The 'Iranian Schindler' who saved Jews from the Nazis

Thousands of Iranian Jews and their descendants owe their lives to a Muslim diplomat in wartime Paris, according to a new book. In The Lion's Shadow tells how Abdol-Hossein Sardari risked everything to help fellow Iranians escape the Nazis.

Eliane Senahi Cohanim was seven years old when she fled France with her family. She remembers clutching her favourite doll and lying as still as she could, pretending to be asleep, whenever their train came to a halt at a Nazi checkpoint.

"I remember everywhere, when we were running away, they would ask for our passports, and I remember my father would hand them the passports and they would look at them. And then they would look at us. It was scary. It was very, very scary."

Mrs Cohanim and her family were part of a small, close-knit community of Iranian Jews living in and around Paris. Her father, George Senahi, was a prosperous textile merchant and the family lived in a large, comfortable house in Montmorency, about 25km (15.5 miles) north of the French capital.

'Trembling'

When the Nazis invaded, the Senahis attempted to escape to Tehran, hiding for a while in the French countryside, before being forced to return to Paris, now in the full grip of the Gestapo.

"I remember their attitude. The way they would walk with their black boots. Just looking at them at that time was scary for a child, I think," recalls Mrs Cohanim, speaking from her home in California.

Like others in the Iranian Jewish community, Mr Senahi turned for help to the young head of Iran's diplomatic mission in Paris. Abdol-Hossein Sardari was able to provide the Senahi family with the passports and travel documents they needed for safe-passage through Nazi-occupied Europe, a month-long journey that was still fraught with danger.

"At the borders, my father was always really trembling," recalls Mrs Cohanim but, she adds, he was a "strong man" who had given the family "great confidence that everything would be OK."
Unlikely hero

The 78-year-old grandmother has lived for the past 30 years in California with her husband Nasser Cohanim, a successful banker. Mrs Cohanim has no doubt to whom she and her younger brother Claude owe their lives.

"I remember my father always telling that it was thanks to Mr Sardari that we could come out. My uncles and aunts and grandparents lived there in Paris. It was thanks to him they weren't hurt. The ones that didn't have him, they took them and you never heard about them again."

Of Mr Sardari, she says: "I think he was like Schindler, at that time, helping the Jews in Paris."

Like Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who saved more than 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories, Sardari was an unlikely hero.
Nazi propaganda

In his book In the Lion's Shadow, author Fariborz Mokhtari paints a picture of a bachelor and bon viveur who suddenly found himself head of Iran's legation house, or diplomatic mission, at the start of World War II. Although officially neutral, Iran was keen to maintain its strong trading relationship with Germany. This arrangement suited Hitler. The Nazi propaganda machine declared Iranians an Aryan nation and racially akin to the Germans.

Iranian Jews in Paris still faced harassment and persecution and were often identified to the authorities by informers. In some cases, the Gestapo was alerted when newborn Jewish boys were circumcised at the hospital. Their terrified mothers were ordered to report to the Office of Jewish Affairs to be issued with the yellow patches Jews were forced to wear on their clothes and to have their documents stamped with their racial identity.

But Sardari used his influence and German contacts to gain exemptions from Nazi race laws for more than 2,000 Iranian Jews, and possibly others, arguing that they did not have blood ties to European Jewry. He was also able to help many Iranians, including members of Jewish community, return to Tehran by issuing them with the new-style Iranian passports they needed to travel across Europe.

A change of regime in Iran, in 1925, had led to the introduction of a new passport and identity card. Many Iranians living in Europe did not have this document, while others, who had married non-Iranians, had not bothered to get Iranian passports for their spouses or children.

When Britain and Russia invaded Iran in September 1941, Sardari's humanitarian task become more perilous. Iran signed a treaty with the Allies and Sardari was ordered by Tehran to return home as soon as possible.

Racial purity

But despite being stripped of his diplomatic immunity and status, Sardari resolved to remain in France and carry on helping the Iranian Jews, at considerable risk to his own safety, using money from his inheritance to keep his office going.

The story he spun to the Nazis, in a series of letters and reports, was that the Persian Emperor Cyrus had freed Jewish exiles in Babylon in 538 BC and they had returned to their homes. However, he told the Nazis, at some later point a small number of Iranians began to find the teachings of the Prophet Moses attractive - and these Mousaique, or Iranian Followers of Moses, which he dubbed "Djuguten," were not part of the Jewish race.

Using all of his lawyer's skill, he exploited the internal contradictions and idiocies of the Nazis' ideology to gain special treatment for the "Djuguten", as the archive material published in Mr Mokhtari's new book shows.

High-level investigations were launched in Berlin, with "experts" on racial purity drafted in to give an opinion on whether this Iranian sect - which the book suggests may well have been Sardari's own invention - were Jewish or not. The experts were non-committal and suggested that more funding was needed for research.

Lonely death

By December 1942, Sardari's pleas had reached Adolf Eichmann, the senior Nazi in charge of Jewish affairs, who dismissed them, in a letter published in Mr Mokhtari's book, as "the usual Jewish tricks and attempts at camouflage". But Sardari somehow managed to carry on helping families escape from Paris, at a time when an estimated 100,000 Jews were deported from France to death camps.

The number of blank passports in Sardari's safe is estimated to have been between 500 and 1,000. In his book, Mr Mokhtari suggests that if each was issued for an average of two to three people "this could have saved over 2,000 individuals".

Sardari never sought recognition for his work during his lifetime, insisting he had only been doing his duty. He died a lonely death in a bedsit in Croydon, south London, in 1981, after losing his ambassador's pension and Tehran properties in the Iranian revolution. He was posthumously recognised for his humanitarian work in 2004 at a ceremony at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles.

Mr Mokhtari hopes that by telling his story, through the testimony of survivors, including Mrs Cohanim, he will bring it to a wider audience but also shatter "popular misconceptions" about Iran and the Iranians.

"Here you have a Muslim Iranian who goes out of his way, risks his life, certainly risks his career and property and everything else, to save fellow Iranians," he says. "There is no distinction 'I am Muslim, he is Jew' or whatever."

He believes the story illustrates the "general cultural propensity of Iranians to be tolerant" which is often overlooked in the current political climate.

BBC

Thanks to Zaahid for the heads-up

MPs urge crackdown on internet hatred

MPs have urged the European Union to take the lead in cracking down on antisemitic sites from far right and Islamist groups.

At the first major debate on antisemitism last Thursday at Westminster Hall, John Mann, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, said he was frustrated with progress on the issue. He said: "Is it beyond the EU to have some common standards relating to the internet that would greatly enhance what has happened in this country? "

But he warned: "Despite the history of the origins of the EU, the Commission has never, ever seen antisemitism as part of its remit, which must change. Addressing the internet would be a good start."

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is preparing a ministerial conference on dealing with internet hate. Noting a US initiative to challenge Google and Microsoft over antisemitism online, Mr Mann observed: "I am certain that if our colleagues in the US Congress can organise such meetings, we will in some way be able to get representatives, too."

His call was backed by LibDem MP Sir Alan Beith, who said: "Internet service providers will have to do a lot more to prevent the internet and social networking tools, which are of such immense value to so many people in the world, from becoming a source of terrible evil and a means by which evil is spread."

Mr Mann pointed to the success of prosecuting Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle, convicted of inciting racial hatred by posting stories such as"Tales of the Holohoax." It was the first case the Crown Prosecution Service brought involving the diffusion of race hate via the internet.

Louise Ellman raised concerns that those sites which went unchallenged were generally Islamist, coming from places like Saudi Arabia,, rather than those on the far right. But Denis MacShane said he did not believe antisemitism online was confined to extremist websites, saying: "I could bring to the House cartoons and articles in our main newspapers - our liberal newspapers, our left newspapers and our conservative newspapers - that precisely draw that moral equivalence between Israel and Nazism, which attempt to typecast all Jews as supporters of Israel who thus have a double loyalty."

Tom Watson was greatly concerned by rhetoric in the media, particulary that of TV host Glenn Beck of Fox News, whose shows are available in the UK. Last year, he noted, "Mr Beck and his guests invoked Hitler 147 times. Nazis, an additional 202 times. Fascism or fascists, 193 times. The Holocaust got 76 mentions, and Joseph Goebbels got 24."

A CST spokesman said: "This was an excellent debate that showed cross-party support for tackling antisemitism and a real understanding of our community's concerns. We must not forget or underestimate just how many good friends we have fighting our corner."

Jewish Chronicle

Hindus, Jews Ask Pope to Abandon Double Standards on Roma Apartheid

Hindus and Jews claim that Pope Benedict holds double standards on the issues of Roma (Gypsy) apartheid in Europe.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed; and Rabbi Jonathan B. Freirich, prominent Jewish leader in Nevada and California in USA; in a statement in Nevada today, said that despite their repeated requests, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI had not come out openly to support the 15-million European Roma who faced apartheid conditions. But in a message for "19th World Day of the Sick, 2011", posted on Holy See's website on January 15, Pope says (as per Zenit.org translation): "...know how to recognize and serve him also in those brothers who are poor, sick, suffering and in difficulty, who have need of your help".

The Pope also points out in this message: "A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through 'com-passion' is a cruel and inhuman society". And he quotes in this message: "As I have loved you, so must you love one another" (John 13:34).

Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, and Rabbi Freirich argued that it was a travesty to silently watch Roma suffer day after day for the last about 1200 years, and do nothing about it. Roma apartheid occurred right under the Pope's nose in Europe. Hindus and Jews had been regularly appealing to the Pope to openly support the Roma cause and come up with a White Paper on their plight, and yet the Pope continued to ignore these reasonable requests for justice in Europe for the Roma.

