Polish workers find hidden Auschwitz letter
A construction crew renovating a cellar near the site of the Auschwitz death camp April 20 discovered a bottle hidden in a concrete wall.
A note, dated Sept. 9, 1944, was written in pencil, then rolled up and inserted in a bottle. It contains the names of seven young prisoners — six from Poland and one from France — who likely thought they were doomed to die at Auschwitz.
“All of them are between the ages of 18 and 20,” the final sentence reads.
Auschwitz museum spokesman Jaroslaw Mensfelt said two of the prisoners survived the camp, but he did not have further details. “They were young people who were trying to leave some trace of their existence behind them,” he said.
Workmen were tearing out a wall in the basement of a college building in the Polish town of Oswiecim — which was called Auschwitz by the Nazis during World War II — when they discovered the bottle. — ap
Israeli security drives Somali pirates away
An Italian cruise ship with 1,500 people on board avoided a pirate attack off the coast of Somalia when its Israeli private security forces exchanged fire with the bandits and drove them away.
Cmdr. Ciro Pinto told Italian state radio that six men in a small white boat approached the MSC Melody on April 25 and opened fire, but retreated after the Israeli security officers aboard the cruise ship returned fire.
Another Italian vessel remains in the hands of pirates. The Italian-flagged tugboat Buccaneer was seized off Somalia on April 11 with 16 crew members aboard. — ap
Belarus destroys renowned rabbi’s shul
Workers are tearing down a former Belarus synagogue where a renowned rabbi served before fleeing the Soviet Union for New York in 1936.
Moshe Feinstein, considered one of the most influential Orthodox rabbis in the United States until his death in 1986, was the last rabbi to serve at the synagogue in this once predominantly Jewish town.
After his departure, the synagogue in Luban was taken over by Young Pioneers for the training of future communists.
The synagogue’s role in town history was publicly recognized in 1996, when a memorial plaque in English, Belarusian and Hebrew was put up on the building, which by then housed a medical clinic.
The local government now plans to build a supermarket at the site, which is on the main square of the town, located 85 miles (140 kilometers) south of Minsk, the capital.
“The synagogue was the only reminder left of the Jews,” said Arkady Gelfand, a 70-year-old teacher who is one of five Jews remaining in the town of 11,000.
Only about 25,000 Jews now live in Belarus, a country of 10 million people squeezed between Poland and Russia. Before the war, more than half of the urban population was Jewish, and Yiddish was a state language. — ap
Reputed Hitler watercolors sell at English auction
What a British auction house claims is a set of paintings and sketches by a young Adolf Hitler sold at auction last week for just under $145,000.
Among the 15 pictures is a portrait of a solitary figure dressed in brown, peering into wine-colored waters. The date is 1910, the signature reads “A. Hitler” and scribbled just over the mysterious figure are the letters: “A.H.”
“I don’t think they’re fakes. I don’t think any hoaxer would have had the bottle to continue, given the global publicity about this,” said Richard Westwood-Brookes, historical documents expert at auction house Mullocks that carried out the sale.
The portrait itself sold for around $15,000. The buyer, John Ratledge, 46, said he planned to hang it in his home or office. — ap
Excavation begins on Nazi-era mass grave
The excavation of what likely is the largest mass grave of Nazi Jewish victims in Germany is being excavated.
Work began last week in the small Brandenburg town of Jamlitz, about 75 miles southeast of Berlin. The excavation of the nearly 54,000-square-foot site will take three weeks.
The site is where 753 Jewish concentration camp prisoners were shot and killed by the SS near the end of World War II, on Feb. 2, 1945. More Jews were shot and killed the following day.
Once the remains are found and reburied according to Orthodox Jewish ritual, a memorial site will be established, according to Brandenburg Interior Minister Joerg Schoenbohm.
The victims, men and women mostly of Hungarian and Polish background, had been held in a satellite of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, reportedly after being transferred from Auschwitz ahead of its liberation by the Soviet army Jan. 27.
In all, some 1,342 prisoners from the satellite camp were shot. Some of the bodies were recovered decades ago in a gravel pit in nearby Staakow, according to news reports. — jta