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Friday, February 20, 2009

Leading terrorism expert Brigitte Gabriel to speak Monday, March 30 presented by Jewish Federation and JCRC



The Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines and The Jewish Community Relations Commission invite you to a public presentation with Brigitte Gabriel, one of the leading terrorism experts in the world.

Brigitte Gabriel, a Christian Arab who survived the Lebanese Civil War, speaks out.



“The Untold Story”

Monday, March 30, 7:00 pm
Tifereth Israel Synagogue, 924 Polk Boulevard, Des Moines.


Author of New York Times best-selling books “Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terrorism Warns America” and “They Must Be Stopped: Why WE Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It," Brigitte Gabriel provides information and analysis on Global Islamic terrorism. Among her activities, Gabriel is a regular guest analyst on Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, ABC and various radio stations daily across America.

This program is made possible through the generosity of Stanley and Gail Richards.

Join us for this thought-provoking presentation and discussion. Free of charge. No reservations necessary. Book signing to follow. For more information contact jcrc@dmjfed.org.


Brigitte Gabriel has become one of the leading terrorism experts in the world providing information and analysis on Global Islamic terrorism. She is a member of the board of Advisors of the Intelligence Summit and lectures nationally and internationally about terrorism and current affairs. Her expertise are sought after by world and business leaders. She has addressed the Australian Prime Minister John Howard, members of The British Parliament/House of Commons, members of the United States Congress, The Joint Forces Staff College, The US Special Operations Command, the FBI and many others. In addition, Gabriel is a regular guest analyst on Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, ABC and various radio stations daily across America.

Gabriel began her career as news anchor for "World News," an evening Arabic news broadcast for Middle East Television seen throughout Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Cyprus and Lebanon. She covered the Israeli security zone in Lebanon and the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank. Her work is of international scope having brought her in contact with world figures such as Margaret Thatcher, George H. Bush, Queen Nour El Hussein, Itzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

With a passion and vigor hailing directly from profound experience -- the opening salvos of Islamic jihad towards the Western world in the Middle East -- Gabriel offers a poignant account of a remarkable upbringing. A native of South Lebanon, as a pre-teen she survived the first attack of the Lebanese civil war in 1975: a barrage of Muslim rockets that exploded in her house and left her wounded and buried under the rubble. Gabriel and her family then spent the next seven years in subterranean hiding while Lebanon was under Islamic attack.

Fiercely articulate and passionately committed, Gabriel outlines mistakes the West has made in underestimating the single-mindedness with which radical Islamists have pursued their goals for the past 30 years. A political hawk on international policy, she discusses the threat of radical Islam to world peace and national security in her New York Times best-selling memoir, Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terrorism Warns America (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). Gabriel's second book, They Must Be Stopped (St. Martin's Press, 2008), continues her mission to - in her words - "challenge our western and politically-correct notions about Islam, demonstrating why radical Islam is so deadly and how we can halt its progress."

Gabriel took up residence in Israel in 1984 and while there rose quickly to an anchor position with Middle East Television's "World News" -- an evening-news program broadcast in Israel, Lebanon, Syria and beyond. Relocating to the United States in 1989, she created a TV production and advertising company, with a client roster that included ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX News, CNN, Discovery, TLC and the History Channel.

From the war-torn bomb shelters of Lebanon to the boardrooms of America, Gabriel is a startling illustration of the American Dream. An inspiration for women throughout the world, she has balanced the demands of a successful career with the equally challenging duties of motherhood. Her passionate lectures emit a positive and empowering message to act on one's beliefs.

Ms. Gabriel is represented exclusively by Greater Talent Network, Inc.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Controversy over the agenda of the UN's World Conference Against Racism, April 2009

What is the controversy over the UN World Conference Against Racism ( Durban II) all about?
 
Here is a brief examination of the topic by Mitchell Bard, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths2/Israelsroots.html#a7
 
Bard informs readers that the UN's 2001 Conference Against Racism did not address the very real and important cases of racial oppression around the world but crudely and hatefully aimed to brand Israel as a racist state.  The present concern is that the April 2009 Conference in Durban, South Africa, not simply repeat the prior outpouring of blatant attempts to delegitimize Israel, in preparation for its destruction.  //Mark Finkelstein

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In 2001, Arab nations again were seeking to delegitimize Israel by trying to equate Zionism with racism at the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. The United States joined Israel in boycotting the conference when it became clear that rather than focus on the evils of racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia that were supposed to be the subject of the event, the conference had turned into a forum for bashing Israel.