Rajan Zed and Rabbi Jonathan Freirich further said that the alarming condition of the Roma people was a social blight for Europe and the rest of the world as they reportedly regularly faced social exclusion, racism, substandard education, hostility, joblessness, rampant illness, inadequate housing, lower life expectancy, unrest, living on desperate margins, language barriers, stereotypes, mistrust, rights violations, discrimination, marginalization, appalling living conditions, prejudice, human rights abuse, and racist slogans on Internet.

The Pope needed to make a public statement against persecution of the Roma, Zed and Freirich added.

Rajan Zed and Rabbi Freirich pointed out that religions shared a conviction to help the helpless, defenseless and downtrodden. The Pope should recognize, acknowledge and affirm the Roma as children of God who deserved to be treated like all other people-as equals. Roma apartheid was shocking, reprehensible, hazardous and immoral. As the most powerful religious leader in the world, the Pope's must lead in upholding the moral obligation to make efforts to stop the frequent human rights violations suffered by Roma.

Hindu Rajan Zed and Jewish Jonathan Freirich offered help to the Pope, if asked, to support the Roma cause.

Sify News

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

We must stand together on this

Last weekend 2,000 supporters of the English Defence League (EDL) invaded Leicester. They claimed to stand up for Englishness against Islamic extremism, but in truth they came for trouble. Almost as soon as they arrived they began fighting with police, putting four in hospital, and in the process throwing army issue smoke grenades, fire crackers and ball bearings at police horses and dogs

During one charge, which resulted in a police officer being repeatedly stamped on, others in the crowd chanted "let him die". As the event finished hundreds of EDL supporters rampaged through local streets indiscriminately attacking local Asians. These were not acts of patriotism but the destructive efforts of racist thugs and football hooligans.

On October 24 the EDL plan to hold a solidarity demonstration outside the Israeli embassy to which they have invited a little-known American rabbi, in a cynical ploy aimed at cultivating hatred between Jews and Muslims.

While many in the Jewish community have understandable concerns about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, it is important to remember that the EDL are not our friends. Searchlight has been running local campaigns against the EDL, in the same way that we work to defeat the politics of hate espoused by the BNP. We seek to mobilise communities to stand together around common values which unite us. In Leicester this meant over 6,000 local residents standing together against the hatred of the EDL. One Leicester, United Together. Next week it is the turn of the Jewish community to stand united against this hatred.

Extremism is extremism, whatever form it comes in, and the EDL is a genuine threat to social cohesion and peaceful communities. And extremism only breeds extremism. The EDL set out to whip up trouble and tensions, hoping to provoke a violent reaction from young Muslims. In the short term this divides communities, in the longer term it only pushes people to more extreme groups.

But with the threat comes an opportunity and we must use the concern over the EDL to bring people together. One of the most moving movements of our peace vigil in Leicester last weekend was when the leader of the Muslim community read out a message of support from the local Jewish community. "A rock thrown at a mosque is a rock thrown at a synagogue," the message read. This produced a massive cheer and highlights what is possible when we stand together against hatred.

Nick Lowles is editor of Searchlight magazine

Jewish Chronicle

Former Nazi SS member charged with killing Jewish labourers

A 90-year-old former member of the Nazi SS has been charged with 58 counts of murder over the killings of Jewish forced labourers in Austria, officials said today

The man is suspected of killing his victims near the village of Deutsch Schützen in 1945, a statement from a German state court said.

"On 29 March 1945, the accused and his accomplices brought at least 57 Jewish forced labourers in several groups to a nearby forest area, where they had to give up their valuables and kneel by a grave," the statement said. "The accused and other SS members then cruelly shot the Jewish forced labourers from behind."

The court described the suspect as a "retiree from Duisburg", but German media reports have named him as Adolf Storms, a former member of the 5th SS Panzer Division, known as Wiking. The suspect is accused of shooting another Jew who could no longer walk during a forced march from Deutsch Schützen to Hartberg on the day after the massacre. The remains of the victims of Deutsch Schützen were found in a mass grave by the Austrian Jewish association in 1995. A plaque now marks the site.

Prosecutors opened an investigation of Storms at the end of 2008 after being alerted to his presence by an Austrian university student who had been researching the killings.

The chief prosecutor, Andreas Brendel, said it was still ongoing. So far, three former members of the Hitler Youth, who were helping the SS to oversee the march, have provided witness statements in Austria. A fourth former Hitler Youth member, now living in Canada, will be interviewed this week, Brendel told the Associated Press.

"There are two who witnessed the shooting of the individual Jewish victim, but there are no people still alive who were part of the other shootings themselves," he said. He added that statements had been made during an Austrian trial of others involved which could be used as evidence against the suspect.

When German authorities raided the suspect's home last December, they said he had invoked his right not to make a statement. He had denied involvement in the shootings to others.

He was interned in a US prisoner of war camp following the war, but was released in 1946. In the chaotic aftermath of the conflict, it was not uncommon for possible war criminals to slip through the cracks. The Austrian press has reported the man changed the spelling of his name after the second world war – a possible explanation of why he went undetected for so long.

Guardian

Marek Edelman, Last Leader of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Has Died

SS officers walking through the destroyed Ghetto after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Marek Edelman, the last living leader of the uprising by Jews incarcerated in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, has died in Warsaw. He is thought to have been 87.

Edelman was imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto, an area walled off by Poland’s Nazi occupiers in 1940 to separate the city’s Jews from the rest of the population. As a member of the Bund labor organization that worked underground to spirit Jews into hiding or out of the country, he was one of the masterminds of the plan to resist the Ghetto’s liquidation.

Edelman, who had suffered from ill health for many years, died in Warsaw late yesterday. His death was confirmed by a friend, Paula Sawicka, whose family he had lived with in recent years.

“He fought for his country more than anyone else,” Michael Schudrich, Poland’s chief rabbi, said in an interview. “He wasn’t fighting for himself, but to show that the Jews in the ghetto weren’t passive, that they wouldn’t go like sheep to the slaughter.”

The Ghetto uprising began on April 19, 1943, the eve of the Jewish festival of Passover and the day Nazi commanders planned to have the remaining people in the ghetto killed. With few weapons, Edelman and his colleagues forced the Germans to retreat. When the operation’s leader, Mordechai Anielewicz, died during the uprising, Edelman took his place. The fighters kept the occupiers at bay for almost a month in total.

By the end of the uprising on May 16, almost all of the Ghetto’s 50,000 to 60,000 remaining inhabitants had been killed or deported, mainly to the Treblinka extermination camp. About 350,000 people were locked into the Ghetto when it was built; only a few thousand survived its liquidation. Edelman was one of the few fighters who escaped, through underground sewers.

In contrast with many Jewish Poles who survived the war, Edelman decided to stay and settled in the central Polish city of Lodz, where he became a cardiologist. In an interview, he said his work as a doctor enabled him to save lives, which he was unable to do in the ghetto.

“The Lord already wants to blow out the candle, and I have to hide the flame quickly when his attention is distracted for a little while,” he said.

Edelman was probably born on Jan. 1, 1922, in Homel, a city located in present-day Belarus. His birth date and place of birth are disputed, and Edelman refused to confirm his age in interviews.

The family soon moved to Warsaw, where his father died when Edelman was young. He was left an orphan at about the age of 13.

In 1946, a year after the end of the war, Edelman moved to Lodz, where he remained for the rest of his life. There he married Alina Margolis, also a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. He finished his medical studies there and became a cardiologist, working until an anti-Jewish campaign in 1968 instigated by the communist authorities led to his dismissal.

While his wife emigrated that year to France, taking the couple’s two children with her, Edelman refused to leave Poland. He later explained his decision by saying “someone had to stay here with all those who died.”

In the 1970s, Edelman became involved in the anti-communist Solidarity movement and was interned after the imposition of martial law in 1981. He was released after a few days thanks to protests by Western intellectuals, and continued his resistance until the fall of communism in 1989.

Edelman was a leading member of the Freedom Union, the party of Poland’s first post-communist prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki. He reflected on his experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto in a book-length interview by the Polish journalist Hanna Krall in the 1970s that has been translated into several languages. In 1998, Edelman was awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest decoration.

Praise from Czech Leader

Vaclav Havel, leader of the Czech opposition movement and the first democratically elected president of the Czech Republic after the fall of communism, wrote to Edelman after a biography by Witold Beres and Krzysztof Burnetko was published in 2008.

“I deeply respect everything that you have done in your life, your uprightness, your courage,” Havel wrote. “For me, you are an example of a true Pole, the authentic personification of all that is best in Poland.”

In April 2009, Edelman joined leading Polish filmmakers and writers in a protest to the government after a former neo-Nazi took over the running of the country’s public television network.

“People who publicly support racism and anti-Semitism shouldn’t be allowed to play a role in public life,” he wrote in an open letter to Prime Minister Donald Tusk. “Don’t forget that evil can grow bigger.”

Edelman is survived by two children, Aleksander and Anna. His wife died in 2008.

Bloomberg

Hitler worship, pervert sex videos and racist postings of jailed BNP weapons importer Michael Winfield

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Hexapla. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

Last month, Nottingham Crown Court jailed BNP member Michael Winfield for illegally importing lethal, offensive weapons he had purchased from a neo-nazi group in the United States. When police raided the home of Michael Winfield back in December 2007, not only did they discover the weapons but also Michael Winfield’s disturbing collection of neo-nazi books, BNP pamphlets, racist stickers and a photograph of himself brandishing a weapon.

