Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area.

MOSCOW (JTA) — A Ukrainian man claimed he arrested in January 1945 a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during World War II.

Bogdan Tarnavsky's claim on Russian national television that he arrested Raoul Wallenberg conflicts with the generally accepted account that Wallenberg disappeared after he drove off with Soviet guards, saying he wanted to discuss protection for Jews after the Soviet army liberated Hungary.

During the Soviet era, the government claimed that Wallenberg died of a heart attack in 1947.

Shoah painting sells for a small fortune

LONDON (JTA) — A planned New York art gallery paid $1.68 million for a painting by Felix Nussbaum, who died in the Auschwitz death camp.

The Neue Galerie, which is slated to open in the fall of 2001, bought "Self-Portrait in the Camp" at a Sotheby's auction in London on Oct. 18. The previous record price for a work by Nussbaum was $260,000.

In related news, a Jewish American woman won a court battle with Hungary for the return of Nazi-looted art after a judge ruled that Hungary did not try to locate the owners of the artworks.

A World Jewish Congress representative said she hoped Hungary would now join with countries such as Germany and Britain in publishing lists of suspected Nazi-looted art now sitting in museums so the rightful owners may be found.

Prosecution toughens in AMIA bomb case

BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — Argentine prosecutors asked a judge to upgrade the charges on an extradition request of a key witness in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center here.

The prosecutors want Wilson Dos Santos to be charged with having participated in the AMIA bombing, which killed 86 people, and not just with giving false testimony.

Dos Santos, a Brazilian citizen living in Switzerland, is also believed to have participated in the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, which killed 29 people.

Austrian memorial site honors Jewish victims

VIENNA (JTA) — An Austrian memorial to Jews killed during the Holocaust was unveiled on Wednesday.

A compromise allowed for the erection of the sculpture "Nameless Library," by the British artist Rachel Whiteread, which was delayed for four years after excavation unearthed the remains of a medieval synagogue on the memorial's planned site.

Meanwhile, the Jerusalem-based Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial posthumously honored a Chinese diplomat who issued visas to Jews in wartime Austria so they could escape the Nazis.

Ho Fengshan, China's consul general in Vienna from 1938 to 1940, issued the visas to thousands of Jews despite opposition from the Chinese ambassador in Berlin. He died three years ago in San Francisco at 96.