News in Brief

Former Jewish ghetto workers can expect old-age pension payments worth a total of 500 million euros, a German court announced yesterday. The Essen court said that German welfare authorities are to run a backdated audit of pension claims, based on a 2009 court ruling in favor of three Holocaust survivors who had demanded a pension after being forced to work by the Nazis while living in ghettos. The ruling was also applied to people who had only been paid by receiving food and other gratuities for their work. In total, the pension authorities are faced with around 70,000 claims, of which 30,000 emanate from Israel. The court estimated that roughly two-thirds of all claims would now be approved. Until now, 90 percent of all claims were rejected. (DPA)

KRAKOW - Anti-Semitic incidents in Poland from this week alone show the need for vigorous efforts to commemorate the Holocaust, the president of the European Jewish Congress told reporters in Krakow on Tuesday, ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which took place yesterday. "This week we saw the language of Adolf Hitler and Adolf Eichmann in Poland," Moshe Kantor said. He was referring to statements attributed to the Krakow-based Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, who was quoted as telling an Italian Catholic news Web site that the Holocaust was a "Jewish invention." "Keep in mind these things were said in the center of a murdered [Jewish] civilization of 1 million people," Kantor said. "This man is a bloody anti-Semite." Also this week, graffiti saying "Jew out" in German was found on the building of a Jewish group in western Poland. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

WARSAW - A Holocaust survivor from Sweden won a long legal fight to reclaim her compensation funds from Germany, which Swedish welfare services unduly confiscated. Yesterday, a Swedish court ordered she be reimbursed. In the ruling by Sweden's highest administrative legal body, the court ordered the Swedish Social Insurance Agency to give back a sum equivalent to some 4,000 euros to Miriam Landau, who was born in Hungary in 1924 and immigrated to Sweden in the 1950s. The insurance agency confiscated the sum, paid to Landau between 1997-2003, because they viewed it as pension payments. Mrs. Landau was already receiving pension payment from the Swedish government; Swedish law forbids dual pension collection. Mrs. Landau receives reparations from Germany for time spent in a ghetto and concentration camp during the Holocaust. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta'al) yesterday linked Holocaust victims to Palestinian victims of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, evoking praise from ministers and fellow lawmakers. The [Holocaust] slaughter victims must be attentive to the suffering of others, "to the cry of the bereaved mother whose home was destroyed, burying her children, to the doctor who lost his daughters, to the other's victim, even if they are their victims," Tibi said at the special Knesset session marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin called Tibi's speech "one of the best speeches" he ever heard in the plenum about the Holocaust. Tibi castigated Holocaust denial, saying nothing was "more foolish or amoral." Shas MK Nissim Ze'ev was evicted from the plenum after interrupting Tibi's remarks, accusing the MK of comparing Holocaust victims to those injured in Gaza. (Jonathan Lis)

A Danish artist claims he used teeth and gold fillings to build a sculpture commemorating the horrors of Auschwitz. The work exhibited yesterday depicts a toy-sized diamond-studded train heading toward the entrance of the camp. Marco Evaristti, a Chilean-born Buddhist with Jewish parents, said parts of the sculpture were built with enamel and gold fillings from teeth that he bought in Austria from a person who said they came from Nazi death camps. He said he also used three teeth from his grandmother that he had received from his mother. The artwork has not created much controversy in Denmark, but in Israel some found it in bad taste. "To me it sounds like a person who is looking for a cheap exploitation of the Holocaust," said Efraim Zuroff, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. "He lacks sensitivity." (AP)