In this article, we reveal Michael Winfield’s postings in praise of Hitler and the US neo-nazi killer David Lane; his sex video; and, his racist postings against Jews and Blacks.

Michael Winfield’s praise of Hitler

In the comments section of a YouTube video on failed British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, Michael Winfield, posting as ‘Heckles300’, claims to be devotee of Adolf Hitler in his following posting:

“We adhere ourselves to Hitler and his policies because he was the only man with ebough courage”

Michael Winfield further confirms his devotion to Hitler by ending his tribute to the neo-nazi killer David Lane with ‘Heil Hitler’ in the form of the neo-nazi symbol ‘88’. Eighty-eight is used as code among neo-nazis to identify each other. ‘H’ is the 8th letter of the alphabet, so 88 is taken to stand for HH which in turn means ‘Heil Hitler’. Why one would boast of being an adherent to Hitler, given his failure and private sexual perversions, is incomprehensible to an ordinary, well-adjusted person. But, Hitler, being a massive loser, will always attract other inadequate losers such as BNP member Michael Winfield. Indeed, one only has to look towards past and current BNP leaders such as John Tyndall and Nick Griffin to see that the dark fascination with Hitler is hard-wired in the hard-core malfeasant BNP mind.

Michael Winfield’s praise of David Lane

Posting under his forename, Michael Winfield posted the following message on a nazi website in praise of deceased neo-nazi killer David Lane:

“A great loss to our great movement, he will surely be missed but let us never forget the famous 14 words by which we all should be living by: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children 14/88”

David Lane is one of the most notorious and violent neo-nazis of the modern era. David Lane founded the neo-nazi terrorist group The Order which embarked on a killing and robbery spree across the United States in the 1980s. Prior to founding The Order, David Lane was an organiser for the Klu Klux Klan and then the Aryan Nations. David Lane was eventually jailed for 190 years for, amongst things, the racist killing of Jewish radio talk show host Alan Berg and racketeering crimes.

Michael Winfield’s pervert sex video

Under the moniker Heckles300, Michael Winfield posted his home-made video ‘XXX Hardcore Porn Advice’ on YouTube. Michael Winfield describes his video as follows:

“the wizard of rothsdale graces us with his presence once again and delivers some extreme advice on cock sex fuck piss shit tag words wanker dead people eat grapes”

That video, featuring a man in a balaclava talking to the camera, can be viewed here:

Michael Winfield’s description of his video is interesting. Given its sexual depravity, it makes a mockery of the BNP’s claim to be an upstanding, moral party.

Michael Winfield’s racist postings against Jews and Blacks

In response to a YouTube video interview by an Asian man with a BNP member, Michael Winfield posted, again as Heckles300, the following racist abuse against Jews and Blacks:

“yeh ya entirely right gee must of been all those spear chucking africoons that came up with all the medical breakthroughs we all take for granted. wow im surprised white people are still alive thank the lord all those greedy money grabbing jews keep us alive by robbing us left right and centre”.

In response to another YouTube video (on the topic of racism), Michael Winfield again racially abuses Jews and Blacks in his following posting:

“fucks sake whoever put this shit up needs to get a life moronic jew fucker probably, ooo hope im not being to racist for you faggit loving jew nigger >:-( "

One is not surprised that a BNP member is publically racially abusing Jews and Blacks.

Michael Winfield as representative of BNP members

With his fascination for all things nazi and Hitler, inspired by the oft-violent contemporary neo-nazi scene in the United States, and racially abusive towards Jews and non-Whites, Michael Winfield is, unsurprisingly, broadly representative of many BNP members. In particular, his praise for David Lane especially stands out. It serves as a timely reminder to the British public of the cross-over between US-based neo-nazi groups and the BNP. Such groups exert a considerable influence on many BNP members who see their racist US counterparts as sources of emulation. BNP members such as Michael Winfield are undoubtedly attracted by their central ideology of an inevitable race-war and have attempted to import their visions for an impending racial apocalypse into the United Kingdom. To date, they have been frustrated by the vigilance of the police and the public. But, we should not let our guard down - the BNP harbours many far-right lunatics such as Michael Winfield who are only too willingly to act on their violent racist impulses and fantasies. Indeed, it is a well documented BNP strategy to whip up racial tensions in major urban centres with a view to exploiting those tensions for electoral gain. We ignore them at our peril.

¡No Pasarán!

BNP leader praises US Nazi party for funding BNP activities

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Hexapla. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

Symbol of the National Socialist Movement, the BNP's US-based Nazi allies

In a recent BNP fundraising email, BNP leader and convicted Holocaust denier Nick Griffin gleefully thanks the avowedly US Nazi party, the National Socialist Movement (also called NSM or NSM88), for its help in funding the BNP. In the opening line to the email, Nick Griffin states:

"I am very grateful to .. you - whose generosity and determination allowed us to reach all our targets… and in several cases surpass those targets!".

Nick Griffin goes on to write that the National Socialist Movement's funding support is crucial to enabling the BNP to meet its goals:

"During August we will set even more ambitious targets and I know you will be there to help us reach these goals that are so important for the progress of our movement."

"Your continued participation in our online operation is crucial to the continued success of our Party - without you our capacity to campaign, raise funds and find new members would be severely curtailed!"

Nick Griffin ends the email by thanking the National Socialist Movement for its most recent donation to the BNP:

"Once again thank you for giving so generously during the month of July."

The National Socialist Movement claims to be the largest and most active
Nazi organization in the United States. Responsible for the infamous 2005 Toledo riots, the website of the National Socialist Movement openly carries articles in praise of Hitler and angry, racist diatribes against Jews and non-Whites and support for the BNP. It is therefore not surprising that the BNP and Nick Griffin have sought to maintain active links with the National Socialist Movement. Indeed, there is no hiding the BNP's neo-Nazi proclivities.

For those readers who wish to read the BNP's email to the National Socialist Movement, you can visit the following link:

http://wikileaks.org/leak/nsmfargo-hotmail-emails-2009/msg00617.html

¡No Pasarán!

France responsible for sending Jews to concentration camps, says court

Jews arriving at Pithiviers, one of the French
camps from which they were deported, in 1941.

First legal admission of country's collaboration in Nazi atrocities

France's highest court put an end to decades of legal timidity and moral taboo yesterday when it issued a ruling recognising the state's responsibility in the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews during the second world war.

Citing "mistakes" made by the collaborationist Vichy regime, the council of state said the government's share of blame was clear in acts which had not been forced on it by the occupiers and which "allowed or facilitated the deportation from France of victims of antisemitism".

The ruling, which will be recorded in the official state legislative journal, marks the first time any French judicial body has acknowledged in such stark terms the government's role in Nazi-era atrocities.

Calling for a "formal admission of the state's responsibility and of the prejudice collectively suffered", the court said it had concluded that acts such as the arrest, internment and dispatching of Jews to transit camps were clear indicators of the government's guilt. "As they led to the deportation of people considered Jewish by the Vichy regime, the acts and activities of the state ... became its responsibility," it added.

The move was welcomed by historians and Jewish groups, many of whom have expressed disbelief at France's unwillingness to face up to its actions. From 1942 to 1944 a stream of Jews were rounded up by Vichy authorities, and by the end of the war some 76,000 had been deported to Nazi concentration camps. Although under the overall control of the SS, the main transit camp of Drancy, from which 63,000 people were sent to their deaths, was run by Paris's police force.

"It is a decision with which I am content," Serge Klarsfeld, the leading French historian of the Holocaust, told Le Figaro. "France is showing now that she is at the forefront of countries which are confronting their past, which was not the case even in the 1990s."

For decades after the war, the suffering of French Jews at the hands of their countrymen was buried, along with the shame of collaboration, at the back of national consciousness. François Mitterand, president from 1981 until 1995, insisted France "was never involved" in ill-treatment of its Jewish population, and it was not until Jacques Chirac in 1995 that a head of state admitted France's "inescapable guilt".

Yesterday's ruling, issued in connection with the individual case of a deportee's daughter requesting damages, did however find that the current French state had largely made up for the sins of its past. Apparently ruling out any reparations for victims or their families, the court said the acts had been "compensated for" through various means since 1945.

Klarsfeld, whose postwar research was the first to reveal the extent of France's complicity in the deportations, agreed that enough had been done in recent years. "The people asking now for other forms of compensation have often already got something with the measures in place," he said.

Guardian

Arrests made after racist abuse in Gateshead

Several arrests have been made following allegations of racist abuse in a Tyneside community.

Police in Gateshead stepped up patrols in the Bensham and Saltwell area, home to around 5,000 Jews, amid fears Jews could be targeted because of events in Gaza in the Middle East.

Officers received reports of abuse towards members of the Jewish community on Bewick Road, and windows at a Jewish building were damaged last Friday. Two boys, aged 14 and 15, were arrested for affray and racially-aggravated criminal damage. Then on Sunday night, there were reports of a man driving on Coatsworth Road shouting abuse. An 18-year-old male youth was arrested for racially-aggravated harassment.

As violence escalates in Gaza, police have been keeping a watchful eye on the community but they say neither of the incidents appear to be related the conflict.

