Levitt Letter Extra News

Associated Press

The U.S. State Department announced the Tuesday before Thanksgiving that it is offering a reward of up to $5 million for a Palestinian bomb-maker suspected of once targeting commercial airliners and of aiding the Iraq insurgency.

Abu Ibrahim, whose real name is Husayn Muhammed al-Umari, stands accused of a spate of bombings in the 1980s. He was indicted in the 1982 bombing of Pan Am Flight 830 that killed a 16-year-old boy and wounded more than a dozen passengers as the plane headed to Honolulu from Tokyo.

The FBI has been trying to catch Ibrahim for decades. It has upped its efforts recently, releasing an age-enhanced sketch of him earlier this year and working to dramatically increase the potential reward for information leading to his capture. He is about 73 years old.

Previously, the reward for Ibrahim had been $200,000 – apparently not enough to get someone to turn on him. With the new amount, former law enforcement officials who hunted Ibrahim say the FBI might finally nab him.

“If he is still out there and functioning, we’ve got a good chance now. Better than we had before. Money talks,” said Denny Kline, a retired FBI explosives expert who investigated Ibrahim’s terrorist organization.

Ibrahim ran the organization, called 15 May, according to federal court documents and terrorism experts. The group was named for the day after Israel was founded, when Arab armies launched an attack against the new country.

Former CIA operatives who also tracked Ibrahim say he lived in Iraq, beyond the long reach of the spy agency and the FBI, for about three decades and thrived with the help of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Before the 2003 Iraq invasion, Ibrahim – known as The Bomb Man – lived in a suburb of Baghdad, and his terrorist group received a monthly stipend from the IIS, according to captured Iraqi documents.

The Iraqi government used him to conduct terrorism operations against Syria and Iran. In his book, former CIA spy master Duane R. Clarridge wrote that Ibrahim had a talent for constructing ingenious machines of death, such as refrigerator trucks whose cooling pipes were filled with liquid explosives.

Ibrahim is accused of teaching the art of bomb-making to a slew of operatives, including Mohammed Rashed, who’s behind bars at a maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado. Rashed was convicted in the 1982 Pan Am bombing. He is scheduled to be released in 2013.

In April, the AP published a story about Ibrahim, whom many people thought dead.

Court documents indicate Rashed has agreed to cooperate in the case against Ibrahim as part of a plea agreement, meaning the FBI needs to catch Ibrahim before Rashed’s release. But Rashed disputed he’ll testify against Ibrahim. In a May letter to The Associated Press, he wrote: I am not a witness against nobody.

In 2004, the military raided a bomb-making factory in Mosul and found telltale signs of Ibrahim and his devices, suggesting that he or his pupils were supporting the insurgency. Federal law enforcement officials also confirmed they had had no reason to believe Ibrahim had given up his deadly trade.

Experts believe his bomb-making signature can be seen in other bombings or attempted bombing in the 25 years since his indictment, according to an FBI news release.

The FBI also put Ibrahim on its list of most-wanted terrorists, a group that includes Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

In May, the AP reported that Ibrahim, a devout Sunni, had fled to Tripoli, a city in northwest Lebanon, where his second wife, Selma, was born.

The FBI said Ibrahim could be in either Lebanon or Iraq and is known to carry a gun at all times. Lebanon does not have an extradition treaty with the U.S., but is a member of Interpol, which has also issued an alert seeking Ibrahim’s arrest.

Ibrahim has been linked to several terrorist organizations, including Black September and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He broke away from the PFLP in 1979 and founded the Baghdad-based 15 May. He’s believed to have received training from the Soviet Union’s KGB and Irish Republican Army.

The State Department says people with tips should contact its Rewards for Justice program, any U.S. embassy or consulate or any U.S. military commander in Iraq.

Ibrahim was also indicted by the French for his alleged role in the 1985 bombing of the Marks and Spencer Department store in Paris and the Leumi Bank. One person was killed and 14 others injured at the store; nobody was killed in the bank bombing.

By David Lev, www.IsraelNationalNews.com

Mordechai Limon, who was one of the pioneers and first commander of the Israel Navy, passed away over the Jewish Sabbath at age 85. Limon, who immigrated to Israel in 1932 from Poland, was at the nexus of two of the most important naval episodes in the course of Israel’s history: The smuggling of immigrants from British detention camps in Cyprus after the Holocaust, and the retrieval from France of five warships that Israel had bought and paid for, but which French President Charles de Gaulle sought not to deliver to Israel.

During World War II, Limon joined the Haganah (predecessor to Israel Defense Forces), where he subsequently helped establish the organization’s naval unit, and conducted training courses for young soldiers. He decided he needed more experience at sea, and joined the British Merchant Marine and sailed the world. At the end of the war, he returned to the Middle East, disembarking at Alexandria. After his return to Mandatory Palestine, Limon commanded several ships smuggling in stateless Jews from detention camps in Cyrus. Altogether, Limon successfully brought 5,000 Jews to the Land of Israel before the establishment of the State.