The United States withdrew its delegation “to send a signal to the freedom loving nations of the world that we will not stand by if the world tries to describe Zionism as racism. That is as wrong as wrong can be.” White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer added the President is proud to stand by Israel and by the Jewish community and send a signal that no group around the world will meet with international acceptance and respect if its purpose is to equate Zionism with racism.20

The UN's Durban Review Conference, dubbed “Durban II, ” has been scheduled for April 2009. Though the conference is intended to target racism, many fear the agenda will again be hijacked and turned into another hate fest directed at Israel. The Obama Administration has declared its intention to participate in the planning for Durban II to try to prevent Iran, Cuba, Libya, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (all gross violators of human rights) and hostile nongovernmental organizations from again promoting Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism and the demonization of Israel. The United States is determined to see the conference play a positive role in combatting global racism and supporting human rights.20a Israel has nevertheless declared its intention to boycott the event and has publicly asked the ‘free world’ to do the same.20b The expectation is that the United States will again join the boycott if the agenda is not consistent with its expectations.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Israeli journalist Yossi Klein HaLevi interviews ilndividuals from what he terms the ultra-nationalist Jewish and Arab political parties.  The location:  Akko, which is in our Des Moines/Israel Partnership region.
 
The New Republic  
Postcards from the Edge

Ground Zero Of Israel's New Ultra-Nationalism.

Yossi Klein Halevi ,  The New Republic  Published: February 13, 2009


Adham Jamal, head of the local branch of the fundamentalist Islamic Movement, and Ze'ev Noiman, head of the local branch of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu ("Israel is Our Home") party, call themselves friends. Both men are deputy mayors of this mixed Arab-Jewish city near Haifa, and their offices are on the same floor of the municipality. "Adham is a great guy," says Noiman, a retired career army officer. "He's condemned terrorism. True, I don't know what he says when he's speaking among Arabs, but to us he says the right things." Jamal: "Ze'ev isn't a racist like Lieberman," referring to Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman. "He grew up here in Acre. He lives with us." Both men say they keep disagreements over national issues separate from cooperation on local issues.

Acre has always been an unlikely home for co-existence. Many of its 35,000 Jews are children of immigrants from Arab countries, or recent immigrants from the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. And many of Acre's 17,000 Arabs are poor and traditionalist. But somehow it's worked. The security guard who checks the bags at the municipality is an Arab--a gesture of trust in the Arab minority I've never seen in Israel. The town's Arab restaurants are filled with Jews. In Sa'id, one of the best hummus restaurants in the country, Jews and Arabs share tables; one recent afternoon there, I ate with a young Bedouin man named Ali, who had volunteered for the Israeli army and was voting for Kadima.

But the balance is becoming increasingly hard for Acre to manage. Last Yom Kippur, hundreds of Arabs and Jews fought in the streets. Jewish store windows were smashed, Arab homes firebombed. The riot was set off by an Arab man who drove into a Jewish neighborhood, violating the unwritten law against traffic in Jewish areas on the fast day. The driver, who Jews say was loudly playing Arabic music, publicly apologized, religious leaders from both communities met for a sulha, or peace accord, and Acre tried to return to normal.

The atmosphere of mutual distrust never quite dissipated, however, and now it has been coopted by two extremist parties. In the recent elections, Yisrael Beiteinu, which regards Israel's Arab minority as a fifth column and wants to revoke the citizenship of those who won't take a loyalty oath to the Jewish state, won as many votes in Acre as the more mainstream Likud party, according to local party officials. And a plurality of Acre's Arabs voted for the nationalist Balad, or "Homeland," which rejects a Jewish state and insists Arabs be recognized as a national minority. For Lieberman's supporters, Balad founder Azmi Bishara--who fled Israel after being accused of spying for Hezbollah--embodies Arab treason. One ad by Yisrael Beiteinu declared it's a "shame and disgrace" that former Knesset member Bishara "is still getting a pension of 8,000 shekels a month from the Israeli government."