Gateshead Central Neighbourhood Inspector, Peter Storey said: “The first incident involved two local boys shouting racial abuse at Jewish students and breaking a window of a Jewish building. The second was someone shouting abuse as they went by in a car. These are infrequent offences which happen in the Gateshead area from time to time. But they are in no way, shape or form connected with the events in Gaza. It is disorder that got out of hand. We have got extra patrols in the area but no-one in the community has change their patterns or behaviour. It is business as usual.”

It is understood that the victims of the abuse were pupils at local Jewish schools. Mrs Bas, of the Gateshead Hebrew Congregation, said the abuse had been frightening.

She said: “I didn’t actually see anything but I’ve heard exactly what happened. In the first incident, a group of girls from the college were just passing by when they all of a sudden were chased and had abuse shouted at them. The people chasing them broke windows, including some car windows.

“It’s frightening, really, and it must have been particularly frightening for the girls involved. In the second incident, some people started fighting with a group of boys from the college. It really must be made clear that this sort of racial behaviour is not going to be tolerated.”

Chronicle Live

Two Italian politians 'made fascist salutes' during tribute to Jews

Two Italian politicians were accused of displaying the stiff-armed fascist salute on Friday as Rome paid tribute to the more than 1,000 Jews to deported to Nazi concentration camps 65 years ago.

The allegation came as graffiti questioning the veracity of the attempted extermination of Europe's Jews was daubed on a bridge on the outskirts of the capital.

"The Holocaust is the biggest lie in history," one slogan read, signed by a neo-Nazi group calling itself 'Militia'.

Last month the same group defaced the walls of a historic cemetery, calling the speaker of Italy's Senate, Renato Schifani, a "Jew" for having paid a visit to Auschwitz.

The two politicians, city councillors from the People of Freedom Party of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, allegedly raised their arms in a Mussolini-style salute as colleagues passed a motion of solidarity with Rome's surviving Jews.

Their actions caused uproar in the council chamber, with colleagues yelling "Shame on you".

The controversy took place in the oddly named suburb of EUR (Esposizione universale romana), a monument to fascist architecture conceived under Mussolini's rule in the 1930s.

Pietrangelo Massaro and Paolo Pollak denied the accusations, calling them "loathsome".

But opposition councillors stood by their claims. "I clearly saw the two councillors stretch out their right arms and make the fascist salute," Vincenzo Del Poggetto told/ La Repubblica/.

His account was backed up by several colleagues. "I saw them with my own eyes raise their arms," said Augusto Culasso. "It was an extremely worrying episode." Of the 1,022 Jews who were deported from Rome to Nazi death camps in 1943, only 15 survived.

The city's Jewish community has been unnerved by the political background of the newly-elected mayor, Gianni Alemanno, who once led a neo-fascist youth party.

When he was elected in April, his supporters celebrated with straight-arm salutes, fascist chants and cries of "Duce! Duce!" – the name adopted by Mussolini.

But since assuming office Mr Alemanno has gone out of his way to portray a moderate image and embrace Rome's Jews, attending community events and meeting rabbis.

Telegraph

Senior Malaysian official to be punished for anti-Semitic remarks

A senior official will be punished for his racist outburst warning Malaysia's ethnic Chinese minority not to become greedy for political and economic power, the prime minister said Tuesday. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said the leaders of Malaysia's 14-party ruling coalition unanimously rejected Ahmad Ismail's remarks and that they "want swift and firm action to be taken" against him.

Ahmad, a district chief in the United Malays National Organization ruling party, claimed that the Malay majority was losing patience with minorities, particularly ethnic Chinese politicians.

"I urge the Chinese not to become like the Jewish in America, where it is not enough that they control the economy, but they also want to dominate politics," Ahmad told a news conference late Monday in northern Penang state.

"Consider this a warning from the Malays," Ahmad said. "The patience of the Malays has a limit. Do not push us against the wall, for we will be forced to turn back and push the Chinese for our own survival."

Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, an American Jewish advocacy group, called the remarks an example of "classic anti-Semitism." But he added: "I'm delighted to hear that there is at least a rejection from the prime minister of this bigotry and anti-Semitism. ... The most important thing is the voice of the prime minister saying that this is bigotry, this is racism, this is unacceptable."

The Muslim Malay majority makes up 60 percent of the Southeast Asian country's 27 million people. Most Chinese and Indian Malaysians are descendants of 19th and early 20th century immigrants who came as traders, laborers and miners during British colonial rule. Ethnic Chinese now comprise a quarter of the population, while Indians form less than 10 percent. They have grown increasingly vocal about alleged government discrimination in economic, social and religious policies.

Malays enjoy a host of privileges in jobs, education and business as part of an affirmative action program launched in 1970 following racial riots fueled by Malay frustration over the Chinese community's wealth.

In a country where racial tensions are palpable but never discussed publicly, Ahmad dropped a bombshell last month by describing the Chinese as "squatters" and "immigrants." The uproar over his comments had barely subsided when he gave a news conference on Monday.

The 14 parties in the National Front represent Malaysia's main races, the majority Malays and the minority Chinese, Indians and others. Ahmad belongs to the Abdullah's United Malays National Organization, the dominant party in the coalition.

Following the comments, the Chinese-based Gerakan party in the National Front severed ties with UMNO's Penang branch, raising fears that it would also do the same at the national level. Gerakan leader Koh Tsu Koon said Tuesday his party would determine its next move after UMNO decides on the disciplinary action against Ahmad.

Abdullah is struggling to hold the coalition together amid a threat by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to seize power by luring government lawmakers to his side by next week. Growing dissatisfaction about racial policies prompted many Chinese and Indians to vote against the government in March general elections. Many Malays also backed the opposition, causing the National Front to retain power with only a simple parliamentary majority.

Ha'aretz

The Whore of Revelation and the BNP speaker who wants to destroy Catholics

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Hexapla. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

BNP activist and speaker Alan O’Reilly says Catholics will be deported under a BNP government; declares Catholics to be the enemies of Britain and Christianity; believes Islam, the European Union and eastern European immigration are Catholic plots to destroy Britain; and, that Catholicism was behind communism, World War I & II and the Nazi regime. We enter the mad anti-Catholic world of the dark recesses of the BNP.

Disturbed and disturbing

In May 2008, as the start of a series of articles on the anti-Catholic bigotry that haunts the BNP, we revealed the anti-Catholic prejudice of BNP candidate Alan Girvan and the anti-Catholic violence of BNP northern Ireland organiser Andy McLorie (see link). This article, the second instalment in that series, was triggered by three incidents: the BNP legal director Lee Barnes’ recent claim that the Saxon races were forced to convert to the Catholic faith; the recent sectarian murder of a young Catholic man by the neo-nazi terrorist group Combat 18 (1 = A, 8 = H. This gives AH or Adolf Hitler), set up the BNP in the 1990s; and, the claim by a racist BNP poster called ‘BNP Supporter’ on the Angry Of Havering Forum that:

“A lot of the BNP supporters on this site have pointed out that this is a christain country and that faith has come under attack from other religions in recent years. It actually goes further this is a PROTESTANT country and the religion is the Church of England and this will be the only faith taught in our school. Catholicism is as much a threat to us as Islam. Our Queen is head of the Church of England and the monarch should always be a protestant but in recent years the Catholics have been trying to have this law removed so the monarch can be any faith. Tony Blair was a secret catholic for may years as Prime Minister and only converted publicly when he left office. Britain for the British”

It was whilst researching these incidents that we discovered the frightening anti-Catholic hatred and racism of the clearly disturbed BNP speaker and Australian immigrant Alan O’Reilly. A fanatical devotee of BNP leader Nick Griffin and operator of the Cleveland BNP blog (BNP for Cleveland), Alan O’Reilly should be prosecuted for incitement of hatred against Catholics.
This article will expose, in detail, the sick and reprehensible views of BNP speaker and activist Alan O’Reilly.

The BNP will deport all Catholics and Muslims from Britain

BNP speaker Alan O’Reilly threatens Catholics and Muslims with the following warning:

“As and when it comes to power a BNP Government would be constitutionally entitled summarily to eject you. All Muslim supporters, Marxist supporters, Papal [i.e. Catholic] supporters etc. could be 'ex-patriated' to countries where such regimes prevail”

Catholics can never be British

BNP speaker Alan O’Reilly classifies Catholics as an enemy category who must be ethnically cleansed from Britain because they can never be British (odd given that Britain was once a Catholic country!):

“I would include them [Catholics] in the 'foreign white' category, which you seem to have overlooked in my earlier posts - they certainly could not be described as ‘white Britons’”

That Islamic/Catholic/EU/Sinn Fein/IRA plot to destroy the UK with Catholic immigrants!

Initially, Alan O’Reilly claims that the European Union (EU) is “a Vatican-inspired project to destroy Britain. Swamping us with foreigners is part of the overall strategy”. But, he then goes on to claim that this is part of a much larger plot between Islam, the Catholic Church, the EU, Sinn Fein and the IRA to destroy Britain by flooding the country with Catholic immigrants from eastern Europe!:

“Sinn Fein actually support illegal immigrants! Eastern Europeans, particularly Poles, are the same religion as Sinn Fein/IRA. Poland is 96% Catholic and Lithuania is 69% Catholic - these were the two European nations mentioned in the BT article. This kind of immigration can only help the Sinn Fein/IRA cause, which is a united Ireland under the Pope. The EU's aim is that mainland Britain should suffer the same fate - and the Mozzies [Muslims] are also a means to that end. Mozzie aggression is a means of driving the British population back into the 'fold,' as the Pope will be perceived as the only leader of any substance willing to stand up to them. He never really apologised for his anti-Mozzie remarks, only regretted that he had been 'misunderstood.'”

