Blind survivor tells of Holocaust

The UK is holding its first memorial to disabled holocaust victims. One survivor who will be attending is 85-year-old Hans Cohn (pictured left, with his wife) from Willesden Green, north-west London

Born in Berlin in 1923, Hans Cohn was blinded after he was hit in the school playground by a member of the Hitler Youth because he was Jewish. The single blow caused a retinal detachment in one eye.

As a Jew, no ophthalmic specialist in Germany would treat him, so by the time he underwent two, unsuccessful, operations in the Netherlands it was too late. A year later he developed sympathetic ophthalmia in the other eye. He was blind by the age of 12.

Because no German school would take him, his father, a lawyer and World War I veteran, decided to send him to a school for the blind - Worcester College - in England. It was a decision which saved Hans' life. His father was not so lucky. He died in Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942 "from the consequences of a medical experiment".

But Mr Cohn's memories of his early years in Berlin are not ones of persecution.

"I was always very sheltered, so I didn't experience any unpleasantness. We were sheltered from the worst. Because my father had an office, not a shop, he wasn't obviously Jewish - we weren't conspicuous."

Indeed, his summer holidays in Berlin in 1938 were not out of the ordinary. But it would be the last time he saw his father alive, and just a year later his mother would have joined him in England, as a "domestic".

In November 1938 Kristallnacht - the night of systematic violence against Jews which served as a prelude to the Holocaust - was carried out across Germany.

"I was never told what happened to my parents during Kristallnacht. My mother never told me and I never asked," says Mr Cohn.

His mother fled, but his father resolved to stay. As a lawyer he would have found it hard to find work abroad and he wanted to pay his son's school fees for as long as possible.

After the outbreak of war, these fees were paid through the International Red Cross. And it was through the Red Cross that Mr Cohn and his mother learned his father had been sent to a concentration camp in 1942.

Now a semi-retired physiotherapist, Mr Cohn will be visiting the Holocaust Centre in Nottinghamshire on Sunday to remember the disabled victims of the Holocaust. He knows several blind people in Germany forcibly sterilised by the Nazis, he says.

One was blinded in a road accident, "So there was no reason why he should have blind children," Mr Cohn notes.

He feels, he has his part to play in making sure the Holocaust's victims are not forgotten.

"I am one of the decreasing number of survivors and I want to do my bit and do what I can."

BBC

Bishops and Muslims at Jewish burial

One of Manchester Jewry's greatest communal activists has died

Henry Guterman, 82, who continued his manifold communal engagements until just before he was admitted to Wythenshawe Hospital with a severe stroke two weeks ago, left Berlin for Manchester with his family after Kristallnacht.

Mr Guterman's father Berthold Guterman had been a great Anglophile since he spent some time in London as an apprentice before World War I. Even though Berthold was interned as an enemy alien for some time in Britain, his grandson and Henry's cousin David Goodman recalled: "He thought England was a bastion of moderation and liberal democracy."

So when the Nazi threat began to loom, Berthold, a soap manufacturer, cultivated his relationship with the owner of the Cussons soap factory in Kersal, Salford.

Even though the large extended Guterman family was well established in Berlin, from its spacious home in a central area of the city, it was able to witness the rise of Nazism as Hitler paraded through nearby streets. After Kristallnacht, during which time 12-year-old Henry was in hospital for a routine operation and when many of their relatives disappeared, Berthold decided to move his family to Manchester where he became a managing director. Having already invented the first floating soap, in Kersal Berthold was responsible for the production of the famous Imperial Leather brand.

The Gutermans set up home in West Didsbury from where Henry celebrated his barmitzvah at South Manchester Synagogue. The family later moved to the White House, Northenden, which David described as a "virtual Berlin where there was high tea with German cakes and German books on the shelves. It was like a recreation of life in Germany".

But, like his father, Henry was a great admirer of Britain. His son Mark said: "He always felt he had to give something back to the country which had accepted him as an immigrant."

