We were privileged to be given the opportunity to arrange Eva Lavi’s (Prisoner Number 76404) speaking engagements and in Christchurch alone  approximately 350 history students from Middleton Grange, Burnside HS, Papanui HS, Rangi Ruru and Villa Maria College heard her speak.

Kudos to the Kate Macpherson, Heather Burgess, NZ Zionist Federation and the Wellington Holocaust Centre for making it all possible.

Anna Turner from the Christchurch Press attended the talk and here is her article:

At 2-years-old she was removed from her home and crowded into Poland’s Krakow Ghetto. At 5-years-old she was taken to the Plaszow Labour Camp where she witnessed unspeakable horrors. And at 8-years-old she was saved from certain death by Oskar Schindler.

Reporter ANNA TURNER speaks to Holocaust survivor Eva Lavi, who was in Christchurch yesterday.

Holocaust survivor Eva Lavi’s voice cracks with emotion as she describes herself as a “child of miracles”.

The softly-spoken woman was just two years old when war broke out in Europe and she and her family were forced into a life of unimaginable horror.

Over the next six years, Lavi narrowly escaped death on many occasions and was ultimately saved by Oskar Schindler, whose story was made famous in the movie Schindler’s List.

Now 76-years-old, Lavi has visited Christchurch to share her incredible tale of survival.

In 1939, Lavi was living in Poland with her parents, Fela and Wilek Rac, when the war broke out. The family was forced into the cramped Krakow Ghetto along with 15,000 other Jews.

Survivors forced out of dugouts during the liquidation of the Ghetto

Within the first month, Lavi’s grandparents were killed for being “too old”.

Her mother told her if she wanted to survive she would have to “be like a little robot”.

“She said ‘Don’t cry, don’t be noticed, be obedient’. So I did what she said.”

The main entrance of Plaszow

Lavi recalled one incident where the Nazis came to the ghetto, looking for children, and her mother shoved her out the window.

“She told me to cling on to the drainpipe and wait until they had gone. It was minus 30 degrees out and I almost froze to death,” Lavi recalled.

“When my mother came and got me I was like an ice-block, but she defrosted me.”

At another point, her father tried to feed the family poison as he “believed it would be better for them all to die” than to continue living in the ghetto.

Her mother stopped him, telling Lavi the family had to keep fighting.

Read more.

Here is the National Radio Interview:  aft-20130417-1420-schindlers_list_survivor-048

This week writer Iain Banks announced he has cancer and may have just months to live. Here he explains why, in 2010, he decided his novels would no longer be published in Israel.

I support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign because, especially in our instantly connected world, an injustice committed against one, or against one group of people, is an injustice against all, against every one of us; a collective injury.

Read more.

Earlier this month, Palestinian children were taught Islam-based hatred of Jews on the weekly PA TV children’s show The Best Home. A young girl recited a poem filled with both Islamic hate messages and other libels demonizing Jews. The poem taught Palestinian children that Jews, “Allah’s enemies, the sons of pigs,” defiled the Quran and Jerusalem, both crimes against Islam, and “murdered children,” “cut off their limbs,” and “raped the women in the city squares.” Palestinian Media Watch has documented that this weekly PA TV children’s program teaches hatred and denial of Israel’s existence.

The suggested response to Jews and Zionists offered in this hate poem is military and Islamic:

“Bravo, applause, applause, applause to Hadeel.”

The poem also included a tribute to Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah organization and Arafat:

The following is the text of the hate poem recited by a young girl on PA TV’s children’s program…

Read more.

A Labour lord has been suspended by the party after an alleged anti-Semitic rant blaming a Jewish ‘conspiracy’ for his dangerous driving jail sentence.

Lord Ahmed is said to have complained in a TV programme that Jews ‘who own newspapers and TV channels’ put pressure on British courts.

The Muslim peer was jailed for 12 weeks in 2009 – serving 16 days – after being involved in a fatal car crash on Christmas Day 2007.

Lord Ahmed, 55, admitted dangerous driving after it emerged he sent five text messages while driving shortly before the motorway collision near Rotherham that killed 28-year-old Martin Gombar.

Today’s announcement follows reports he told an Urdu-language broadcast in Pakistan that his trial judge was appointed to the High Court as reward for helping a ‘Jewish colleague’ of former prime minister Tony Blair.

He allegedly said: ‘My case became more critical because I went to Gaza to support Palestinians. My Jewish friends who own newspapers and TV channels opposed this.’

A Labour spokesman said: ‘The Labour Party deplores and does not tolerate any sort of anti-Semitism…

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World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder congratulated Cardinal Jorge María Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, on his election as Pope Francis I on Wednesday.

“Pope Francis I is no stranger to us. In recent years he attended many inter-faith events co-organized by the WJC and our regional affiliate, the Latin American Jewish Congress,” he wrote, adding he had met him in Buenos Aires in 2008.

Lauder praised the new pope as “an experienced man, someone who is known for his open-mindedness…a man of dialogue, a man who is able to build bridges with other faiths”.

Read more.

Ed Miliband, the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, has pledged to oppose boycotts of Israel and to protect Jewish customs, including circumcision and ritual slaughter.

Speaking Thursday before a crowd of 300 at an event organized by Britain’s main Jewish umbrella group, the leader of the British opposition, who is Jewish, warned of the need to be “ever-vigilant” against anti-Semitism, the Jewish Chronicle reported.

Read more.

An Israeli air attack staged in Syria this week may be a sign of things to come.

Israeli military officials appear to have concluded that the risks of attacking Syria are worth taking when compared to the dangers of allowing sophisticated weapons to reach Hezbollah guerrillas in neighboring Lebanon.

Tzachi Hanegbi, an incoming lawmaker in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and a former chairman of parliament’s influential foreign affairs and defense committee, signaled Thursday (local time) that Israel could be compelled to act on its own. While Israel’s preference is for Western powers to gain control over Syria’s arms stockpile, he said there are no signs of that happening.

“Israel finds itself, like it has many times in the past, facing a dilemma that only it knows how to respond to. And it could well be that we will reach a stage where we will have to make decisions,” Hanegbi told Israel’s Army Radio Thursday.

Read more.

Armed fighters linked to the Syrian opposition have detained more than 20 UN peacekeepers Wednesday in the increasingly volatile zone separating Israeli and Syrian troops on the Golan Heights, a new escalation in the spillover of Syria’s civil war.

The U.N. Security Council demanded their immediate and unconditional release.

The NZ Defence Force said none of its personnel in the Middle East were involved in the incident.

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When Elie Wiesel emerged from quintuple heart bypass surgery, still wired to monitors, he immediately started writing a book about the ordeal – “in my head.” In French.

A year later, as he recuperates from post-procedure fatigue and depression, “Open Heart” is being published, in English. And the 84-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust activist is busy in the Manhattan office of his foundation, which also is recovering – from financial ruin by Bernard Madoff, who had invested the money funding its humanitarian efforts.

Read more.