Alan O’Reilly then claims that the Catholic Church murders public critics of the EU:

"that's what happens to EU dissenters in public life, who speak the truth. The Vatican is poised for the kill. It is hoped that a government can be elected within the next decade to stave off the Pope's 'coup de grace' but time is running critically short."

This anti-British conspiracy then extends to the Nazis and the African National Congress (ANC) because:

“The IRA and the Nazis all belonged to the same [Catholic] church. Their blood-brotherhood in terror (along with Islam and the ANC) should surprise no-one”.

Catholics are not Christians

Condemning the Catholic religion as the “whore of Revelation”, Alan O’Reilly states: “Catholicism isn't Christianity” and reiterates this on BNP legal director Lee Barnes’ blog when he says, “Catholicism and Christian belief should not be confused”.

Islam is a Catholic plot against Britain and the Protestant faith!

Following the Catholic immigration conspiracy, Alan O’Reilly claims that:

“Islam is a Vatican creation”.

“Both Catholicism and Islam have a common objective - the destruction of Protestant Britain”

Further, on the blog of BNP newspaper editor Martin Wingfield, Alan O’Reilly asserts that “all the world's religions, including Islam, are gradually merging to worship the Catholic BVM. This is not good news for England's identity, any more than the armada of 1588 was”.

This is because, as Alan O’Reilly claims, the real enemy of Britain and the White race are Catholics:

“the real enemy, which is the same one Britain has always had since Henry VIII broke with Rome in the 16th century. It's just a question of straegy and tactics to suit the times, as in 1588 (Armada), 1642 (Civil War), Stewart Pretenders (1715, 1745), Napoleon (1815), Kaiser Wilhelm II (1914), Adolf (1939-40). All the tyrants alluded to belonged to the same church as Sharia Blair, with the exception of the Kaiser and he was a sympathiser, allied to Catholic Austria-Hungary. Adams and McGuinness have been described as "two fine f****** Catholic boys" by IRA heavy Brian Keenan, who masterminded the Libya-IRA connection, i.e. Mozzies[Muslims] and Papists [Catholics] colluding to murder British security personnel”.

One should remind Alan O’Reilly that BNP leader Nick Griffin himself once visited Libya to secure funding from Gaddafi’s regime and the BNP carried articles in its then official magazine, Spearhead, in support of Gaddafi under the leadership of BNP founder John Tyndall. Are Nick Griffin and John Tyndall now in league with the ‘Mozzies’ as ‘Papist’ co-conspirators? This aside, the Catholic threat is very real for Alan O’Reilly because, according to him, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was “another papal puppet”. Then, on the BNP website, Alan O’Reilly claims that the Church of England (CoE) never fully recovered from what he regards as the Catholic assault on it. Elsewhere, the Catholic treat to the Protestant faith, in the particular to the CoE, is clear for Alan O’Reilly:

“Rome's premier target was the 1611 Authorised King James Bible .. he main attack was orchestrated by Romish Anglican Cambridge academics .. They produced the Revised Version of 1881, a Catholic bible that was the forerunner of all the modern bibles that have effectively marginalised the national church”.

Destroy the CoE and you destroy Britain. But, Alan O’Reilly’s real concern is not for the Protestant faith or the CoE. The truth is that he worships race and nation rather than God as he defies Britain and the White race by placing them at the centre of the Protestant faith and the CoE. Not just this, but again on the BNP website, Alan O’Reilly claims that God punished Britain with World War I because:

“Unfortunately, the [Coronation] Oath was tampered with in 1910, to remove the clause whereby the monarch is supposed to disavow the Catholic mass, in accordance with Article 31 of the Church of England’s 39 Articles of Religion .. which is one reason, I believe, why Britain became embroiled in WW1 a mere 4 years after the Oath was corrupted. God is not mocked”

Alan O’Reilly claims Catholics were behind World War One and Two

For Alan O’Reilly the alleged corruption of the Coronation Oath is evidence of the Catholic Church’s modern interference in British affairs that culminated in World War II. But, he goes further. He claims that Catholicism deliberately started both World War One and Two:

“If you want to know who set up WW1, 2, for example, read ‘The Vatican Against Europe’ and’ The Secret History of the Jesuits’ by Edmond Paris, a French writer who was murdered by Jesuits for his publications against them”.

Alan O’Reilly claims Catholics wrote Mein Kampf and were in charge of the concentration camps

Not only does Alan O’Reilly accuse the Catholic faith of directing the Nazi violence against the Jews in 1930s Germany, but he also claims that it was a Catholic priest, not Hitler, who wrote Mein Kampf:

“It was even a Jesuit, Fr. Staempfle, who 'ghosted' Adolf Hitler in the writing of Mein Kampf. Even Hitler had part-Jewish ancestry, as did other leading Nazis but that did not stop him from instigating the murder of 6,000,000 European Jews. That was because he and all the leading Nazis, plus the commandants of the death camps; Hoess, Koch, Stangl etc. all belonged to the same [Catholic] religion - which was not Judaism.You have no chance of winning any war if you can't identify the enemy [i.e. Catholics]”.

But, Alan O’Reilly’s claim that a Catholic priest wrote Mein Kampf is pointless as elsewhere he claims that Hitler was a Catholic carrying out the Pope’s orders.

Attacks on other Christian sects

Not content with attacking Catholicism, in another post Alan O’Reilly takes a swipe at Jehovah's Witnesses and accuses the Greek Orthodox Church, like the Catholic Church, of concealing original parts of the Bible.

Alan O’Reilly claims Catholics are behind communism

Alan O’Reilly then goes on to claim that every prominent communist personality of the twentieth century were in fact secret Catholic agents: “the so-called founders of CommUNism; Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and later Castro”.

The relationship between Catholics and Jews

Alan O’Reilly argues that the “Jewish-Roman collusion against genuine believers is as old as the 1st century Pharisaic declaration”. Alan O’Reilly then claims that the Catholic Church used “renegade Jews to defeat the Russian Orthodox Church via the 1917 Revolution” and “tutored Marx in writing the Communist Manifesto in the Reading Room of the British Museum”. And, the Catholic Church then “instigated the pogroms against Russian Jews to encourage them to help overthrow the Czar”.

But, he also says that the “Jewish loathing for Christians undeniably exists within the State of Israel but the only kind of terror that has reared its ugly head in these isles for the last century has been papal [Catholic] and Islamic”.

Jesus Christ sends earthquakes to punish Muslims for their sins

But, his most sickening claim is that Jesus Christ sent the Kashmir earthquake that killed 75,000 civilians to punish Muslims for the 7/7 bombings in London. Why? Because both events occurred three months apart and so must have been the work of Christ.

Alan O’Reilly’s sick claim that Madeleine McCann was kidnapped by Muslims

A stupid and unjustifiable statement that will surely distress the parents of Madeleine McCann, the British infant who went missing in Portugal, is Alan O’Reilly’s baseless implied claim that it was, conveniently, Muslims (he means non-Whites) who kidnapped Madeleine McCann:

“A pity that a Patricia Harrington act-alike couldn't have been 'riding shotgun' on Madeleine McCann and her siblings. If so, what is the possibility that the outcome might have been two dead Mozzies [Muslims] instead of an abducted 3-year old?”

The Olympics spread “global tyranny”

Bizarrely, Alan O’Reilly claims that the Olympics are a “deception to boost the NWO [New World Order] and eventual global tyranny”.

Foams against mixed-race relationships

Posting on the pro-BNP blog, Sarah Maid of Albion, Alan O’Reilly claims “the media is doing all it can to encourage this inter-racial destruction”. On another site, Alan O’Reilly then claims that pornography “encourage[s] attacks on white girls by non-white males”!

Alan O’Reilly perverts the Bible to justify racial segregation

The reason why Alan O’Reilly can attack inter-racial marriages is due to his apartheid-like perversion of the Bible to justify his racial hatred:

“I have no comment about black males in the media, except that according to holy scripture (along with all those not in the media and their female counterparts), none of them should be living north of Cairo or west of the Azores. Africa, not England, is the land of Ham, the pro-genitor of the black race, Psalm 105:23, 27, 106:22, Genesis 10:6-20 (The Table of Nations - note that Hamites later located in the land of Canaan were out of bounds, which is why they had to be expelled by the Children of Israel under the leadership of Joshua, Joshua 1-24).”

This is the same twisted and evil racio-theological logic that the Klu Klux Klan uses to justify its lynching and murder of Black men and children in the United States. Further, on the Cleveland BNP blog, an excerpt from Alan O’Reilly’s speech at a Teesside BNP meeting states:

“why populate a country like Britain with black Africans and Asians. In the long term, it would only weaken that nation’s physical resilience. I guess that is the agenda”.

Does Alan O’Reilly’s family history of violence explain his disturbed views?

The verbal violence that Alan O’Reilly commits runs through his blood. On his personal blog, alanorei, Alan O’Reilly tells us about his alcoholic grandfather who used to beat up local policemen in western Australia and the violence his father pursued, as he puts it, for “recreation”. Alan O’Reilly comes from a fine lineage.

Conclusion

In light of racist and sectarian nonsense we read above, can anyone with an adult, rational and sane mind ever contemplate voting for the BNP? For readers interested in our first article on the BNP’s anti-Catholic racism, we refer them to the following article:

BNP candidate in anti-Catholic claims: the indefatigable Alan Girvan strikes again!

¡No Pasarán!

