The remnant who survived
I read with interest “Herbert Haberberg’s story and Jewish history” (March 12). No doubt Haberberg’s time with the Jewish Brigade was very impactful.
For more about the Jewish Brigade, I recommend the book The Brigade by Ward Blum, informative about how Haberberg may have served his people.
As described in the book, after the war ended many members of the Brigade served in post-war Germany as intelligence officers. Their familiarity with the German language made them indispensable to Allied authorities interrogating Germans for war crimes.
There was another side to certain members of the Brigade. They used their access to information seized from the German authorities to identify and locate war criminals who otherwise would not have received justice because there was a practical numerical limit as to how many Germans the Allies were willing to prosecute. These members of the Brigade dispatched justice to, perhaps, hundreds of war criminals who had responsibility for the deportation and extermination of Jews.
The British always had suspicions that members of the Brigade were carrying out targeted hits on Germans connected with the Holocaust. To address their concerns, the Brits eventually transferred the Brigade to
Italy, where your Uncle may have spent part of his service. Once established in Italy, the Brigade turned its attentions to using their knowledge and access to logistics to transport displaced Jews to Palestine.
As independence approached in Palestine, many of the Brigade members resigned their commissions and returned to Palestine where they turned their attention and military knowledge to helping the fledgling state of Israel establish its defense forces.
DAVID NEMSCHOFF Manhasset, NY
I was most interested to read the story of Herbert Haberberg, the more so because so much of it is my story too.
I was born in Germany, as was my father, but we had Polish citizenship. We too had to leave our home on October 28 for the journey to Zboncyn. I was a baby of 17 months with siblings aged 3, 5 and 7.
Thankfully our story had an amazingly good ending as my three older siblings were sent to England by Kindertransport after four months in the camp and shortly thereafter someone in England had agreed to sponsor me, whilst others sponsors my parents.
By an amazing coincidence we met up with my siblings on the train en-route to Gdynia and all sailed on the SS Warsava, arriving in Cotton Wharf on February 16, 1939. As we were the only complete family to arrive this way, we were featured in the press.
We too have Stolpersteine outside our former home in Freiburg.
RENEE MOSS Netanya
In “They choose to be Jews” (Letters, March 10), there appears a brief letter that must be rejected as a grotesque perversion of all that is Jewish.
The writer states: “But I believe the response (to the question “Who is a Jew?”) is quite simple: if this individual would have been deemed eligible to be tossed into a gas chamber by the Nazis then he/she is a Jew.”
The writer is in fact saying that following the Holocaust all of Jewish wisdom is no longer valid since there is a new decider of Jewish law. Reb Hitler definition of who is a Jew reigns supreme. The absolute absurdity of this statement renders it high ethical-sounding nonsense.
Hitler dare not be given such a posthumous victory.
DUBAI (Reuters) – British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was tried on a new charge of making “propaganda against the system” at Iran’s Revolutionary court on Sunday, her lawyer said, one week after she completed a fiveyear jail sentence.
British foreign minister Dominic Raab said the second trial was “unacceptable” and called on Iran to let Zaghari-Ratcliffe return to Britain. He said Iran had subjected her to a “cruel and disgraceful ordeal.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested in April 2016 and later convicted of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment.
Her family and the foundation, a charity that operates independently of media firm Thomson Reuters and its news subsidiary Reuters, deny the charge.
The propaganda charge relates to her alleged participation in a rally in front of the Iranian Embassy in London in 2009 and giving an interview to the BBC Persian TV channel at the same time, according to her lawyer Hojjat Kermani.
After the trial on Sunday, Kermani said he expected the verdict within the next week.
“Zaghari-Ratcliffe was fine and calm at the court session,” he told Reuters. “I am very hopeful that she will be acquitted.”
The Iranian Judiciary was not immediately available to comment.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who served out most of her five-year sentence in Tehran’s Evin prison, was released last March during the coronavirus pandemic and kept under house arrest until last Sunday. The authorities removed her ankle tag but immediately summoned her to court again on the other charge.