The sight at his funeral last Friday of bishops, side by side with Hindus and Muslims wearing yarmulkes, bears full testimony to the fact that he certainly repaid his debt more than in full.

New Manchester Jewish Representative Council president Barbara Goldstone said: "I will have to find more than five people to do what Henry did."

The list of Mr Guterman's communal positions within and without the community fills a third of a page in the Jewish Year Book. Besides being a former Manchester Jewish Rep Council president and chairman of the Board of Deputies defence and public relations committee, Mr Guterman was extremely active in South Manchester Synagogue, the Zionist Central Council, the North Manchester Jewish Youth Project, Morris Feinmann Homes, Heathlands and Outreach.

He was at the helm of most of Manchester's interfaith groups, including the Muslim Jewish Forum and Indian Jewish Association and Council of Christians and Jews, as well as having been instrumental in founding the Black Jewish Forum. He represented the Jewish community on the Manchester and Trafford Standing Advisory Councils for Religious Education, as well as on the Manchester Council of Community Relations, the North Manchester Crime Prevention Committee and Disabled Living.

Having dedicated his life to making sure the Holocaust never recurs, in recent years Mr Guterman, who received an MBE for his communal endeavours, was particularly active in fighting the BNP through Unite Against Fascism for which he toured the country on speaking engagements. He also fought Israel's corner in his relations with Christian and Muslim organisations.

Son Mark said of his father, who was a retired raincoat and handbag manufacturer: "He was never motivated by money but by what he could give. I remember that in the 1970s, he deliberately employed a black man in order to make a stand against racism."

And Henry was never afraid to make a stand, whether in support of Far Eastern asylum seekers in danger of deportation or his public support for controversial London Mayor Ken Livingstone. But although Henry was a passionate advocate for peace he was not afraid to fight Israel's corner in his relations with the Muslim Council of Britain and pro-Palestinian Christians.

He is survived by his children Mark, Robert of London and Emma Morris and seven grandchildren.

Henry Guterman was a highly valued member of the Zionist Central Council's executive, writes president Lucille Cohen.

He worked tirelessly for the Jewish community as a former president of the Manchester Jewish Representative Council and, following his attendance among a ZCC contingent at a World Zionist Organisation Israel advocacy course in Jerusalem, also became an equally tireless and fearless advocate for Israel.

Henry displayed his passion for Israel and his capability of defending it to dramatic and best effect when he debated in a statesmanlike manner against the pro-Palestinian Sabeel protagonist, the Rev Steven Sizer, at Chester Cathedral.

Having fled Nazi Berlin as a young refugee in the late 1930s, Henry was acutely aware of the dangers of antisemitism and fascism and devoted much of his life in a variety of roles to the battle against these twin forces of evil.

In recognition of the need for improved interfaith relations and dialogue as a means of avoiding discordance between the different faith and ethnic communities in this country, he became vice-chairman of the Manchester branch of the Council of Christians and Jews and set up the Muslim-Jewish Forum with a former Manchester Lord Mayor.

Henry Guterman, president of the Jewish Representative Council from 1986 to 1989, was a wonderful man who devoted his whole life to fighting fascism and racism, writes Barbara Goldstone, president.

He was respected and admired by all. His main aim in life was creating peace, harmony and tolerance among different faiths and demonstrating that all people have a place on this earth. A true gentleman, his unique ability to play an important part at every meeting he attended will be an impossible act to follow.

His passing has left a huge void in the Jewish Representative Council and indeed the whole community.

Jewish Telegraph

How's this for filth?

If you want to know the truth about the British National Party, read the Covert Undercover Nuisance Tactics blog, a page of filth that would horrify anyone with an ounce of decency in them but which apparently amuses Nick Griffin, the fascist BNP's leader.