Anti-Semitic leader rebuked by Catholic Bishop

A man who has run a virulently anti-Semitic “Catholic” group for 14 years has been told to clean up his act by church officials contacted by the Intelligence Report.

Robert Sungenis, who founded and heads Catholic Apologetics International (CAI), was profiled in the magazine edition released in January, along with other anti-Semitic individuals and institutions involved in the “radical traditionalist Catholic” movement, whose precepts are rejected by the Vatican. The Report later sent a letter to Sungenis’ bishop in Harrisburg, Pa., detailing Sungenis’ anti-Semitic activities.

The church responded with alacrity. According to a July 31 essay he posted on CAI’s website entitled “Catholic Apologetics International and its Teachings on the Jews”, Sungenis was contacted by Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades and later met with Rhoades’ vicar general, the Very Rev. William J. King, and the Rev. James Massa, executive director for ecumenical and inter-religious affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Afterward, Sungenis wrote that CAI’s “hard-line positions regarding the Jews” had been “often expressed in an ill-advised manner” and promised to change.

“CAI is in the process of removing all the content on its website concerning the Jews in order to make the initial adjustments in complying with my bishop’s directive,” he wrote. “If in the future we write any new material on the Jews, it will always be with the required due diligence, as if the bishop were present with us.”

Sungenis, based in State Line, Pa., is one of the hardest-line figures of the radical traditionalist Catholic movement, which generally has rejected the Vatican’s efforts to reconcile with Jews and other faiths. Among other things, Sungenis in 2002 wrote a 33,000-word screed attacking the Jews that led to him being thrown off Eternal Word Television Network, a Catholic cable station. Elsewhere, he has written of “Jews, Judaism and Israel” are conspiring to make Satan the ruler of the earth.

Despite the rebuke, Sungenis did not back down all the way. He wrote that the “Jews, as a race, are no longer the ‘chosen people’ of God,” and added that they “have been blinded to the Gospel of Jesus Christ by their own doing.” Still, he promised to adopt the “more conciliatory approach” that is today “in vogue.”

Hatewatch

Church split feared as Pope backs return of 'anti-Semitic' Latin Mass

A plan by the Pope to authorise the widespread return of the controversial Latin Mass, despite concerns that parts of it are anti-Semitic, has provoked a backlash among senior clergy in Britain and threatens to divide the Catholic Church worldwide. The 16th-century Tridentine Mass - which includes references to "perfidious" Jews - was abandoned in 1969 and replaced with liturgy in local languages, to make worship more accessible to the bulk of churchgoers. But the Pope announced on Thursday that a long-awaited document liberalising the use of the Mass, which some clergy fear will also limit the Church's dialogue with Jews and Muslims, will be released next week.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, has written to the Pope to say that no changes are needed. Concerns about the prospect of the introduction of the Mass were also underlined on Thursday at an unusual meeting to underline resistance to it. But the Pope subsequently issued a statement revealing that he had illustrated "the content and the spirit" of next week's document, which will be sent to all bishops, accompanied by a personal letter from him.

There have been months of debate about the impending statement within the higher echelons of the Church. Cardinals, bishops and Jewish leaders are concerned by the text of the "old" Mass, which has passages, recited every Good Friday, which say Jews live in "blindness" and "darkness", and pray "the Lord our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ".

There are also fears that a reintroduction may be the precursor of further changes to the reforms approved by the Second Vatican Council, which sat between 1962 and 1965 and which called for the Mass to be said in local languages, for the priest to face the congregation, and for the use of lay readers. Latin could still be used to recite the Mass, but the "new" Mass will be used, not the "old" Mass.

To celebrate the old Latin Mass now, a priest must obtain permission from the local bishop and the Roman Catholic Church in Britain. "It is standard practice to follow Rome, but we don't know yet what the [statement] will say," a spokesman for the Church in Britain said yesterday. "When we have the document, bishops and cardinals will consider it."

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, said bishops would still have a "central role" - but hinted at the Vatican's new enthusiasm for the old Mass by calling it a "great treasure" of the Church.

Pope Benedict's move is widely seen as an attempt to reach out to an ultra- traditionalist and schismatic group, the Society of St Pius X, and bring it back into the Vatican fold. The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the society in 1969 in Switzerland, in opposition to the Second Vatican Council's reforms.

The Rev Keith Pecklers, a Jesuit liturgical expert, said: "The real issue here is not limited to liturgy but has wider implications for church life." He added that proponents of the old Mass "tend to oppose the laity's increased role in parish life... collaboration with other Christians and its dialogue with Jews and Muslims".

Independent

Disgraced UN chief and Nazi war criminal Waldheim, dies aged 88

So the old rogue is dead. That is all I could say when I heard yesterday that Kurt Waldheim had reached the end of his days at 88.I spent months, years, investigating his dark past in what we now call Bosnia, when he - let us not be coy about this - was part of the Bosnien-Kampfgruppen of Wehrmacht Army Group E of General Löhr, fighting "terroristen" (yes, indeed, the Nazis called them terrorists, just as they talked about the "RAF Terroristenfliegen") in the Balkans. Waldheim had been secretary general of the UN, had lectured UN officers in Lebanon on the lessons of "terrorism" and, well - as was later to ruminate - he knew about that, didn't he?

I remember, when Waldheim was President of Austria - stamps were issued, heaven spare us; no mention of course of 1943 or 1944 or 1945 - how he turned up in Jordan where the Plucky Little King Mark One (King Hussein, who liked to rule a British Jordan) met him on the apron. I was at Amman airport when this outrageous little man snapped to attention in front of the Jordanian guard of honour, clicked his heels just a little too quickly, I thought, much as he must have done when he saluted his masters in Yugoslavia during the Second World War.

Waldheim - how his friends would prefer that they didn't read these words this morning - was based at a town called Banja Luka, a market town where Serbs and Jews and communist Croatians were murdered en masse, hanged like thrushes from mass gallows or raped to death in the nearby Jasenovac extermination camp. Waldheim would have us believe that he knew nothing of all this, that he was a mere intelligence officer for Army Group E of the Wehrmacht, whose commander, Löhr, just happened to be tried for war crimes after the Second World War.

It was an Austrian journalist who alerted me to Waldheim, a reporter whose father had fought in the Wehrmacht, who had survived the evacuation of north Africa ("I do hope I didn't kill him," the "Enigma" cryptologist said to me when I told her of his attempt to escape by air - his plane got through the Allied net). "Look for the letter W," the Austrian journalist said, the letter W after each debriefing, each Allied commando captured by the Gestapo, each prisoner to be extinguished by "nacht und nebel" - by night and fog.

No, Waldheim didn't order their deaths. He didn't even interview the captured British commandoes, or so he said, but merely "collated" their reports. His junior officers did the interviewing (let us not contemplate what that meant). Then the British prisoners disappeared into night and fog.

I recall finding the German interrogation papers of a young Briton who had been caught trying to escape from Yugoslavia during the war. They lay in the files of the Public Record Office at Kew (now known as the National Archives) and they were pitiful proof of what the Nazis could do. Yes, he admitted he was a British agent, yes he was wearing British uniform, and yes - there it was, in all its symmetry, the "W" - he was interviewed by Waldheim. And then he was taken away and executed, and Waldheim - whose colleagues (no secretary generals, they) had saved the lives of British prisoners - didn't give a fig about their souls.

I remember how I visited Bosnia in 1990 to investigate Waldheim's past. He had written a PhD thesis, he told the world, in the last years of the war; he knew nothing of the Nazi subjugation of the Balkans. He had been wounded on the Russian front. But there was a certain manipulation of the truth. He had been sent to Yugoslavia. He was an intelligence officer for Army Group E. He was based at Banja Luka and - years before the town became the Bosnian Serb capital in the outrageous war between Muslims and Christians - I visited his former headquarters, where the Serbs showed me his files, still cloaked in the see-through parchment of the Wehrmacht.

I even visited his interrogation office, next to an execution pit wherein Serbs and Jews were massacred daily. Did the rifle shots not disturb Kurt Waldheim's concentration? Oh, what it must have been to have the peace and quiet of the UN headquarters on the East River.

Monty Woodhouse was the top man for SOE - Special Operations Executive - in Greece during the war, and he pursued Waldheim for years afterwards, along with an immensely brave Jewish academic. Waldheim published a "White Book" claiming to prove his innocence of war crimes (he was later based in the Hotel Angleterre in Athens). He didn't know, he said. And his friends noted quietly that it was his wife who was the Nazi party member in Austria in the 1930, not himself; that Waldheim was merely a civil servant, one who - in the damning words of the Jewish academic - "helped to give the wheel a push."

So what memories did Waldheim carry with him to the grave? During the war, Woodhouse's Greek partisans captured a Gypsy who was spying on his comrades for the Italians. Woodhouse decided that he should be hanged.

I asked him what it felt like to do such a thing - to commit what, I suppose, we would call a war crime, were it Waldheim whom it had been proved had done it. Woodhouse replied to me - and I have his words in my own handwriting as I write this: "It was terrible - I felt terrible. I still bring the scene back to me from time to time. He was a wretched youth. He didn't say anything really - he was so shaken. He was a sort of halfwit. I was at the hanging. He was hanged from a tree. They simply pulled a chair from beneath his feet. I don't think it took long for him to die. I don't know exactly how long. We were only a hundred men or so - it was the early days of the occupation. If we had let him go, he would have told the Italians... After that, I told Zervas not to take any prisoners."

