Marilyn Henry
Last chance for Holocaust restitution
‘Needs are immediate and we are all too aware of them’
PRAGUE – Just when charitable agencies are struggling to provide services, 46 nations have called for greater aid to needy Holocaust survivors. No one suggests that communal agencies take on this obligation, but in the United States, immediate support is unlikely to come from any other source.
With a declaration endorsed on Tuesday at the Terezin concentration camp, the nations — primarily European — concluded a four-day conference on Holocaust-era assets. The conference, hosted by the Czech Republic, was the first international diplomatic forum on Nazi victims’ material losses in slightly over a decade. It also was the first to include the social welfare of survivors on the agenda.
“It is unacceptable that those who suffered so greatly during the earlier part of their lives should live under impoverished circumstances at the end,” said the Terezin Declaration.
Ambassador Meridor’s message: Part frightening, part festive
From left are Dan Silna, president of UJA-NNJ; Leo Gans, a member of the UJA-NNJ board of trustees who introduced Ambassador Sallai Meridor; Meridor; and Barbara and Phillip Moss, who hosted a leadership briefing before Meridor's talk. Howard Charish, executive vice president of UJA-NNJ, is in back. UJA-NNJ
Sallai Meridor, Israel's ambassador to the United States, came to Bergen County last week, with a message that was part festive, part frightening. At the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades last Wednesday, he spoke at length about Iran and terror and called for action against the threat posed by Iran.Yet despite a speech marked by the domestic and external challenges Israel faces, he offered celebratory statements for Israel's 60th anniversary, and commendations to North Jersey for maintaining the community's strength through the '004 merger of the UJA Federation of Bergen County & North Hudson and the Jewish Federation of North Jersey.
