Congress presses the Red Cross
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The U.S. House of Representatives this week passed a resolution calling on the International Committee of the Red Cross to grant full membership and recognition to the Magen David Adom Society and its Star of David emblem.
The international body recently suggested it may accept Israel’s relief agency if it uses a different emblem.
U.S. panel considers fund for survivors
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A presidential panel may determine that the United States owes compensation to Holocaust survivors.
The compensation would cover Jewish-owned bank deposits that were frozen during World War II because the owners were Germans or lived in nations under Nazi control.
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States has until the end of the year to write its final report on what became of a wide range of assets, including bank accounts and artworks, that were owned by Holocaust victims but came under the control of U.S. authorities during the war.
Apology is asked over Elian imagery
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) has called on Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.) and New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to apologize for their use of Holocaust imagery in their descriptions of the Elian Gonzalez case.
Using Nazi imagery is shameful and irresponsible and trivializes the hardship of Holocaust survivors, Nadler said. His comment came after Smith referred to the Wye plantation in eastern Maryland where Gonzalez is staying as a “concentration camp,” and Giuliani called the federal troops that took the boy from his relatives’ Miami home “storm troopers.”
An aide to Smith was later quoted as saying that the senator had meant to say “re-education camp.”
What do Jews study? Cooking, Holocaust
NEW YORK (JTA) — Cooking and the Holocaust are the two Jewish topics that U.S. Jews are most interested in studying, while Jewish art/music and intermarriage rank lowest, according to a new study on adult Jewish learning.
Commissioned by the Jewish Community Centers Association and the Jewish Theological Seminary, the study also found that Jews younger than 45 are somewhat more likely to be involved in Jewish learning than their elders. Highlights of the study were presented at the JCCA biennial in Boston, which ended Wednesday.
Verdicts appealed in Crown Heights
NEW YORK (JTA) — Lawyers for two men convicted in the 1991 slaying of a Chassidic man in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn are questioning the jury selection process in one of the cases and the constitutionality of the federal civil rights law used in the other.
The lawyers took the actions before arguments were heard May 4 in the cases of Lemrick Nelson and Charles Price at a U.S. appeals court.
The two had been convicted on charges related to the stabbing death of Yankel Rosenbaum.