This page, which surely ranks well below the Sunday Sport in the peculiar world that nazis inhabit, has launched attacks on everyone from anti-fascists to those we would ourselves refer to as fascists but with whom the owners apparently disapprove. Sharon Ebanks, who as a former BNP candidate in Birmingham's Kingstanding ward, thought she had won the election last year after a miscounted vote but who was then disappointed, has come in for particular vile criticism - not, as you might expect, for turning on the BNP leadership for refusing to pass along the money donated towards her High Court costs by party members following the Kingstanding recount, but simply for being the offspring of a mixed-race relationship.

But there's worse. Following the tragic events at Virginia Tech a couple of days ago, the Covert team has outdone itself with this short piece of filth.

'YAWN!

We've heard it all before

As the dust starts to settle over the Virginia Tech incident the stories of bravery start to emerge. Ofcourse the media picked up on one of the dead teachers straight away. Liviu Librscu like millions of other jews since the end of the second world war was a holocaust survivor. The term itself 'holocaust survivor' seems to have been branded onto every jew like some kind of merit badge to be displayed in times of crisis and this time it was the turn of Librscu to have his paraded. So what of the media headlines?

'HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR KILLED IN VIRGINIA TECH SHOOTINGS'

"Librescu, an aeronautics engineer and teacher at the school for 20 years, saved the lives of several students by using his body to barricade a classroom door before he was gunned down in Monday's massacre, which coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day."

So what brave act did this survivour of the Nazi and Communist oppression do? According to reports "Librescu, an aeronautics engineer and teacher at the school for 20 years, saved the lives of several students by using his body to barricade a classroom door before he was gunned down in Monday's massacre, which coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day."

We think what really happened was the kids were thinking "gook with a gun, quick lets use the jew as a sandbag" and then the media played on the holocaust remembrance day thing. And who needs to remember the holocaust anyway on one day when we are reminded of it 365 days a year? Anyway, we don't want the anti semitic brigade accusing us of lies while we are just delivering our own thoughts on the issue and you can ponder on the issue at your own pace now.'

As Nick Griffin and his vile party seem to be proscribing everyone in sight at the moment - including, apparently, his murderous former deputy, the terrorist, Tony Lecomber - perhaps he might like to order a proscription notice against Covert Undercover Nuisance Tactics. If, as he claims, he has no problems with Jews nowadays (to the point where there's at least one in the party) perhaps he might like to speak out against those who dishonour them, the Holocaust and a single Jew who sacrificed his life for the lives of his students.

Jewish leader pushes on nazi archive

A Jewish leader who survived the Holocaust as a boy by hiding in basements and attics urged countries on Wednesday to speed the opening of millions of files on Nazi concentration camps and their victims.

Leo Rechter, president of the U.S.-based National Association of Jewish Child Holocaust Survivors, told Congress that Nazi war records stored in Bad Arolsen, Germany, should be opened urgently for a dying generation of survivors.

'Of all the public archives in the world, what possible justification can there be to prevent us from learning the truth about what happened to our families during the Holocaust?' he asked, according to testimony prepared for delivery to the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Europe subcommittee.

Rechter, an Austrian Jew whose family fled to Belgium and survived the Nazi occupation after his father was deported and murdered in Auschwitz, spoke at a hearing aimed at stepping up pressure on an 11-nation body that oversees the secret Nazi archive. Wednesday's hearing follows the approval by a House panel Tuesday of a resolution urging the countries to speed up ratification of plans to open the archive to researchers.

This month, the nations overseeing the archive set procedures in motion to open the records by the end of the year. Before the material can be accessed, all member countries must ratify an agreement adopted last year to end the 60-year ban on using the files for research.

The Associated Press, which has been granted extensive access to the archive in recent months on condition that victims are not fully identified, has drawn attention to the importance of the documents.

Witnesses testifying Wednesday expressed frustration that the commission has waited so long to release the files.

'We survivors cannot understand why the world powers would have made a conscious decision to withhold all of the facts about our history from us,' said David Schaecter, president of the Holocaust Survivors Foundation.

