Spain’s
Constitutional Court declared last week that denial of the Holocaust is
no more a crime, although justification of the Holocaust or of any
other genocide is still punishable by law.
Campaigners have failed to save the horse chestnut tree that gave Anne Frank such comfort as she hid from the Nazis during the Second World War.
Amsterdam city council has given the order for the "Anne Frank Tree" to be felled next Wednesday after tests two months ago showed that it was in such a bad condition that the felling could not be put off any longer.
"The original postponement was to give objectors the time to present a plan to preserve the famous tree for longer," said Ton Boon, a council spokesman.
"From the latest assessment, it appears that only 28 per cent of the trunk is still healthy. The risk of the trunk breaking - in which case the 27-ton tree will fall over - is now unacceptably high."
The 150-year-old tree, which stands next to a "secret annex" where the Frank family hid, above an Amsterdam canal-side warehouse, has become familiar to the many millions of readers of The Diary of Anne Frank.
The Jewish teenager made several references to the tree in the diary that she kept during the 25 months she remained hidden, "like a caged bird", until the family was arrested by the Nazis in August 1944.
"The two of us looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air, and we were so moved and entranced that we couldn't speak," she wrote on February 23 1944, referring to her friend Peter van Daan.
Anne, aged 15, and her sister Margot died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, just weeks before it was liberated. Her fondness for the chestnut tree inspired Emma Thompson, the actress, to launch the www.annefranktree.com website last year.
Anne Frank House, the museum based in her former hiding place, has promised that the tree will live on.
"After the felling, a graft from the original will be put in its place. In this way the tree, which is so closely connected with the memory of Anne Frank, will live on," said a museum spokesman.
Iran wants Interpol to arrest five Argentines for falsely accusing Iranians in the 1994 Buenos Aires Jewish center attack.
The state IRNA news agency reported Tuesday that Iranian prosecutors have demanded that the five appear before an Iranian court.
The accusations come on the heels of a vote at the Interpol world
police body's annual general assembly last week to put five Iranian men
and one Lebanese man on its most wanted list in connection with the
attack on the AMIA center, which killed 85.
The Argentines include a judge, two prosecutors, a former government
official and the president of the Jewish center. The charges, according
to IRNA, include making accusations against Iran "based on baseless and
faked information," and bribery.
No one has been brought to justice in the AMIA bombing. Iran has
denied involvement in the bombing, claiming the United States and
Israel are behind the accusations.
Ukrainian
President Viktor Yushchenko on Wednesday gave his Israeli counterpart
Shimon Peres hundreds of declassified documents shedding new light on
mass graves of Jews dating from World War II.
Yushchenko, on a three-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian
territories, "surprised" Peres at their meeting in Jerusalem by "giving
him a large box containing hundreds of documents and maps with the
exact location of mass graves and Jewish graves," Peres’s office said
in a statement.
Ukraine’s security and intelligence bodies recently declassified the
previously confidential papers at the request of Yushchenko, who said
that "Ukraine wishes to turn over a new leaf in its relations with
Israel.
"We do not deny our past, but we are looking towards the future and
want Israel to consider us a loyal partner," he was quoted as telling
the 84-year-old Nobel laureate.
More than 800,000 Ukrainian Jews were killed during World War II.
The most notorious massacre was at Babi Yar, Kiev, when 34,000 Jews
were machine-gunned over two days, on September 29 and 30 in 1941.
The killings there continued until 1943, where up to 100,000 victims
-- Jews, Roma, resistance fighters and Soviet prisoners of war -- are
thought to have died.
Yushchenko also gave Peres documents on Jewish underground movements
in the Ukraine from the 1920s onwards, Peres’s office said.
Campaigners have failed to save the horse chestnut tree that gave Anne Frank such comfort as she hid from the Nazis during the Second World War.
Iran wants Interpol to arrest five Argentines for falsely accusing Iranians in the 1994 Buenos Aires Jewish center attack.
