Page 6-The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday. November 12, 1987
M-T
^iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiHiiiiiiiiiHiiiin^^
More than 40,000 suspects
I MOTHER AT 58! 1
I Israel's Ethiopian Jewish community was astounded earlier this month =
E when this 58-year-old woman gave birth to a baby. The birth was describ- 1
I ed as perfectly normal and mother and child are in great shape! fIPPA|
= photo] ■■ ■' ■ =
illlllllllllllllllllllilllllllltlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllilllllllliilllllillllll
JANICE ARNOLD
MONTREAL -
Dr. Gerald Batist, head of the International Cancer Patients Splidarity Committee, said he has returned from the Helsinki Accords review conference in Vienna hopeful that two Soviet Jews with cancer will be allowed to join relatives in the United States.
Batist spent four days in Vienna pleading the cases of Benjamin Charney, a 50-year-oId mathematician, and Naum Meiman, 76, a retired physicist. Both are seeking "urgent" life-saving treatment abroad that is not available iii the Soviet Union, said Batist, an oncologist with the Montreal General HospitaL
Batist, said he went to Vienna tb lobby for "the principle of free movement across, borders" of cancer patients who wish treatment or to be reunited with family.
Batist nriet with the deputy head of the Soviet delegation, Gennady • . Evstafiev, as well as the the ambassadors of thgJJnited States and Canadian .delegations^ respectively, Warren Zimmerman and William Bauer. In addition, he met with senior members of the delegations of Denmark, Britain,
Sweden, Norway, West Germany. Switzerland and Austria. The Canadian External Affairs Department ■ helped arrange the meetings.
Evstafiev admitted weaknesses exist in the Soviet health care system, but maintained the Soviet position that the release of the two men to the.West would pose a major security risk, Batist said.
Batist claims Meiman has not been involved in nuclear research for 32 years and secrets he may have had access to are long out of date. Gharney, he said^ abandoned his work on space exploration, including manned flights to Mars, 16 years ago.
"I think they are just being; punished for forming an unofficial group and giving the Soviet Union bad press;"
Meiman, who suffers from leukemia and heart and prostate problems, was first refused permission to emigrate to Israel in 1975. He later became active in the human rights movement, sitting on the Helsinki . monitoring committee.
His wife Inna was one of the group of Refusenik cancer patients who last year began a campaign to be alloNved out- She was .eyentuaiiy permitted to go to the U.S., but died soon after.
Meiman's only surviving immediate! relative, a daughter 0|ga, lives in Colorado.
C barney, who has a history of cancerous growths and heart disease, has been applying to emigrate with his family since 1979. His only brother, Leon, was allowed to leave that ye^ and his daughter Anna and son-in-law Yuri Blank left this year. They all live in the Boston area.
He was also one,of the original members of the cancer patients group.
As a result of his visit, Batist said Bauer raised the cases of Charney and Meiman at a plenary session of the conference, which began one year ago. Canada, Holland and Norway' agreed to send embassy representatives to visit Meiman and Charney.
Batist is scheduled to meet the first secretary of the Soviet embassy in Ottawa in a few weeks to continue talks. -
Meanwhile, V the Women's Campaign for Soviet Jewry, the 35s, have " adopted" the cases of Chamy and his wife Yad-viga and Meiman, as well as other Refiiseniks Alexander loffe, 50, a -mathematician, and his-wife Rosa, 48, a physicist, and cybemeticist Alexander Lemer, 74.
IN warctimes
By
YITZHAK RABI
NEW YORK -
United Nations Secretary General Javier Perez dc Cuellar announced last week the'o[i&ning of files on more than 40,000 suspected Nazi warcriminals to governments and scholars.
His announcements was immediately hailed by Israel, long a proponent of the opening, as "an historic and courageous decision."
Perez de Cuellar said in a statement read by his spokesman that the decision followed consultations with the 17 former members of the UN War Crimes Commission (WCC) between Sept. 22 and Oct. 30, 1987 regar-
ding wider access to the archives. Until la-st week, the files of the long defunct WCC had been accessible only to the governments of United Nations member states. The files are currently located in the UN archives in Manhattan.
The secretary-general announced that "under the new rules and procedures now approved, the charge files and the related papers will be available to governments for official research into, and investigation and prosecution of. war crimes. '■Access for governments has been broadened. Not only may governments continue to request information on specific individuals, but they now may ask for access for general research."
Continuing, the state-
ment said. "While the original files are in a fragile and delicate condition and access will normally be to microfilm copies, governments can. upon specific request, consult the original files when this is required for investigation and-pro.secutipn of specific individuals. Cbpjes of the files win be provided, at cost, tb governments when requested in accordance with the new rules. Copies will not otherwise be made available."
