Tennis fans banned from Israel vs. Sweden in Davis Cup match
malmo, sweden | Sweden and Israel will play their first-round Davis Cup match in an empty arena next month because of security concerns.
Several anti-Israeli demonstrations are planned during the best-of-five series, which will be played March 6 to 8 at the 4,000-seat Baltic Hall.
Malmo officials announced the decision after a vote on the issue in the city’s recreational committee. The Swedish Social Democratic Party and the Left Party won the vote 5-4 after a long debate.
The committee said it could not guarantee security for the fans.
Michael Klein, chairman of the Israel Tennis Federation, said it was a shame political demonstrators could force Sweden to keep out fans.
“This means that they will not sell tickets to the general public because they are expecting provocation by troublemakers who have nothing to do with the sport,” he said. “It’s terrible that they are trying to mix politics with sports, especially in an enlightened country like Sweden.” — ap
France helped kill Jews, court says
For the first time, France has officially recognized it was guilty of helping murder French Jews during World War II. When asked Feb. 16 about a related case on granting reparations to a Holocaust victim, the country’s high court took the opportunity to hold France “responsible” for sending Jews to Nazi camps.
The Council of State said the French must “solemnly recognize the responsibility of the state and the collective prejudice suffered,” because the country “permitted or facilitated the deportation from France of victims of anti-Semitic persecution,” the French Daily le Figaro reported.
It was in 1995 that former French President Jacques Chirac became the first French leader to publicly assume his country’s responsibility for sending some 76,000 French Jews to Nazi camps during World War II. Approximately 2,600 survived, according to the Paris-based Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah. Chirac said that German occupiers under the French Vichy government were officially responsible for the Holocaust. — jta
Anti-Semitic tensions hit Toronto campus
Toronto police quelled tensions between Jews and anti-Israel activists at the campus of one of Canada’s largest universities for the second time in two weeks.
Hillel@York, the on-campus club for Jewish students at Toronto’s York University, said that anti-Israel activists “isolated and threatened Jewish students” during a Feb. 12 news conference on the fallout from a long strike that ended recently at York. Jewish students allegedly were subjected to slurs and physically intimidated.
Among the slurs allegedly uttered by those barricading Hillel’s office were “Die bitch — go back to Israel” and “Die Jew — get the hell off campus.” Toronto police escorted the Jewish students out of the office to ensure their safety. — jta
Gestapo-looted poster to be returned to heir
A German court ruled Feb. 10 that Peter Sachs, a 71-year-old Jewish man from Sarasota, Fla., is the rightful owner of a rare poster the Gestapo seized from his father in 1938.
The ruling set the stage for the return of the entire collection of thousands of posters taken by the Nazis, which are now worth at least $5.85 million.
The Berlin administrative court ruled that Hans Sachs never gave up ownership of the collection of 12,500 posters taken from his home on the orders of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
Sachs’ son, Peter, sued in a test case for the return of two posters — a 1932 poster for “Die Blonde Venus” starring Marlene Dietrich, and one for Simplicissimus, a satirical German weekly magazine. The court ruled that it was unclear whether “Die Blonde Venus” was part of his father’s collection, but that there was no doubt about the Simplicissimus poster and that it must be returned to him.
The ruling means that the court has backed the claim of Sachs on the surviving portion of his father’s collection — some 4,000 posters at the German Historical Museum in Berlin, said his attorney, Matthias Druba. Sachs said he now faces a “very daunting” task of identifying which posters in the museum’s 80,000-piece collection belonged to his father, and what to do with them.
Born in 1881, Hans Sachs began collecting posters while in high school and by 1905 was Germany’s leading private poster collector; he later launched the art publication Das Plakat, or the Poster. — ap
ADL: Anti-Semitism still bad in Europe
A study from the Anti-Defamation League released this week found in six European countries — Poland, Hungary and Spain being the worst — anti-Semitic attitudes had changed little since a similar ADL study was conducted in 2007. The new survey was based on telephone interviews with 3,500 respondents in seven European countries.
In announcing the study, the ADL noted that “millions” of Europeans believe in classical anti-Semitic stereotypes, including that Jews have too much power in business and finance and talk too much about the Holocaust. It also said that nearly half of those surveyed “believe Jews are not loyal to their country,” a finding based on a question that asked if Jews are “more loyal” to Israel than to their country of residence.
In the United Kingdom, however, there was a “marked decline” in the percentage of respondents who believe that at least three of four anti-Semitic stereotypes presented are “probably true.” — jta
Montreal bomber gets 40 more months
A judge sentenced Montreal resident Omar Bulphred, 23, to seven years in prison, but gave him 44 months’ credit for the 22 months he has already served, so the sentence amounts to another 40 months — just over five years altogether.
The Algerian-born Bulphred pleaded guilty Feb. 12 to lobbing a Molotov cocktail at the Skver-Toldos Orthodox Jewish Boys school in September 2006 and the Ben Weider Jewish Community Centre the following April. Damage was minimal in both cases. The maximum sentence was 14 years. — jta