During the War of Independence, Limon commanded several vessels, and, among other battles, participated in the Helino Incident, in which a Czech ship filled with weapons bound for Egypt was confiscated. In 1950, Limon was named Commander of the newly established Israel Navy, with the rank of general – at age 26, the youngest officer in the IDF’s history to be promoted to that rank.

In 1954, Limon left the Navy and studied business administration in the United States. He returned to Israel and began working in a number of capacities for the Defense Ministry, and in 1962 was chosen to head Israel’s procurement office in Paris, then the most important source for Israel of foreign-manufactured weapons. Limon was able to put together many important weapons deals for the IDF in that post and built up excellent working relations with French government and military officials.

In 1965, Israel negotiated the manufacture and purchase of advanced missile boats at a ship foundry in Cherbourg, France. In the wake of the 1967 Six Day War, French President Charles de Gaulle placed an embargo on Israeli arms purchases from France – including the Cherbourg boats, for which Israel had already paid. The ships, some of which were ready to sail and already manned by Israeli crews, were forced to remain anchored in Cherbourg.

In order to redeem the ships, Limon and other Israeli officials clandestinely established a Norwegian company, which “purchased” the ships from Israel, with the sale approved by French authorities. The Norwegian company was ostensibly to use the ships for oil exploration in the North Sea, but Israeli officials began preparing them for the long journey to Israel, equipping them with spare fuel. At the same time, Israeli sailors, posing as Norwegian staff, began manning the ships. On December 24, 1969, as residents of Cherbourg were celebrating Christmas, the ships left port, arriving in Israel on December 31.

The French, meanwhile, became aware of what happened only after the ships left port, and in retaliation booted Limon out of the country. When he returned to Israel in 1970, he was greeted by the top brass of the IDF and the Defense Ministry, and hailed as a hero for his role in rescuing the ships.

Limon subsequently retired from official life, and became a private businessman.

Speaking Saturday night, President Shimon Peres mourned Limon, saying that his contributions to the State “were as deep and important as they were quiet. He knew how to handle crises, such as in the Cherbourg Affair. The nation has an obligation to salute the man, his personality, his actions, and his contributions.”

Jewish groups again are mobilizing to protest Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the United Nations, as they did last year.

By Ben Harris, www.jta.org

Sarah Palin is being disinvited from the Jewish-sponsored Iran rally, sources told JTA.

The move follows two days of controversy for organizers of Monday’s rally to protest Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations.

The controversy erupted after JTA reported that Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, had accepted an invitation from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to speak at the event. The news of Palin’s participation prompted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who had pledged several weeks earlier to speak at the rally, to announce she was withdrawing from the event.

Spokespeople for both Palin and Clinton proceeded to trade barbs over who was responsible for tainting the rally with politics.

A Clinton spokesperson said the senator withdrew because the rally had become “a partisan political event.”

Palin spokeswoman Tracy Schmitt took a shot at Clinton, saying the Republican nominee “believes that the danger of a nuclear Iran is greater than party or politics.”

The National Jewish Democratic Council defended Clinton’s decision not to attend and called for Palin to be disinvited so as to preserve the nonpartisan nature of the effort to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

On Thursday, the Conference of Presidents held a conference call for rally organizers in which the decision was made to limit participation in the rally to unelected officials, participants on the call told JTA.

Shortly afterward, organizers put out a statement saying, “In order to keep the focus on Iranian threats and to ensure that this critical message not be obscured, the organizers of the rally have decided not to have any American political personalities appear.”

The statement said Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and Israeli Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik would address the demonstration.

The controversy has sparked concern that the issue of stopping Iran has been politicized, undermining efforts to cast opposition to Ahmadinejad’s belligerence and nuclear ambitions as a broad bipartisan issue in the United States. Jewish organizers have labored to present the Iranian regime as a threat not only to Israel but to the United States and the world.

In an effort to avoid the taint of imbalance and partisanship, the Presidents Conference issued a late invitation to the Obama campaign Wednesday morning. But reportedly irked by the conference’s slight, the Obama camp did not commit to sending a representative.

Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Presidents Conference, told JTA earlier this week that the invitation to speak at the rally was extended to Clinton several weeks ago. He also told The New York Jewish Week that once Clinton accepted, organizers did not want to supersede her by bringing in someone from the Obama campaign.

Fred Zeidman, a leading Jewish backer of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, told JTA he was approached about helping secure a speaker around the time of the Republican National Convention at the beginning of September in Minnesota. Zeidman said he forwarded the request to the campaign last week with a recommendation that it cooperate.

“I remember saying to our guys, Hillary Clinton is representing the other side,” Zeidman said. “We’ve got to really take this seriously.”

In a statement this week, the McCain campaign noted its participation in the rally and derided Obama’s stated willingness to negotiate with the man being protested.

