L.A. JCC gun lawsuit approved

los angeles (jta) | Three U.S. families whose children were shot by a white supremacist can sue the makers of the weapons used.

The ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco was greeted with relief by the three families, whose children were shot during the 1995 attack on a Jewish community center, and by the mother of postal worker Joseph Ileto, who was slain by the same gunman in a separate attack.

The suit grew out of the Aug. 10, 1999, attack by Buford Furrow Jr. at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in suburban Los Angeles, which left three children, one teenager and one adult wounded.

Religious streams back ‘road map’

washington (jta) | Leaders of several Jewish movements pressed Colin Powell to get the United States more involved in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Leaders of the U.S. Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative movements joined Christian and Muslim leaders in a meeting with the secretary of state on Tuesday, June 1.

They asked the Bush administration work with Israelis and Palestinians along the lines of the U.S.-backed “road map” peace plan.

Lieberman honors Dachau liberators

washington (jta) | Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) honored the U.S. Army division that liberated his mother-in-law from Dachau.

Lieberman and his wife, Hadassah, honored World War II veterans from the 42nd Infantry Division in Washington on Tuesday, June 1, noting the division freed his mother-in-law, Ella Freilich, from a sub-camp of the Dachau concentration camp in 1945.

“You are in part the reason I am here today, the reason we are all here today,” Hadassah Lieberman told the group. “We must never forget the horror of the Holocaust. And we must never forget the heroism of the liberators.”

Senators want ‘Gold Train’ action

washington (jta) | U.S. senators pressed Attorney General John Ashcroft to resolve the case of Holocaust survivors who lost assets on the “Gold Train.”

A bipartisan letter written by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and signed by more than 15 other senators urged the Justice Department to help return items taken from Hungarian Jews by the Nazis and later seized by U.S. forces in May 1945 on a train in Austria.