I've come to Acre because promoting Arab Israeli equality and Arab-Jewish co-existence is my civic passion. I know how hard it is to separate the Arab Israeli issue from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel's Arabs are a unique minority: second-class within a Jewish majority, yet part of a regional majority hostile to Israel. But Israel's dilemma is unique as well. To be true to itself, Israel must remain a Jewish state responsible for Jews around the world, and a democratic state responsible for all its citizens, Jews and non-Jews.

What's breaking down in Acre is the habit of decency that makes these insoluble paradoxes possible. Acre offers a scenario for the unraveling of Israeli society. Between Lieberman and Bishara there can be no shared identity. If Yisrael Beiteinu and Balad are our future, then Lieberman is right: The greatest threat to Israel's existence comes from within.

 

Acre's walled Old City, one of the country's leading tourist sites, has an Arab market, an ancient port, and a vast underground Crusader-era fortress of tunnels and vaulted hallways. Acre was the last capital of the Crusaders before they were expelled from the Holy Land. And that past intrudes on Acre's politics. Jews say Arabs see them as Crusaders, conquerors who will one day be expelled. "They say it half-jokingly," says Yisrael Beiteinu's Noiman, "but it isn't a joke."

I have the fate of the Crusaders in mind when I visit the headquarters of Balad, a one-room storefront at the edge of the Old City, facing Ottoman walls built against the sea. "National Identity and Full Citizenship" reads the Arabic banner hanging out front. The citizenship is Israeli, but the national identity is Palestinian.

Balad's posters and leaflets are only in Arabic; unlike Hadash, the mostly Arab Communist Party, Balad doesn't even bother trying to appeal to Jews. On the wall is a large framed photograph of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the late Egyptian leader revered here for his pan-Arabism. Beside it hangs a poster warning young Arabs against doing alternative national service--" A Step Toward Military Service."

I ask Maryam Wishahie, an English teacher and a Balad activist, whether she thinks the Jews will end up being expelled like the Crusaders. "That depends on Israel's behavior," she says. "The Crusaders surrounded themselves with forts, just like Israel's security wall. If Israel doesn't become part of this region, it will have no future."

The more immediate possibility, she fears, is that her Jewish neighbors will build a wall around Arab neighborhoods, or try to force Acre's Arabs out. "The house next door to mine was recently bought by a Jew. I'm used to seeing the other: In my apartment building there are Muslims and Christians and a Jewish-owned restaurant. But this was done through an organization that wants to settle Jews in the Old City. What is this, the West Bank?"

For me, I say, the presence of Arab citzens in a Jewish state is an opportunity. You're the only part of the Middle East I can still talk to.

"We're not a bridge," she counters. "A bridge means that you belong to both sides. We are Palestinians. But if Israel will make real efforts for peace, we can help draw hearts together."

For Balad, peace can only happen when Israel abandons its Jewish identity--and its Jewish majority. "There is no solution between Zionism and Palestinian nationalism," says Maryam.

The Acre headquarters for Yisrael Beiteinu is a ten-minute walk from the Old City, and it is located in the Histadrut labor union building, once a bastion of the left. A group of young activists sit at a recruiting booth outside. They are all secular; one young man has a ponytail, a young woman multiple piercings. Posters taped to the booth show Lieberman's brooding bearded face, and the words, "Lieberman, I believe him."

As the leading parties blur into each other, and peace and security become more elusive, Lieberman promises clarity. He breaks the rules, not only of civility but of Israel's political categories. He combines left and right in a brutal pragmatism that speaks to a post-ideological generation. Lieberman is the only right-wing leader to support a Palestinian state. And he goes farther than the left in his willingness to concede territory, though for right-wing reasons: He wants to withdraw from areas within pre-1967 Israel that are overwhelmingly Arab, to reduce the number of Israel's Arab citizens--to eliminate the internal enemy.

Lieberman's young activists are eager to talk.

Itamar: "They say they're discriminated against? I'm discriminated against. I have to do three years in the army; they don't. Okay, I don't want them in the army. But what about national service? When I get out of the army at twenty-one, an Arab young man is already a lawyer. I want them to contribute. Also the ultra-Orthodox."

