Past Events 2008

January 4

• International Rescuer Day 2008 – Nanjing, China. Organized by Professor Xu Xin.

January 15 and 17

• Documentary ”Raoul Wallenberg, le diplomate juste” – France. The French TV station ARTE will screen the film, directed by Klaus Dexel, on January 15th at 23:00 pm and on January 17 at 15:00.

January 16

• International Rescuer Day 2008 – New York, USA. Organized by Carla Lessing, Hidden Children Foundation.
• Raoul Wallenberg Celebrated – Saskatoon, Canada. A special ceremony was held in Saskatoon with the presence of Les Fenyes, whose mom who was just 8 years old along with some other family members were able to live in an apartment Wallenberg set up from April of 1944 to January 1945.

January 17

• Homage to Raoul Wallenberg – Buenos Aires, Argentina. Holocaust survivors saved by Raoul Wallenberg will place flowers on the Wallenberg monument at 7.30 pm. Gabriela Michetti, Vice-Mayor of the City of Buenos Aires will be the keynote speaker.
• Raoul Wallenberg Day – Winnipeg, Canada. The Jewish Federation of Winnipeg and Gray Academy of Jewish Education have developed a program to commemorate Raoul Wallenberg Day on January 17th. The day-long conference has a double objective: to bring awareness to students about human rights issues and to empower students to undertake initiatives and action plans in keeping with Wallenberg’s legacy: that we can all make a difference. A number of local high schools have been invited to send delegations.
• Wallenberg Commemoration – Moisesville, Argentina. The Moisesville Museum and the town community organize an event to commemorate the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg at 8:30 pm in the Raoul Wallenberg park.
• Homage to Raoul Wallenberg – Budapest, Hungary. The Hungarian Raoul Wallenberg Association will commemorate Wallenberg at 5 pm at the Wallenberg memorial plaque in the Wallenberg street (Budapest,13th District). The speaker will be Antal Czinder, sculptor of several Wallenberg memorial plaques.
• Remembering a Lost Hero – Toronto, Canada. Screening of the film ”Rosenstrasse” at 7 pm at the Sheppard Centre Cineplex Odeon, 4861 Yonge Street, Toronto. RVSP to 416-635-2883 x153 or hschwartz@ujafed.org.
• Raoul Wallenberg Day – Winnipeg, Canada. The Jewish Federation of Winnipeg and Gray Academy of Jewish Education have developed a day-long conference with a double objective: to bring awareness to students about human rights issues and to empower students to undertake initiatives and action plans in keeping with Wallenberg’s legacy: that we can all make a difference.
• Wallenberg Commemoration – Puebla, Mexico. Organized by Fernando Lucero.
• International Rescuer Day 2008 – Jerusalem, Israel. Organized by Jerusalem Working Group.
• International Rescuer Day 2008 – Budapest, Hungary. Organized by Gabor Deak.

January 21

• Anniversary of Wallenberg’s Disappearance – London, UK. A screening of the documentary film ”Buried Alive,” which narrates the life and deeds of Raoul Wallenberg, will take place at 7 pm in West London Synagogue. Guest speaker Mr. Baruch Tenembaum, Founder of the IRWF, will address the audience following the film. The synagogue is located at 34 Upper Berkeley Street – London – W1H 5AU.

January 27

• International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The United Nations General Assembly designated January 27 as an annual international day of commemoration to honor the victims of the Nazi era. This date marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. The U.N. resolution rejects denial of the Holocaust, and condemns discrimination and violence based on religion or ethnicity. For more information visit http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=16431&Cr=holocaust&Cr1

January 31

• Presentation of the Book ”Escape” – New York, USA. ”Escape,” written by Professor Norman S. Poser, narrates the story of the author’s family saved in part by Danish Consul General in Oslo, Hans Henning Schroder. The presentation will take place at 7 pm in JCC Manhattan, located at 334 Amsterdam Avenue (@ 76th Street). The event will count with the presence of Professor Norman S. Poser and Ambassador Torben A. Gettermann, Consul General of Denmark in NY.
• Screening of ”Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertranspor” – New York, USA. The UN organizes this screening at 6 pm. at the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library Auditorium. Limited seating, RSVP by 16 January 2008 to holocaustremembrance@un.org.

