Argentine Jews remember bombing

Argentine Jews marked the 16th anniversary this week of the Israeli Embassy bombing in Buenos Aires.

Twenty-nine people were killed March 17, 1992 in an attack that has been blamed on Hezbollah, a terrorist group supported by Iran, and was supposedly masterminded by Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated earlier this year.

No one has been tried in court for the attack. — jta

Did Eichmann save 800 Jews?

Adolf Eichmann might have saved the lives of 800 Jews, according to the British Sunday Times.

Eichmann, the notorious Nazi executed in Israel in 1962 for crimes against humanity, allegedly saved the Jews by holding them in Berlin’s Jewish Hospital.

Red Army soldiers searching the area at the end of the war encountered the Jewish survivors. Eichmann protected some because they either had collaborated with the Nazis or were married to influential Germans. Others worked for the hospital.

Eichmann’s intention was to make Berliners think that Jews were being well cared for, the Times report said. — jta

Amulet with Sh’ma found in Austria

University of Vienna archeologists announced they have unearthed an amulet in a third-century grave bearing the Sh’ma prayer.

The find in eastern Austria represents the earliest sign of Jewish inhabitants in present-day Austria, the university said in a recent news release.

The silver amulet contains a gold scroll on which the words of the Sh’ma are inscribed in Greek.

The grave, which belongs to a child, is one of about 300 graves in an ancient Roman cemetery discovered in 1986 near the town of Halbturn. The amulet will go on display next month in Austria. — jta

S.F. refugee activist testifies at U.N.

Regina Waldman, founder of San Francisco-based JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa), was part of a group of Jewish refugees from Arab lands that testified March 18 before the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.

The U.N. body has been sharply criticized for singling out Israel while ignoring refugee issues in other countries, and the United Nations in general has never formally recognized the plight of Jewish refugees from Middle Eastern nations.

Waldman, wearing her grandmother’s wedding dress, spoke of the terror of Jews of the region when they were forced out by some Arab regimes following Israel’s creation. — jta