But whenever you target a specific group, I say, you're on a dangerous road. Lieberman doesn't target the ultra-Orthodox for avoiding military service, just the Arabs.

"It's not like that," says Itamar. "This is a life and death issue for the state. The ultra-Orthodox don't call for the destruction of Israel. In another twenty years, we will lose this country if something isn't done."

Yotam: "We're not motivated by hatred, but by love for our country. From the moment this state was born, the Arabs have tried to destroy us."

Chen: "A minority anywhere has to respect the country."

Yossi: "I see my future here in Acre with a Jewish majority, and with Arabs who respect the country. They want to be Palestinian? Then go to Palestine. This is the state of Israel.

Yotam: "This party [Yisrael Beiteinu] is my hope for staying in Acre."

Yael: "For staying in the country."

A car loudly playing Arab music drives by.

"You'll see," says Yael, "he'll come back."

He does. Twice.

Yossi Klein Halevi is a contributing editor at The New Republic and a senior fellow at the Adelson Center for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-fg-usiran12-2009feb12,0,3478184.story
From the Los Angeles Times

U.S. now sees Iran as pursuing nuclear bomb

In a reversal since a 2007 report, U.S. officials expect the Islamic Republic to reach development milestones this year.
By Greg Miller

February 12, 2009

Reporting from Washington — Little more than a year after U.S. spy agencies concluded that Iran had halted work on a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration has made it clear that it believes there is no question that Tehran is seeking the bomb.

In his news conference this week, President Obama went so far as to describe Iran's "development of a nuclear weapon" before correcting himself to refer to its "pursuit" of weapons capability.

Obama's nominee to serve as CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, left little doubt about his view last week when he testified on Capitol Hill. "From all the information I've seen," Panetta said, "I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability."

The language reflects the extent to which senior U.S. officials now discount a National Intelligence Estimate issued in November 2007 that was instrumental in derailing U.S. and European efforts to pressure Iran to shut down its nuclear program.

As the administration moves toward talks with Iran, Obama appears to be sending a signal that the United States will not be drawn into a debate over Iran's intent.

"When you're talking about negotiations in Iran, it is dangerous to appear weak or naive," said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear weapons expert and president of the Ploughshares Fund, an anti-proliferation organization based in Washington.

Cirincione said the unequivocal language also worked to Obama's political advantage. "It guards against criticism from the right that the administration is underestimating Iran," he said.

Iran has long maintained that it aims to generate electricity, not build bombs, with nuclear power. But Western intelligence officials and nuclear experts increasingly view those claims as implausible.

U.S. officials said that although no new evidence had surfaced to undercut the findings of the 2007 estimate, there was growing consensus that it provided a misleading picture and that the country was poised to reach crucial bomb-making milestones this year.

Obama's top intelligence official, Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, is expected to address mounting concerns over Iran's nuclear program in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee today.

When it was issued, the NIE stunned the international community. It declared that U.S. spy agencies judged "with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program."

U.S. intelligence officials later said the conclusion was based on evidence that Iran had stopped secret efforts to design a nuclear warhead around the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Often overlooked in the NIE, officials said, was that Iran had not stopped its work on other crucial fronts, including missile design and uranium enrichment. Many experts contend that these are more difficult than building a bomb.

Iran's advances on enrichment have become a growing source of alarm. Since 2004, the country has gone from operating a few dozen centrifuges -- cylindrical machines used to enrich uranium -- to nearly 6,000, weapons experts agree.

By November, Iran had produced an estimated 1,400 pounds of low-enriched uranium, not nearly enough to fuel a nuclear energy reactor, but perilously close to the quantity needed to make a bomb.

A report issued last month by the Institute for Science and International Security concluded that "Iran is moving steadily toward a breakout capability and is expected to reach that milestone during the first half of 2009." That means it would have enough low-enriched uranium to be able to quickly convert it to weapons-grade material.

Tehran's progress has come despite CIA efforts to sabotage shipments of centrifuge components on their way into Iran and entice the country's nuclear scientists to leave.

Iran still faces considerable hurdles. The country touted its launch of a 60-pound satellite into orbit this month. Experts said Iran's rockets would need to be able to carry more than 2,000 pounds to deliver a first-generation nuclear bomb.