March 11

• Book Presentation – Tel-Aviv University, Israel ”Holy Land and the New World during the Ottoman Empire”. The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and the Association of Friends of Tel Aviv University for Spanish-Speaking invite to the presentation of the book Holy Land and the New World during the Ottoman Empire, the work of Jaime and Margarita Krejner, recently published in Argentina. The presentation will take place on Tuesday, March 11, 2008, at 18:00 pm in auditorium number 001 in the WEBB building – School of Languages, in the Ramat Aviv campus of the University of Tel Aviv – (entrance at street Levanón, gate No. 8).

March 13

• Wallenberg Medal – International Institue, University of Michigan; 07:30PM – 09:30PM, Rackham Auditorium. The Wallenberg Medal is one of the University of Michigan’s highest honors, bestowed annually on an outstanding humanitarian whose achievements signal that he or she is free of racial, religious, or ethnic prejudice. Recipients are selected because their contributions, in the form of actions and/or writing, honor and perpetuate Raoul Wallenberg’s own extraordinary accomplishments and human values. For over 15 years, Sompop Jantraka has worked tirelessly to save children in Asia’s Mekong sub-region from being sold into prostitution. Sompop’s efforts earned him two Nobel Peace Prize nominations and a profile as an Asia Hero in Time Magazine. Contact Information: cseas@umich.edu

March 19

• 64th Anniversary of German Occupation in Hungary. On March 19th, 1944, German forces occupied Hungary. As a result, Hungarian Jews were ordered to concentrate in ghettos. Over 500,000 Jews died under German occupation.
  
  Ongoing Exibitions :

  Swedish Institue, Consulate-General of Sweden and The Museum of Political History of Russia Present: ”Raoul Wallenberg – One Man Can Make A Difference” . The exhibition is dedicated to the life and activities of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg whose personal courage and negotiating skills helped to save thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis. He was captured on 17 January 1945 in Budapest and was taken away by the Russian army without knowing whether he was ”a guest or a prisoner”. To date, the Raoul Wallenberg exhibition has been shown in Stockholm, Lund, Kiev, Lviv, Warsaw, Banja Luka, Bucharest, Budapest and Moscow. It is being shown at the State museum of Political History of Russia in St Petersburg

  The Museum Of Jewish Heritage Presents – Sosúa: A Refuge for Jews in the Dominican Republic. On view February 17-July 25, 2008. In 1938, a time when openings for Jewish refugees were hard to find, the government of the Dominican Republic offered to resettle up to 100,000 Jews. Sosúa, an abandoned banana plantation on the north coast of the island, would become a refuge to hundreds of jews. This exhibition will tell how the settlers were recruited and came to Sosúa, what awaited them there, what role the Dominican and U.S. governments and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee played in the story, how the settlers worked with their Dominican neighbors to establish themselves, and what kind of a town they created. For more information : http://www.mjhnyc.org/exhibitions_special.htm#sosua

March 30

• Carl Lutz was born in 1895. As chief of the Swiss Legation’s Department of Foreign Interests in Budapest and as an engaged Christian, Carl Lutz felt he had to protect people persecuted by the Nazis. When deportations to Auschwitz began, Lutz decided to place the staff of the Jewish council for Palestine under his diplomatic protection. With the aid of volunteers, Lutz issued tens of thousands of ”protective letters” and placed part of the Jews protected by Switzerland – about 30,000 people – in 76 protected houses. Carl Lutz helped 62,000 Jews to survive.

April 3

• Aristides de Sousa Mendes dies, in the year 1954.

April 9

• Film Screening: ‘Legacy’ (Legado) at the Instituto Cervantes, New York, USA. Legado, the film produced by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation based on the idea of Baruch Tenembaum the IRWF Founder will be shown as a part of ”El legado de Sefarad” Festival. The film is part documentary and part fiction feature about the various waves of Jewish immigration to Argentina.