The secretary-general further decided that the files "will also be opened for bona fide research" by individuals into the history and work of the United Nations War Crimes Commission and into war crimes.
In a news conference following the announcement, Binyamin Netan-
yahu, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, declared that with the opening of the files to scholars and researchers "a new chapter in Holocaust research is beginning today." He said that the information available on the Nazi era in the ^^UN archives is especially important in-view of the attempts in the last decade by .various elements tb deny the Holocaust and the disaster that befell the Jewish people. He said that the implications of opening the files are important jto the whole human race and not just the Jewish people.
Netanyahu added that opening the files would enable the prosecution of war criminals still at large. ■:l hope that many govern-' ments wjU act now to bring war criminals to justice," he .said.
nommatton
WASHINGTON-
Judge Douglas Ginsburg has withdrawn as nominee for the . U:S. Supreme Court after controversy following his admi-ssion that he had used marijuana. Last week. Education Secretary William Bennett had told the 41-year-old judge that the fight to confirm his nomination in the Senate would not be "winnable" and that staying in would hurt President Reagan politically.
Ginsburg acknowledged, after repprters sought his comment on drug use allegations, that he had us-, ed marijuana in the 1960s and several times in the 1970s.
UNESCO
choice
hailed
PARIS (JTA) -
Western and Israeli spokesmen welcomed as "a step in the right direction" the election here of Federico Mayor Zaragoza, a Spanish bio-chemist, to a 6-year term as director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The vote by the General Conference, : UNESCO's equivalent of the General Assembly, was 142-7 with two abstentions. It confirmed the UNESCO executive board's selection of Mayor for the post on
Oct. 18:
He succeeds Amadou Mahtar M' Bow of Senegal. who headed UNESCO for the past 13 years, a period marked by anti-Western bias and anti-Israel initiatives. Mayor-prbmised ■'radical changes,", though he refrained from criticizing M'Bow, whb remains popular with many Third World delegations.
'Ginsburg, the President's second choice after Judge Robert Bork's nomination had been defeated in the Senate, said he withdrew because hi.s views on law have been "drowned out in the clamor" oyer the mari-. juana issue.
The furor over the drug use followed allegations of a possible conflict qf in-
. terest that occurred when Ginsburg was chief of the Justice Department's antitrust division. Ginsburg had led a gov-
, ernmeni effort to reduce regulation of cable television operators. At the time, he owned about $140,000 (U.S-) Worth oi" shares in Torbnto-based Rogers
• Communicatibns In^.
The Jewish Quiz
QUESTIONS:
(1) Who was the "father",of the modern Yiddish theatre?
(2) Which Israeli violinist, handicapped by polio since childhood, has,attained the highest international critical response?
(3) Which composer of popular music became jji-oneer of American opera with his folk opera Por-gy and Bess?
ANSWERS: '
(1) Abraham Gold-faden (1840-1908).
(2) Itzhak Periman.
(3) George Gershwin.
EdmoridY.Lip.sitz
these questions and answ;ers came from the book 6400 Questions About Judaism and the Jewish People by Edmond Y.Lipsitiy published by JESL Educational Products, Downsview. Dr. Lipsitz would be pleased to receive yoUr coiii-ments, or to consider your own Jewish quiz questions for inclusion in future columns. Write to him, c/o Canadian Jewish News.
90 miles from Halifax, Nova Scotia Co-ed 7-15, July 1-Aug. 12, 1988
Give your child a great summer. Plan it witli us:
• Red Cross Royal Life Saving • Water Skiing • Sailing •Full Land Sports Program • Boating, Canoeing • Doctor and R.N. on premises •Windsurfing
•Individualized Swim Instruction
• Judaica Program • Arts & Crafts
• Drama • Jazz Dance ♦ Over-nites • Maccabia (Mini Olympics)
• Qualified Friendly Staff
FEE: $1,575.00
C.II PROGRAM -16 YEARS OLD $1,575.00 (includes out-of-town excursion)
STAFF INQUIRIES WELCOME
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION Montreal • Neil Riibin (514) 484-9218 Toronto • Dr. Melvin Brown (416) 783-0136, Karen Miller (416) 773-6135 Ottawa - Laurie Pascoe (613) 224-1672 Halifax - (902) 422^7491 1515 South Park Street, Suite ^» Halifax, N.S. B3J 212 SHEUX)N COHEN - CAMP DIRECTOR
Owned and Operated by ATLANTIC JEWISH COUNCIL Young Judaean Youth Came. Lake William, Barss Corner, Lunenburg Co. N.S. ~