When I left Bosnia in the summer of 1988 in the aftermath of my Waldheim investigations, I called my foreign news editor, Ivan Barnes of the The Times, to tell him that I saw so many parallels in modern-day Yugoslavia with Lebanon on the eve of conflict in 1975 that I believed a civil war would break out in Bosnia in the near future. The local Serbs even abused me for driving to Waldheim's ex-headquarters with a Croatian driver. "We'll report it if it happens," Barnes roared down the phone at me. In 1992, I did report the Bosnian war - for The Independent.

And what of Waldheim? The Austrian state defended him. He appeared on postage stamps. He went to the opera. He was forbidden entry to the United States - long after he ever needed to go there. He produced a "White Book", supposedly proving he knew nothing of war crimes.

His former United Nations colleagues clucked and re-clucked over his hypocrisy. And I well remember his number two at the UN telling me how he always knew that "KW" was a "crook" - this just three days before I came across a second-hand copy of Waldheim's memoirs in Waterstone's bookshop in Piccadilly with the very same man's warm appraisal of Waldheim as a "man of principle" in the frontispiece.

In 1987, King Hussein took Waldheim to the heights of Um Queiss to overlook the Israeli-occupied West Bank and awarded him the Hussein bin Ali medal - named after Hussein's grandfather. The Plucky Little King praised Waldheim for his patriotism, integrity, wisdom and "noble human values". General Löhr, I should add - Waldheim's superior officer in Yugoslavia - was hanged as a war criminal.

Independent

'Japanese Schindler' who saved Lithuanian Jews is honoured

When Japan's Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko visited the monument of Chiune Sugihara in Lithuania last weekend, many television programmes back in Japan had to run stories explaining who this obscure diplomat was.

It's obvious why the Emperor would be in London yesterday to dine with the Queen but who was Chiune Sugihara?

For years, few Japanese knew the incredible story of how the man dubbed "Japan's Schindler" saved about 6,000 Jews from the Nazis during the Second World War despite working for an ally of Germany. Unlike Oscar Schindler, the German industrialist who turned against the Nazis and rescued almost 1,100 Jews from the Holocaust, Sugihara had to wait until just seven years ago for his bravery to be officially recognised.

Sugihara was the acting consul in Lithuania's temporary wartime capital when he was ordered to abandon his post as the Germans advanced in 1940. A fourth of the city's population was Jewish, mostly prosperous and well integrated, and few were ready to believe the horror stories from nearby Poland until it was too late to flee. By an accident of history the mild-mannered diplomat - one of just two left in the city - became their last hope for survival.

The crossroads in Sugihara's life came one night in July 1940 when he woke up to find a group of desperate refugees outside his window demanding visas to the Soviet Union. He decided to help but his repeated requests to Tokyo for permission to issue the visas were denied. Despite facing disgrace or worse for his family, Sugihara decided to follow his conscience and sign as many visas as he could, in defiance of his government.

Sugihara's courageous decision was all the more remarkable given his background. From solid middle-class stock, he graduated from Tokyo's elite Waseda University and served under the Foreign Ministry in Japan's puppet state of Manchuria, one of the more brutal military occupations of the war. A gifted linguist, he was once tipped for an ambassador's post.

Yet this is the man who sat for almost a month from 31 July to 28 August 1940 painstakingly writing out 10-day transit visas by hand, even enlisting his wife, Yukiko, to help him. By the time they boarded a Berlin-bound train on 1 September 1940, still scribbling out the last visa, they had saved about 6,000 people, including hundreds of children. Sugihara's final act in the besieged city was to hand his consular stamp to a refugee, who went on issuing passes.

Sugihara's reward for his heroism was dismissal from the Foreign Ministry immediately after the war. Disgraced in Japan, he was forced to eke out a living as a part-time translator and ended his life working for a trading company with connections to Russia. He died in 1986 and his family had to wait until 14 years later for the then Foreign Minister Yohei Kono to formally apologise.

A year before he passed away, he was honoured for his work in rescuing the Lithuanian refugees by the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Israel. The award stunned those who heard about it in Japan, where Sugihara had lived in obscurity for years.

Historians and journalists have searched through Sugihara's background to discover what made him take his momentous decision. There were hints in his past that the man who once planned to study medicine was plagued with a conscience. While stationed in Manchuria, for example, he resigned from his post after witnessing the brutality meted out by Japanese troops to the local Chinese.

But many suspect that the key to his change of heart may have been a Jewish refugee called Zalke Jenkins, whose family had fled to Lithuania from the Russian revolution. Sugihara met the 11-year-old in a shop and gave him some money, an act of kindness rewarded with an invitation to visit Jenkins' family. The diplomat spoke afterward at how moved he was by the strength of family bonds in Jewish life, which reminded him of home.

The Emperor's seal of approval is for many of his family the highest honour that Japan can bestow for Sugihara's bravery. "The visit by the imperial couple makes me feel as though his actions have again been rewarded," one of his surviving family members told the Asahi newspaper.

Independent

Quilt recalls horrors of Nazi cruelty

Quilts are pieces of cloth sewn together that in many cases tell history. Not all are designed to remember happy times. For Rosa Freund, the quilt she recently completed looks back on when she and others lived through the tyranny of Nazism.

A Holocaust survivor who started her life in concentration camps when she was 17 years old, Freund gathered patches from friends and then created a quilt to be a silent witness of those terrible days more than six decades ago when she was taken from her home on the outskirts of Budapest, Hungary.

One of the patches is of blue and white stripes, the colors of the uniform she wore in one camp. On the patch is a pocket that bears a gold number 672. "That was my work number," the small-framed woman said.

Above the pocket is a candle of remembrance, which Freund said is important for her. It marks the horrors she saw at places such as Birkenau, Auschwitz and other death camps.

While 672 is a number she remembers, Freund almost had another number. She was one of about 800 people standing in line and was near the place where her arm would have been tattooed with a number. "They ran out of ink before they got to me," she said.

So, unlike untold hundreds of thousands who were "inked" crudely with a number, Freund was not. She also took an old photo of her brother, Moshe; her sister, Klara and her taken before they were sent to concentration camps and had it transposed on a white piece of cloth and sewn to the quilt. The photo was discovered after World War II and was in her brother's possession. He was living in Israel.

Perhaps the most telling of her personally designed patches is one of three smokestacks and the buildings that those who were to be killed entered.

"I lived three blocks from the crematoria," Freund said.

Years later, those days of being near the crematoria came back in a haunting way. Freund said she was at a doctor's office in the United States because of a skin problem. The doctor decided to burn off some of her dry skin. The smell of her own burning flesh rose to her nostrils, bringing back the stench of bodies being burned more than 60 years ago.

Freund was one of five Holocaust survivors who made a trip recently to Fort Huachuca and Sierra Vista to speak about the time of death and destruction unleashed against Jews and others in Europe by Germany's Nazi regime.

The program was part of an educational process of the Holocaust survivors of southern Arizona who meet weekly at the Jewish Family and Children Service of Southern Arizona. For the past five years, the group has come to the post to speak to military members, civilians and schoolchildren. This year's event was called "Children in Crisis, Voices of the Holocaust."

Exhibits about the Holocaust from the Afikim Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to furthering Jewish life, also are on display.

Freund completed the quilt just before April 15, Holocaust Day. The quilt's appearance at the fort was the first of many planned for outside Tucson.

Tucson Citizen

The dark side of Facebook

The social networking website has become popular with political activists - including the British National Party.

Over the last three months, it seems like the bulk of the British political and media establishment has moved on to the social networking site, Facebook. And I'm not just talking about politicians jumping on a new way to meet voters - journalists and commentators from Hugo Rifkind to Andrew Neil and Jonathan Dimbleby are Facebook members.

"Site" seems like an off-hand description. With more than 20 million registered users, "phenomenon" is perhaps more appropriate. Facebook is a small but active battlefield in May's elections, and perhaps more so for the Labour party leadership and deputy leadership elections. It provides the facility to organise your contacts and events and to network and discuss issues with people who share similar interests, whether they be serious or trivial.

Facebook is by no means the only online social networking facility, yet it has become "the one" for politics, far beyond any use of MySpace or LinkedIn. It's hard to pin down why Facebook has achieved this pre-eminence, though I'd put my money on the layout. The pages are laid out neatly and with a clean and neutral colour-scheme and there is limited scope for personal customisation. So while Facebook was originally designed for university students, it is entirely accessible to adults of all ages. And together with the ability to organise canvassing sessions, fundraising events, and policy debates, it's no surprise really that political activists would see the benefits.

Yet mainstream political parties are not the only campaigners to mobilise using this effective resource. The British National Party has recently developed a number of presences on the system. A search for BNP returns 98 groups, though a number of these are unrelated or anti-BNP. But still, those that are supportive of the BNP are disturbing to read.

Danny Lake and Mark Wain, the Young BNP National Organiser and National Secretary, have set up the most official-looking BNP group, which boasts 75 members and publicises a detailed BNP manifesto. Another group has 76 members and the Newcastle University BNP group, managed by John Lilburne and Preston Wiginton, has 49 members. There also are numerous smaller groups.

These may not seem like significant numbers, yet these are people who are willing to have their names and photographs - and often email addresses and mobile numbers - publicly associated with their endorsement. If this is not disturbing enough, Facebook has the facility to form "secret" groups that don't show up on listings, and there is no doubt that the BNP is capable of taking advantage of this.