April 19

• Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. On the 19th of April 1943, the uprising of the ghetto of Warsaw began and, on another 19th of April, but this time in 1997, in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Buenos Aires a commemorative mural was placed, in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

Yom Hashoa – Holocaust Memorial Day Events:

Saviors on the screen – Annual Film Marathon at the JCC in Manhattan

April 29th

• 7:30PM: As seen through these eyes. The documentary focuses on art made by children during the Holocaust, and in certain cases, even at the encouragement of the German authorities.
  Documentation of these works and conversations with surviving artists give us a glimpse into what went on in the minds of these children and into the strength of the human spirit.

April 30

• 6PM: The House on August Street. This highly acclaimed Israeli documentary brings the untold story of Beate Berger who founded ”Beit Ahawah” (”House of Love”) in Berlin for Jewish Children in need. In the early 1930s she made the courageous decision to save the children from the Nazis, and through unique rescue operations, she took them to a new home she built for them in Israel.

April 30

• 8PM: Fugitive Pieces. Based on the best-selling novel, the film tells the story of Jakob Beer, an orphan child saved by a Greek Archeologist during WWII. Over the course of his life Jakob attempts to deal with the losses he has endured. Through his writing and the discovery of true love, he is ultimately freed from the legacy of his past.
  Starring: Stephen Dillane, Rade Sherbedgia, Rosamund Pike, Ed Stoppard, and Ayelet Zorer

Screenings will take place at the JCC Manhattan 334 Amsterdam Ave. at 76th St.
Buy tickets online

April 28 – May 1

• Educational Program at Hebrew Schools, New York, USA. Children and teens will reenact scenes from the life of Raoul Wallenberg in Hebrew Schools, as part of IRWF’s program.

May 5

• Exhibit – Caricatures of Robert Hans Olschwanger, Berlin, Germany. 7:30PM at the Ev. Vaterunser Gemeinde in Berlin.
  Mr. Olschwanger was a unique artist. A Jew born in Germany, he fled from the Nazis and established himself in Peru, where he became a combatant artist, having published a great number of remarkable caricatures against the Nazi regime in the Peruvian press. Beyond the artistic value of his prolific work, his caricatures bore a prophetic nature, foreseeing the downfall of Hitler’s regime. After the war, Mr. Olschwanger returned to Germany, where he passed away.
  View the invitation

May 6

• Street named after Angello Roncalli, Peekskill, NY. 6:30 PM East Main Street and Angelo Roncalli – Pope John XXIII’s Way (Dayton Lane).
  Rabbi Claudio Kupchik of First Hebrew Congregation initiated the naming of the street after Angelo Roncalli, who saved Jews during the Holocaust by issuing baptismal papers and by personal protests. Later, as Pope John XXIII, Roncalli convened the Second Vatican Council, which finally acquitted Jews of Chirst-Killing. Dr. Mordecai paldiel, director of special projects with the IRWF,will attend the ceremony and deliver a speech.

June 12

• Presentation of the International Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli Award. Rome. See the invitation

September 10

• President of Croatia, Stepan Mesic, presents to Baruch Tenembaum the ”Order of the Croatian Danica bearing the likeness of Katarina Zrinski”. Presidential Palace, Zagreb.

October 17

• Conference on the life of the Portuguese rescuer Aristides de Sousa Mendes. Paulo A. Martins. Auditório do Instituto do Ceará. Fortaleza. Brazil.

October 27

• Gedenkstatte Stille Helden Permanent Exhibition. Berlin Town Hall. Germany.
• The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation presents the ”Raoul Wallenberg Medal” and the ”Esfira Maiman Women Rescuers Medal” to Ms. Karolina Reszeli and posthumously to her mother – Zsuzsanna Reszeli. Budapest. Hungary.

November 13

• Tribute to Holocaust Rescuer Stanislawa Slawinska. Residence of the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland in Israel.