Ceremony opens Holocaust memorial

A Holocaust museum was opened in Bavaria at the site of the Flossenbuerg concentration camp. Holocaust survivors and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, whose father was a prisoner at Flossenbuerg for five months during World War II, attended the opening ceremony, held on the 62nd anniversary of the camp’s liberation in July. “For me this concentration camp has a very human dimension,” Yushchenko said. He said he had a 1944 aerial photograph of Flossenbuerg showing the camp and its prisoners. “I know one of those people is my father.”

An estimated 30,000 prisoners died at Flossenbuerg, located in the southern German state of Bavaria, including Jews from Hungary and Poland, citizens of the Soviet Union and political prisoners from Germany. Eighty-four former prisoners attended the ceremony, according to the AP. After World War II, parts of the camp were dismantled, and a factory and private homes were built. Ex-prisoners began campaigning for a memorial in the mid-1990s. Several camp barracks eventually were restored and a research center opened. — jta

Austria hunts Nazis

Austria is offering rewards for the capture of two Nazis at large and believed to be alive.

The former Nazi-controlled state is offering approximately $69,000 for information leading to the arrest and capture of Aribert Heim, an SS doctor who killed concentration camp inmates with heart injections, and Alois Brunner, a right-hand man to Adolf Eichmann who organized deportations of Jews to death camps.

“Austria is often blamed for having done too little,” Austrian Justice Minister Maria Berger told Reuters. “I don’t want to judge previous governments; I want to do now what we still can do.” — jta

Exhibit looks at anti-Semitic trends in Europe

A new exhibit on current anti-Semitic trends opened at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin on Wednesday, Aug. 1. “Antisemitism? Anti-Zionism? Criticism of Israel?” will be on display in the ministry’s courtyard before moving to the Technical University in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany. It was produced with the support of the German Center for Political Education.

The exhibit, produced by Yad Vashem and the Center for Antisemitism Studies at the Technical University of Berlin, explores current anti-Semitic trends in Europe.