Providers of internet services, whether they are email systems or social networking sites, try to varying degrees to maintain a hands-off approach to content, regarding themselves as the canvas rather than the painting, which is provided by the user. Facebook certainly has an acceptable use policy, though a little careful manoeuvring from the BNP would enable them to circumvent this without difficulty.

The question remains: should Facebook and other networking sites be responsible in any way for the activities and ideas promoted and facilitated by their services? If a hate crime is committed and is found to have been incited on Facebook, will the company be open to prosecution?

There is, however, some hope. The number of groups and individuals opposing the BNP and its ideology of hate massively outweighs those in favour. One comment amid the bile on a BNP Facebook page raises a smile instantly. In a reference to the founder and owner of the site, a young woman says: "Let me add this up. You guys hate Jews yet you're on a Jew's networking site? Irony!".

Would it be prejudiced of me to assert that no BNP supporter could ever have the mental capacity to come up with a concept or a system that will ever have the potential for political change enjoyed by Facebook? With a head full of poison and hate, what room is there for anything else?

Comment is free

Escape from the Holocaust: The Secret life of Britain's Anne Frank

When her parents were sent to the Nazi concentration camps, a six-year-old from Newcastle was hidden away in Paris. Now she is retracing her path to freedom

The fragments of the story were there all along, bundled into a shoebox which lay, unopened, in a spare room at Suzanne Rappoport's apartment in Leeds. There were the postcards her father had sent, asking after her but providing no word of her mother; the studio photograph of the three of them taken a few weeks before they were separated; and the immaculate, handwritten note she had penned, aged no more than nine, telling how she longed to see them both again. "Je serai bien contente de revoir ma chere petite maman et mon cher petit papa," reads the letter. She never did.

Ms Rappoport was born of an immigrant British mother and has spent her entire adult life in England. But its defining event occurred on a warm August afternoon in German-occupied Paris, in 1942. The French police were collaborating with the Nazis in the round up of non-French Jews - those who had come to France but were not born there - for deportation. Among them were her parents, taken from their small flat at Belleville, in the attractive 20th arrondissement.

Ms Rappoport would have been taken, too, were it not for the courage and sheer audacity of the woman across the third floor landing, Mme Yvonne Collomb, who removed the child from the flat - even as French police waited for her parents to pack a case each - and then helped conceal her from the Nazis and their collaborators for over three years. Though other British Jews are known to have been among France's 30,000 Hidden Children, who escaped the Nazis in circumstances captured by Sebastian Faulks's novel Charlotte Gray, Ms Rappoport will become the first to tell her story this week, in a BBC Timewatch documentary which takes her back to the apartment block where, 65 years ago, she was concealed in a makeshift bed under her neighbour's kitchen table.

There would have been no story to tell had not Ms Rappoport's mother, Millie Spadik, whose own parents first arrived in Liverpool by passenger ship in the early 1900s to escape the Russian pogroms, decided to leave her home in Newcastle upon Tyne for France after an unhappy marriage. She settled in Paris where she had met Josek Rappoport, a Polish tailor, though she and her daughter returned to north-east England several times before the war. With Millie's income as a garment finisher supplementing Josek's salary, they enjoyed theatre and cinema and were able to indulge their daughter in her favourite treat - grenadine and lemonade with a straw at a café on Rue de Belleville. The last family photograph, taken at the Studio Jean Guy, marked their daughter's sixth birthday - 23 July 1942.

What occurred next remained firmly in the past until Ms Rappoport, now 70, concluded it was time to revisit it. Her decision to go back stemmed from a chance conversation about her parents with one of her neighbours in Leeds, Barbara Govan, whose Screenhouse Productions company has produced the Timewatch documentary, which airs on BBC2 on Friday. "I felt that I needed, while I still could, to find out what had happened to my parents - and to my grandparents, who were also taken that summer," Ms Rappoport said. "There were so many fragments of memory. That's how it must be with an experience like that."

She was at her father's shoulder, as he sat watching the pigeons in the sunshine through the window of their third-floor apartment, when they both heard the sound of the French policemen on the wooden staircase at 58 Rue de Belleville. The child was not immediately anxious: there had been a curfew for her that summer and the yellow star she and other Jewish children wore made her uncomfortable, but her parents had been assiduous about keeping the family's true predicament from her. It was as her parents locked the front door and quickly ushered her into the small family bedroom with them, bundling her under the bed, that it became clear something was seriously wrong. "Mother was sobbing, pacing backwards and forwards and tearing her hair out," Ms Rappoport recalled. "From under the bed, I saw clumps of it falling to the floor. She knew what was coming." After the front door was broken in, the Rappoports were ordered into their sparse little kitchen and were packing bags in front of the small Salamander stove, under the eye of the policemen, when Mme Collomb rushed in. "She said: 'What's my child doing in this apartment? I've been looking everywhere for her. She dragged me out by the arm before I could react," Ms Rappoport said. "She got away with it. The police left the building with my parents but never came looking for me."

Ms Rappoport now believes that her parents and their neighbour had rehearsed this script in readiness for the moment. "Mme Colomb had sent her daughter out to play at the Butte de Chaumont park that day," she said. "I also found my parents' sideboard in her apartment, and items like their Japanese tea set, which puzzled me. I now think it might have been their advance payment to her for the task she was prepared to undertake."

The days which followed brought the same bewildering existence which the two young Jewish brothers experience when hidden in an upstairs room in Charlotte Gray. Mme Collomb made her new child a bed under the kitchen table, protected from view by a long, thick chenille table cloth, and she occupied her with a pair of slippers made from old dusters. It was Suzanne's job to polish the floor with them. "I loved skating around the slippery kitchen on them," Ms Rappoport recalled. "She knew how to distract me."

But it soon became unsafe for a child, whose existence was well known, to be confined so close to home. Mme Collomb tapped into a network which was hiding children in rural France and sent her to the village of Mondoubleau in the Loire Valley, whose role in hiding children has been documented. It was here that the reality of her parents' absence and her own grim existence - with hours hidden from view in a cellar - began to dawn on her. Though she did not know it, those into whose care she had been entrusted did not share Mme Collomb's empathy. A letter, written from a family in Mondoubleau to Mme Collomb and recently recovered from the Leeds shoebox, reads: "Je regrette de vous mettre en embarras pour [Suzanne] mais je ne peux pas la garder. Je ne peux pas m'attacher a la maison pour un enfant." ("I'm sorry to put you in a difficult position over Suzanne but I can't look after her. I can't be stuck at home for a child.")

Suzanne was moved to a farmhouse in the Auvergne, where her yearning to see Ms Collomb, as well as her parents, was evident in an emotional a letter to Ms Collomb which concluded: "Je vais vous quittaient en vous embrasant de tout mon petit coeur."

Correspondence from southern Poland told Mme Collomb that the prospects for the child's parents were grim. Several postcards from Suzanne's father confirmed he was in the Auschwitz camp at Birkenau, where at least 1.1 million Jews and 75,000 Poles perished. His prisoner number - Birkenau 3776 - is at the top of the cards (translated into German at the camp) in which he reports: "I'm digging coal. I'm in good health. How is my child? Of my wife, I've heard nothing."

Young Suzanne, like dozens of France's hidden children, received no word of her parents' fate. She wept when a child, Fernandres, who had shared her predicament in the Auvergne, was suddenly taken home to Marseilles by her parents. Her years in hiding brought several close escapes - she was caught in the crossfire of a resistance attack on a German munitions train on one occasion - but eventually, after the war had ended, she returned to Mme Collomb, only to find herself within days on a ship to her maternal grandparents in Newcastle. "After everything, it wasn't what I wanted," she said. "I was returning to a strange country where I didn't speak the language. As soon as I was old enough, I left my family for London."

"Forget what happened," her grandparents told her, leaving her to reach her own conclusions about her parents' fate. And to this day, the precise details about them are unclear. Though Ms Rappoport has located them both at the Shoah Memorial in Paris, where 76,000 Jews deported from France are remembered, the dates and places of their deaths are still unknown. Discussions are currently under way in Europe on how to speed up the unlocking of a vast archive of Nazi documents, including an index of 17.5 million names, controlled by a commission on which 11 countries, including Britain, are represented. This may also reveal more about her paternal grandmother, who died at Auschwitz, and her grandfather, who died at a holding camp.

Mme Collomb's collection of evidence - passed to Ms Rappoport in 1969 when she went to France in search of documentation to assist her application for a British passport - has helped her to discover more than she hoped to learn and prompted her to ensure the Frenchwoman, who died in 1992, is remembered for her heroism. Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, has already agreed to name Mme Collomb as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust, and her name is also to be placed on France's Mur des Justes, which acknowledges those who defied the Nazis. It is now known that Mme Collomb saved others including a M. Hubermann, another neighbour, who hid in her broom cupboard.

The French government has awarded Ms Rappoport a small annual compensation - for which she must attend a Leeds police station each year to prove she is still alive. A class action suit co-ordinated in New York against the French railway, SNCF, for transporting her parents and many others continues - though a regional court verdict in their favour has recently been overturned.

"The police never came looking for me at Mme Collomb's house that day and whether I was on the arrest list is a mystery I shall never know the answer to," Ms Rappoport said. The horror that she was spared is perhaps best understood by the letters written by other Parisian children before they were herded away on trains, that summer. "My heart is heavy and I can't tell you all I am feeling," said 15-year-old Jacques Befelor before departing Paris on what was known as Convoy 15 to Auschwitz. "We are rushing to prepare for a long, sad journey and it drives us mad that we are to be separated. This is the end."

Independent