And there are indications that the U.S. and Iran are interested in holding serious diplomatic discussions for the first time in three decades. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said this week that his nation was "ready to hold talks based on mutual respect," and Obama indicated that his administration would look for opportunities "in the coming months."

Hassan Qashqavi, spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, on Wednesday warned the U.S. not to wait for Iranian presidential elections this year, because ultimate authority rests with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

He also said Iran would be patient.

"Since a new administration came to power in the U.S., we do not want to burn the opportunity of President Obama and give him time to change the reality on the ground," Qashqavi said.

But experts said Iran was now close enough to nuclear weapons capability that it may be less susceptible to international pressure.

"They've made more progress in the last five years than in the previous 10," Cirincione said.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Attitudes. The two following items are related. The first, from London, hatefully characterizes Jews as taking joy in the death of Arab children. The second documents the extremist Islamic glee in having their children pursue death for Allah.
Unbelievable. //Mark Finkelstein jcrc@dmjfed.org


New anti-semitic play in London

Commentary by blogger Elder of Ziyon.

[There is]a new ten-minute play called "Seven Jewish Children" where Jewish parents and grandparents teach their unseen charges to hate Arabs.

The climax of the play is where unfeeling Jewish parents literally cheer the deaths of Gaza children:

" Tell her about the family of dead girls, tell her their names why not, tell her the whole world knows, why shouldn’t she know? tell her there’s dead babies, did she see babies? Tell her she’s got nothing to be ashamed of. Tell her they did it to themselves. Tell her they want their children killed to make people sorry for them, tell her I’m not sorry for them, tell her not to be sorry for them, tell her we’re the ones to be sorry for, tell her they can’t talk suffering to us. Tell her we’re the iron fist now, tell her it’s the fog of war, tell her we won’t stop killing them till we’re safe, tell her I laughed when I saw the dead policeman, tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out, the world would hate us is the only thing, tell her I don’t care if the world hates us, tell her we’re better haters, tell her we’re chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? Tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her.


Commentary by Elder of Ziyon: It is pointless to argue that Jews and Israelis don't feel anything like the words spoken here. It is a waste of time to explain that Jews are not happy to see dead Palestinian Arab civilians. And it is beyond the comprehension of the playwright to mention that the only population that unabashedly and joyously celebrates the deaths of innocents are the Arabs that the author of the play is so sympathetic to.

But it is important to point out that the playwright, who pretends to be a liberal, is displaying the worst kind of bigotry possible.

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Palestinian Women Urged To Sacrifice Their Children.


Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas/Gaza), Al-Quds TV (Lebanon) -Granddaughter and Wife of Giants of Terrorism, 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam and Abdallah 'Azzam, Urge Palestinian Women to Sacrifice Their Children

Israeli election returns, according to TV channels



All credit to Aussie Dave, http://www.israellycool.com

Monday, February 9, 2009

Remarkable collection of 300 original Holocaust-era letters from major camps and ghettos on display in Cedar Rapids this weekend only.
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The exhibit will be on display at Coe College on February 14 and Temple Judah (Cedar Rapids)on Sunday, February 15. 10:00 am - 3 pm at each venue.
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A one-of-a-kind, award-winning exhibit of hundreds of pieces of World War II era mail and documents related to the Nazi’s attempted extermination of Jews and others will be publicly displayed at Coe College on Feb. 14. The exhibit will be shown from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Perrine Gallery of Stewart Memorial Library. It is free and open to the public. For information about the exhibit's display at Coe College, contact rpritcha@coe.edu.

For information about the exhibit's display at Temple Judah, contact Prof. Steve Feller at sfeller@coe.edu. Temple Judah is located at 3221 Lindsay Ln SE in Cedar Rapids, IA 52403.

The collection is owned by the Deerfield, Illinois-based Florence and Laurence Spungen Family Foundation, which acquired the extraordinary items to preserve and offer them for public use at Holocaust and genocide educational venues around the world.

“The insured value of the collection is $1 million, but the educational value to future generations is incalculable,” said Daniel Spungen, a member of the board of the Spungen Family Foundation.

