Life Begins at Sixty
June
1 Villach, Austria - A memorial honoring Holocaust victims in southern Austria, consisting of 17 glass plates engraved with the names of 108 local Holocaust victims, was smashed. The memorial, which was created in 1999, was previously damaged by vandals in March 2003.
2 to 3 Quebec City, Canada -- Twenty gravestones were toppled by vandals in the historic Beth Israel cemetery. The cemetery is designated a national historic site by the Canadian government.
4 Epinay-sur-Seine, France - A 17-year-old Jewish student was stabbed with by a man with a knife shouting "Allahu Aqbar" (G-d is great in Arabic). The student was leaving a Jewish school in the northern Parisian suburbs. The attacker tried to hurt two other students with a screwdriver. The student was in serious, but not critical condition. President Jacques Chirac condemned the attack and the French Interior Minister, Dominque de Villepin, visited the scene.
6 "In Amsterdam, a 14-year-old girl heard the news of D-Day over the radio in her attic hiding place. She wrote in her diary, 'It still seems too wonderful, too much like a fairy tale. The thought of friends in delivery fills us with confidence.' Anne Frank even ventured to hope, 'I may yet be able to go back to school in September or October.'"
President George W. Bush on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 2004
11 Rivesaltes, France - A Holocaust-era mural painted by Jewish children in a transit camp who were being held before being sent to Nazi death camps, was discovered vandalized in southwestern France. A historian visiting the site, where 4,500 Jews and Gypsies were held, found that the mural had been chiseled off the wall. According to The Independent, in 1942, a Swiss nurse at the camp asked the children to paint a Swiss landscape on the infirmary wall. The painting was discovered in 1999 and was to become the central exhibition of a Holocaust museum at the Rivesaltes transit camp. Half of the inmates of the transit camp, including 400 children, were later killed in Auschwitz. French government officials condemned the incident, and the Interior Minister promised that the mural would be restored. ADL
12 David’s sixtieth birthday.
From the Simon Wiesenthal Center:
REMEMBER ANNE FRANK AND THE 1.5 MILLION CHILDREN WHO PERISHED DURING THE NAZI HOLOCAUST
Dear Henny,
It is of little worth what I offer you. Pluck roses on earth and forget me not. Anne Frank
Inscription by Anne Frank in her autograph album on display at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance
This Saturday, June 12th would have marked the 75th birthday of Anne Frank, one of the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis during the World War II Holocaust. The Jewish teenager's diary, written while she and her family were hidden in Amsterdam, has touched the lives of tens of millions of people the world over. She perished at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945.
18 This resolution, which David wrote, was passed by an almost unanimous vote of the delegates at the One hundred fifty-sixth Session of The California-Nevada Annual Conference of the UMC. The Conference has 355 churches and over 87,000 members.
People of Faith—Working Together
Each of us and our churches should reach out to our non-Christian neighbors in order to learn from them and appreciate what they have to contribute.
This is from the background information which supported it:
"The California-Nevada Annual Conference of the UMC is blessed in having strong representation from many of the world’s living faiths among our friends and neighbors. The time when mere tolerance was sufficient has passed. God has spoken to all human beings through these faiths and the message we preach will be richer if we better understand that. We can better bring the Methodist message to the people of Northern California and Nevada if we understand some of the insights these faiths bring and incorporate them in our message."
19 David becomes the American promoter for the Africa University Choir and their 2004 Chamber Choir U.S. Tour CD.
Nepean, France – A synagogue was vandalized in an Ottawa suburb. Congregation Beth Shalom West was defaced with graffiti, swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans.
21 The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the stabbing of a Yeshiva student in Antwerp by a gang of 15 young Arabs outside of a Yeshiva in a suburb of Antwerp on Thursday.
22 Rav Menachem Mendel Schneerson's Yahrzeit.
Known as the rebbe, Rabbi Schneerson was the last in a line of seven Lubavitch leaders of fathers and sons or sons-in-law, according to Rabbi Eliezer Zaklikovsky of the Monroe Chabad on Gravel Hill Road.
Zaklikovsky, since his infancy, knew the rebbe and studied with him for many years. Zaklikovsky was sent to Monroe to start a new Chabad center about two years ago.
Zaklikovsky recalled the rebbe's Saturday afternoon gatherings of "insightful talks and lessons" where the leader would speak for four or five hours.
"He was a wellspring of fresh new perspectives. It was very, very mesmerizing," he said.
Lubavitchers believe that when you are alive, you are limited by your body, but once the soul departs from the body, you have unlimited power, Zaklikovsky said.
"Although the rebbe is dead, he is still with us, and his message keeps on growing and growing," he said.
Zaklikovsky said he most remembers the rebbe for his ability to see the potential in every individual, Jewish or not.
"He had an unconditional love of every person regardless of background, level of service, knowledge or affiliation," Zaklikovsky said.
From: Rebbe is recalled as symbol of optimism amid doubt and chaos, Brunswick Sentinel/June 24, 2004,
David sends this Brookings Institution paper to the chair of the FIX Protocol Ltd. FIX Foreign Exchange Working Group, of which he is a member. One of the items the group’s monthly meeting discusses is how to expedite the handling of payments sent to countries, where major banks are not willing to keep large bank accounts on which payments they send can be drawn.
POLICY BRIEF #121
by Paul R. Masson and Heather Milkiewicz
July 2003
© 2004 H. David Marshak, All Rights Reserved
