings of Palestinians.

Historian says Roman Catholic leader once targeted by Hitler

For decades, critics have expressed resentment and outrage over reports that Pope Pius XII, who led the Catholic Church during World War II, did little or nothing to help Jews escape the terror of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis.

AS AN EARLY TEEN, I was playing in a YMCA basketball league in Sumter, South Carolina, a leafy, sleepy southern town of about 35,000 where I was born and raised. Being of Jewish descent, I had to play for a Methodist team because the Jewish population in the county — indeed, in the state, at that time — was limited enough to preclude its own league. The YMCA was agreeable to this, and a few other Jewish kids from surrounding areas played as well.