“One of the most heartbreaking artifacts and historical evidence of Nazi desecration is a torn fragment of a hand-written Hebrew parchment from a Bible scroll (Tanakh). A German soldier used the holy scripture to wrap a parcel he mailed from Russia to Austria in 1942,” explained Spungen. “The sacred parchment was pillaged from a Russian synagogue. Ironically, the portion that was used as wrapping paper has passages from the first book of Samuel about the story of David and Goliath.”

George J. Kramer, chairman of the New York-based Philatelic Foundation, described the scroll fragment as “one of the most important items of Judaic postal history.”
This is only the third public exhibition since the acquisition of the historic items from a private collector was formally announced by the Spungen charitable foundation last September.

Steve Feller, a Coe professor of physics and co-author of the book, “Silent Witness: Civilian Camp Money of World War II,” will present an educational program about Holocaust-related money in conjunction with the exhibit of the collection.

The postal artifacts in the collection are evidence of the torments, ravages and terror of war and genocide in Europe from 1933 to 1945. They also show that many prisoners never lost hope, and the human spirit survived.

“We will be giving educational institutions and museums around the world the opportunity to use the exhibit materials for displays, lectures and research,” said Florence Spungen, Founder of the Foundation. “This is a permanent educational tool for all generations to document this important period of time that cannot be forgotten.”

The Holocaust exhibit was acquired intact from noted researcher, writer and collector, Ken Lawrence, of Bellefonte, Pa., a former vice president of the American Philatelic Society, who began assembling the material in 1978.

Including items contributed by Spungen, the foundation now will be the guardian of the more than 250 envelopes, post cards, letters, and specially-designated postage stamps used exclusively by concentration camp inmates, Jewish ghetto residents and prisoners of war. In addition, the collection includes counterfeit Bank of England paper money created by slave laborers during “Operation Bernhard,” the Nazis’ failed plot to undermine England’s economy and the subject of the recent motion picture, "The Counterfeiters."

Frequently exhibited by Lawrence, the display won awards and medals at stamp shows including an international exhibition in Washington, D.C. in 2006.

“The scroll page that was used for mailing a parcel is the most viscerally disturbing item. Some scholars have told me it is among the most important surviving evidence of Nazi desecration,” said Lawrence. “Chronic, flagrant desecration exemplified by violating that sacred scripture imbued the cultured German nation and historically honor-bound German army with an inhuman attitude toward Jews that made the Holocaust both possible, and given the opportunity, inevitable.”

Some of the ghetto and concentration camp letters have coded or hidden messages about the plight of the senders. Research about the postal materials has led to discovery of a previously unreported undercover address in Lisbon, Portugal, used by Jewish resistance fighters, and the location of two camps in Romania for slave laborers and political detainees.

In addition to the Bible scroll fragment used to wrapping a package, the collection includes:
• Rare examples of mail sent to prisoners and mail sent between inmates at different camps;
• A card sent by an inmate at Dachau soon after it opened in 1933 is the earliest known prisoner mail from any Nazi concentration camp;
• An October 3, 1943 letter to his parents in Rzeszów, Poland from Eduard Pys, a 21-year-old who arrived on the first transport at the Auschwitz concentration camp in May 1940;
• The only known surviving piece of mail sent by Rabbi Leo Baeck, the leader of German Jewry (Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden), while he was confined to the Theresienstadt ghetto;
• A postal checking account receipt imprinted with a crude anti-Semitic caricature denoting payment for a subscription to a Nazi propaganda newspaper, Der Stűrmer;
• Mail secretly carried by children through the sewers of Warsaw during the 1944 uprising;
• Mail clandestinely carried from Nazi-occupied Poland to the exhibit Polish Navy headquarters in London and to a Jewish resistance leader in Switzerland; and,
• A December 1945 postal card addressed to Dr. Eugen von Haagen, a Nazi war criminal on trial after the war at Nuremberg, that is the only recorded example of the censor mark of the International Military Tribunal.

Arrangements are being worked out for the entire collection to be housed at the new facilities of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center that will open in April in Skokie, Ill.

“We are genuinely excited about the prospect of being the central repository for this remarkable collection,” said Richard Hirschhaut, Executive Director of the museum.

The Florence and Laurence Spungen Family Foundation was established in 2006 to
support charitable and educational causes. Many of the historic artifacts now can be viewed online at the foundation’s Web site, www.SpungenFoundation.org.