Some expressed incredulity that the release still faces diplomatic negotiations for final ratification.

'The timetable for this project is not a diplomatic timetable,'' said Paul Shapiro, director of the Washington Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. ``Every month of additional delay means more survivors gone - an irreversible benchmark of the consequence of delay.'

The State Department said Wednesday that Britain recently joined the U.S., Israel, Poland and the Netherlands in completing ratification. Germany and Luxembourg have said they would ratify before the commission meets again in May. The positions of France, Belgium, Italy and Greece were unclear.

National Association of Jewish Child Holocaust Survivors

Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies

Guardian

Model's 'monkey' jibe fuels race row

Miss Scotland becomes the latest celebrity forced to apologise after an offensive on-air comment about a black singer

The reigning Miss Scotland was embroiled yesterday in the latest racism row to be played out in the media after she called the black singer and actress Samantha Mumba 'a monkey' on a live radio programme. Nicola McLean, 22, later insisted she was 'not racist' and apologised for her remarks. She joins a string of politicians and celebrities who have had to apologise recently for inappropriate language on race.

At the end of a week when Patrick Mercer, the Conservative's homeland security spokesman, was sacked following a furore prompted by his remarks about 'idle and useless' ethnic minority soldiers, McLean's outburst has fuelled the debate around race and language. The beauty queen made the remarks live on Radio Clyde in Glasgow during a conversation about possible new judges for the X Factor talent show on TV. After Mumba, an Irish actress, singer and model, was described as 'attractive' by one of Radio Clyde's presenters, McLean said she thought she 'looked like a monkey'.

Yesterday, McLean admitted the remark was foolish but maintained she is not a racist. 'I am new to this job and have learnt that sometimes flippant remarks can be perceived in a negative manner. There was no malice or premeditated thought here, just a simple mistake and for that I am truly sorry.'

The Observer can also reveal that the Commission for Racial Equality has demanded fans of Tottenham Hotspur stop calling themselves 'Yiddos' or the 'Yid Army' - a reference to the club's strong Jewish links. The CRE says such behaviour could fuel anti-semitism. 'It is clear that in this day and age racist attitudes and comments are not acceptable,' said a spokeswoman. 'It is the responsibility of all of us to ensure regressive comments such as these do not undermine the achievements that have been made in race equality.'

The commission's intervention has given renewed impetus to an issue that has bitterly divided opinion among the club's supporters, Jewish groups and campaigners against racism in football. It comes as the police investigate video footage showing some West Ham fans chanting, 'I'd rather be a Paki than a Jew' during their 4-3 defeat by Spurs last Sunday.

Piara Powar, director of the Kick It Out campaign against racism in football, said: 'We have had complaints from fans that the chant is used regularly at White Hart Lane. One guy was in his seventies, had fought in the war and was Jewish, and he was deeply offended. A young fan went to Spurs with his dad and sang it but then used the word "Yid" inappropriately in the school playground.'

Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: 'The term "Yiddo" has always been regarded as abusive. It comes from the Russian "zhid" and means Jew. It is highly offensive and always has been.'

Race awareness campaigners say there is no excuse for those in the public spotlight failing to appreciate how their words will have political repercussions. 'The first time I was called a Paki I didn't even know what it meant,' said Denis Fernando, of the National Assembly Against Racism (NAAR). 'It was only when I understood the hatred behind the word and was able to put it into context I realised it was hurtful. People have got to understand the social structure behind words.'

Nevertheless, Britain appears to be much less concerned than New York over the relationship between language and race, according to race awareness campaigners. Last year, Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles had an on-air spat with actress Halle Berry after he adopted a faux black American rapper's accent. 'Are we having a racist moment here?' asked Berry, a suggestion furiously denied by the breakfast presenter.