Her husband, Richard, who has set up the “Free Nazanin” campaign group and lobbied the British government to secure his wife’s release, said in a statement that “at present, Nazanin’s future remains uncertain, and her detention effectively open ended.”
Antonio Zappulla, CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, said in a statement that the second trial was a deliberate move to prolong her ordeal and her suffering.
“It is incomprehensible that she faces further trauma as punishment for crimes that she did not commit,” he said.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in a call with Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday, said Zaghari-Ratcliffe must be allowed to return home to her family.
Iranian media reported that during the call, Rouhani raised the issue of a historical debt of 400 million pounds ($557 million), which Tehran says Britain owes the Islamic Republic in capital and interest for a 1970s arms deal with the then-shah of Iran.
British airline Virgin Atlantic, which has been hammered by the COVID-19 pandemic like much of the sector, is set to raise 160 million pounds ($222.75 million) in new financing, a spokeswoman for Richard Branson’s airline said in an emailed statement.
“We continue to bolster our balance sheet in anticipation of the lifting of international travel restrictions during the second quarter of 2021,” the spokeswoman said.
“This latest £160 million financing provides further resilience against a slower revenue recovery in 2021,” she said.
The latest financing follows the airline’s completion in January of the sale and leaseback of two Boeing 787s as part of a plan to strengthen its balance sheet.
The deal with Griffin Global Asset Management to raise just over $230 million from the two planes was meant to enable
Virgin Atlantic to repay a loan taken on as part of its rescue deal last year.
In the latest raise, Branson’s Virgin Group is set to provide about 100 million pounds and the remaining 60 million pounds would include deferrals, according to Sky News, which first reported the development.
In November, the company said that its 1.2 billion pound rescue deal, secured two months prior, meant that the airline can survive even if the travel situation worsens.
Virgin cut costs by 335 million pounds last year, CEO Shai Weiss told an airline industry event in November. It shrank its fleet and announced 4,650 job losses during the pandemic, half its workforce. (Reuters)
rudy Giuliani’s questionable appearance in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm has garnered him a couple of 2021 razzie nominations.
on Friday, the 41st annual Golden raspberry awards, which honors to the year’s least best movies, unveiled their nominations and the former new york city mayor received two nods in the Worst supporting actor and Worst screen combo category.
In the acclaimed sacha Baron cohen flick, the trump consigliere is featured in a hidden camera scene seemingly fondling himself in front of a woman he was apparently trying to seduce in a Manhattan hotel room this past summer.
the film makes it clear that the 76-year-old political figure thought the much younger woman was a conservative journalist interviewing him for a show.
other notables that drew razzie attention was the ill-fated robert downey jr. remake Dolittle, sia’s Music, and My Pillow owner Mike lindell’s stolen election documentary Absolute
Bruce Willis scored three nominations for three different films in the same category.
oscar winner anne hathaway and Katie holmes also were nominated twice for two different films in the Worst actress category.
the razzies also awarded a “special Governors’ trophy” to the year 2020 as “the Worst calendar year eVer.”
the reimagined Fantasy Island movie and adam sandler’s netflix comedy Hubie Halloween also struck out this year among razzie voters.
usually announced the day before the academy awards, the razzie awards were rescheduled this year – like every other awards ceremony – due to the coVId-19 pandemic.
since 1980, under the shingle of the Golden raspberry Foundation, ucla film graduates and film industry veterans present the satirical ceremony as a parody of the academy awards.
this year’s winners will be unveiled april 24.
although he’s in the ‘worst’ category, Giuliani isn’t in such bad company.
through the years, some of hollywood’s biggest names have been nominated and awarded for the humorous honor, including Will smith
(Aladdin), Barbara streisand (Yentl), halle Berry (Catwoman), dwayne “the rock” johnson (Doom), Whoopi Goldberg (The Telephone), al pacino
(Revolution) and even Beyoncé
(Obsessed).
last year, billionaire hollywood kingpin tyler perry scored eight nominations for the much-maligned comedy A Madea Family Funeral.
the star-studded, box office bomb Cats, which razzie organizers described as a “widely derided feline flop,” also scored eight nominations, alongside sylvester stallone’s audacious
sequel. (new york daily news/tns)