DC Thomson, publisher of the Dandy, provoked outrage shortly before Christmas when it reissued a 1939 anniversary edition of the comic in which a character - Smarty Grandpa - used the word 'nigger' repeatedly. And the image of reality TV star Jade Goody was severely damaged after what many viewers believed was her racist bullying of a fellow Big Brother housemate, Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty. Yesterday it emerged police have dropped their investigation into the affair. Goody was forced to apologise to Shetty following her remarks. 'I'm not racist, but I can see why it has had the impact it's had,' she said.

More recently, the media have been criticised by some for repeated references to Lord Levy's Jewish background, leading to claims that certain stories about Tony Blair's Middle East envoy and chief fundraiser contain 'a whiff of anti-semitism'.

Race equality campaigners are now starting to express alarm over the number of politicians and celebrities who provoke fury over their allegedly racist comments but issue what are perceived to be only half-hearted retractions in which they deny their racist undertones. 'The relationship between language and race is extremely important,' said Milena Buyum, coordinator for the NAAR. 'In a court of law proving someone used the word "nigger" before an attack can be used to show it was a racist attack, which can add an extra two years on the sentence.'

Such an example is an overt link between race and language, but Buyum is concerned at the increasing preponderance of more subtle behaviour surfacing in popular culture, such as Jade Goody ridiculing Shilpa Shetty over her accent and her food while in the Big Brother house.

This argument, however, is met with a sharp retort from some cultural commentators who complain the Big Brother row was another example of 'political correctness gone mad'. Last week a head teacher accused police of overreacting when eight boys were arrested for chanting, 'Yid army' during a leaving ceremony at Chauncy School, Ware, Hertfordshire. Likewise, Mercer's comments last week drew support from many quarters, not least a number of black soldiers who served under him.

A growing backlash against multiculturalism has made tackling racism increasingly difficult, according to experts. They warn complaints from both liberal and right-wing commentators that multiculturalism hasn't worked and that ethnic communities are failing to integrate is perpetuating the fear of 'otherness'.

Additional reporting by Denis Campbell and Lorna Martin

They said what?

'She should fuck off home'
Former Miss Great Britain Danielle Lloyd talks about Bollywood movie star Shilpa Shetty live on Celebrity Big Brother.

'Shilpa Poppadom'
Jade Goody's name for Shetty.

'A fucking lazy nigger'
Ron Atkinson talking about Marcel Desailly, Chelsea's black defender, believing his TV microphone was off.

[I came across a lot of ethnic minority soldiers] 'who were idle and useless, but who used racism as cover for misdemeanours'
Former Conservative spokesman for homeland security Patrick Mercer.

'I'm a black American guy. A big fat black guy'
Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles interviews Halle Berry.

'Suicide bombers and limb amputators'
TV presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk's description of Arabs in a newspaper article.

Observer

Look closely. We’re all going colour-blind

My 84-year-old Yorkshire father and I know better than to talk about race. Doors will be slammed, Christmas could be spoilt as it was once 20 years ago when I stormed out of the house after remarks by my uncle that I won’t repeat because such poisonous, hardcore bigotry no longer has any place in public discourse, and quite right too.

These days the racism of old people makes me sad more than angry. It is possible to understand — without in any way excusing — the views of someone who lived all his life in a homogeneous white, working-class community, didn’t go abroad until he retired, who saw maybe two black faces a year.

My father shakes his head over the Daily Mail and tells me the country is ruined: by which he really means, all certainty and familiarity is gone, the landscape now is alien, unsettling, frightening. He is more mystified than outraged why his grandsons’ primary school classes contain mostly black faces.

Then he’ll confound me by overtipping his African mini-cab driver because he was a “lovely fella” or I’ll find him chatting about cricket with our elderly Jamaican decorator and after he’s packed up, Dad carefully examines the kitchen paintwork and says reverently: “Now, he’s a proper craftsman.”

Meanwhile, my children understand that racism is the most heinous playground crime. They have grown up with Black History Month, assemblies on Nelson Mandela and our groovy new school building is named after the black Crimean nurse Mary Seacole (the children’s other suggestion was Rosa Parks). I feel with absolute conviction if they or any of their friends join the Army and find themselves training a bunch of recruits, they will not spur some laggard through the assault course by calling him a “black bastard”.

For all we love to label our young people toxic degenerates, in one regard they look down at us from the loftiest moral heights. In all surveys, the young’s tolerance of other races and intolerance of racism itself far outstrips the adult population: 82 per cent of under 18s, according to a National Research Centre poll, claimed they are not at all racially prejudiced, compared with 69 per cent of adults. While this reveals nothing about their actual behaviour, it reflects that racism is now taboo.

This week the writer Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, reflecting on the remarks by Patrick Mercer, the Tory homeland security spokesman, and the CCTV footage of a black woman, Toni Comer, being beaten by a white police officer, wrote: “The filth of racism has washed back, but now there’s no concern, no shame, no real opposition.” But who could possibly agree?

No act of perceived racism now goes without exhaustive analysis. Mr Mercer was summarily sacked by David Cameron just three hours after his remarks. Only a few months ago — in what seems now like some lurid dream — the nation’s media and political leaders ceased discussion of the Iraq war or loans for honours to debate the implications for race (and international) relations in Jade Goody calling the Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty a poppadom on Celebrity Big Brother. The 30,000 people who complained to Channel 4, the tens of thousands more who voted to ensure Shilpa won the show, were not letting racism pass by unopposed.

My father’s old monocultural generation is dying; the blithely colour-blind young are ascending. Those in the middle, the generation now running the world, are left questioning our own attitudes, trawling for prejudices, trying to make judgment calls in an atmosphere where to err is to be history.

It is seldom acknowledged that we grew up in a deeply racist climate, where our country was affiliated with South Africa (try explaining apartheid to an eight-year-old: it is almost beyond their imagination), where blokes in pubs joked about Paki-bashing, the top sitcom Love Thy Neighbour spoke cheerily of “nig-nogs” and “darkies”. As a nation we have progressed a long, long way so very fast. And although we still have far to go, are these slippages really very surprising?

Patrick Mercer’s mistake was to be a 51-year-old man who assumed promoting and fairly treating black NCOs under him — as many of them have testified — exonerated him of all racism. In his day in the Army, his actions probably made him a cutting-edge progressive officer. But he was not schooled enough in modern antiracist nuances to appreciate that the insults “ginger” and “black” don’t come with equivalent volumes of oppression.

And his remark that some black soldiers “used racism as cover for their misdemeanours” was the most problematic. Is it possible ever to say this publicly now? Even on a day when Lord Levy’s supporters suggest the inquiry into his role in cash-for-honours is fuelled by an anti-Semitic desire to hang a rich, prominent, influential Jew up to dry?

Or when a drunken, aggressive woman, who has been ejected from a nightclub and then vandalised a car, claims the policeman who thumped her arm to stop her grabbing his genitals did so because she was black? The fact that this case — disturbing as it is to watch any woman being hit by a man — has not been whipped up into some South Yorkshire Rodney King moment does not demonstrate indifference to state, racial violence. Rather it shows, I’d bet, that black people themselves realise they don’t need such a lousy figurehead as Toni Comer.

And whether the Army let “black bastard” foul the barrack-room air seems as nothing compared with its huge unchallenged inequalities: that Gurkha soldiers have only now been granted the same pension rights as the British men they died beside. And this was not after a sudden lightning bolt of racial justice but because our Army is undermanned and needs to attract foreign nationals.

It is one thing for David Cameron to keep step with the latest antiracist language, another to pledge action against the huge, institutional injustices: that twice as many black British men are in prison as at university, that gun crime is little addressed by white politicians since its victims are almost all black, that a whole generation of black boys is tumbling, unchecked, through the education system into low-paid jobs, unemployment or crime. These are the sticks and stones that hurt more than any name.

Times Online