“Instead of pressuring Senator Clinton to withdraw and pressuring the event’s organizers to disinvite Governor Palin, we hope Senator Obama will consider lending his own voice to this cause,” McCain-Palin spokesman Michael Goldfarb said in a statement published on a Washington Post’s campaign blog, The Trail. “And if [the] Senator subsequently wishes to clarify any remarks that might be misconstrued, he will have the opportunity to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions after he speaks at the U.N. the following day.”

Clinton advisers said the senator dropped out of her own accord, not due to any pressure from the Obama campaign, according to the Washington Post.

The rally “is not and will not be a partisan event,” Hoenlein told The Jewish Week before his group decided to cancel the invitation to Palin. “The organizers reached out to a wide spectrum of people. Hillary accepted early in August. We also asked numerous Republicans. Some we approached couldn’t make it, and since Governor Palin was coming to the United Nations to meet world leaders, her staff agreed to have her speak.”

Ira Forman, the National Jewish Democratic Council’s executive director, said it is the McCain campaign that was guilty of politicizing the rally with its partisan statements.

Along with other Jews involved in organizing the event, Forman also laid blame with the Presidents Conference, saying it bungled matters either by inviting Palin at all or by failing to notify the Clinton camp promptly that it had secured Palin’s participation. Forman praised the decision Thursday to cancel Palin’s appearance.

“It was a wise decision to make,” he said. “It depoliticizes an event that fundamentally needs support from everybody and shouldn’t be part of the political circus this year.”

Jewish Republicans agreed that the organizers blundered — but said the mistake was withdrawing the invitation to Palin.

“This is one of the biggest black marks on our community that I can remember in more than 20 years of working in the Jewish community,” Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told JTA. “I think it is absolutely outrageous that we allow people with a partisan political agenda to hijack an event that is designed to send a message to Iran and the rest of the world of the U.S.’s commitment to ensure that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons. The fact that we can’t put partisan differences aside to come together on something like this, it’s sad and it’s disappointing.”

As the campaigns sparred over who was guilty of placing partisanship above principle, some Jewish leaders worried that an event intended to display unity in the face of the Iranian threat was crumbling.

“I do think that’s unfortunate,” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism. “The point here obviously is to show broad bipartisan support for the need to stop a nuclear Iran. We don’t want the message to be diverted by internal political considerations.”

“It doesn’t make sense to me as an American Jewish policy matter, and as an American matter, to let one party or the other off the hook over what is going to be, objectively in our view, the most serious foreign policy issue of the next administration,” said David Twersky, a senior advisor on policy, international affairs and communications at the American Jewish Congress. “It’s not a good policy for the Jews.”

By Hillel Fendel, www.IsraelNN.com

At a suddenly-called press conference, the Prime Minister announced he will not participate in his party’s primaries. He said he would resign when a new party leader is chosen, “in order to enable the new leader to form a new government.”

Kadima’s primaries are to be held on September 17.

Olmert began his speech, timed to coincide with the national televised evening news broadcasts, by boasting of his administration’s economic successes, such as low unemployment. He added, however, that he believes that peace with the Arabs is the most important mission he faces.

“I have never tried to boast of my achievements for political purposes,” Olmert said. “I have always had to defend myself from attacks… I am the Prime Minister, and am therefore an address for political attacks, but everyone knows that it has gone out of control. Have I made mistakes? Certainly I have, and I regret them. But I deserve to be treated as innocent until proven guilty – yet this has not happened. I am proud to live in a state where even a Prime Minister can be investigated; the police must investigate, and the Prosecution must do its job as well. The Prime Minister is not above the law – but he is in no way below it. It cannot be that minor clerks determine whether a Prime Minister continues in office. Unfortunately, this is not what is happening…”

Towards the end of his talk, Olmert said, “The campaign of mudslinging being waged these days against me raises a question that I cannot and do not want to avoid: What is more important – personal justice for me, or the interests of the State?” He answered categorically that the latter take precedence, and therefore: “I have decided not to take part in the Kadima primaries, nor will I intervene in them. When a new party leader is chosen, I will resign in order to enable him/her to form a new government.”

“We have a wonderful state,” Olmert concluded, “which I love with all my being. I thank you for the opportunity you have given me to act on your behalf.”

Unsurprisingly, Olmert did not entertain reporters’ questions, and quickly left the room.

The media event was announced only two and a quarter hours before its scheduled starting time, and was held in Olmert’s official residence in Jerusalem. No further details were provided, and even some of the Prime Minister’s close aides said beforehand that they did not know what Olmert planned to say.

More Excerpts
Olmert summed up his term in office while decrying the “constant attacks” he has suffered from “self-appointed warriors for justice… I will not interfere in the internal elections. I will accept their results and give them my blessings.

“As a citizen of a democratic state I always believed that once a Prime Minister is elected in Israel, even those who voted against him in the ballot box must wish for him to succeed,” Olmert said. “However, almost from my first day in the Prime Minister’s Office, I have had to fight off wicked attacks even as I dealt with matters vital for the state’s security.”

“I have decided not to run in the primaries, and I will not interfere in the internal elections. I will accept their results and give them my blessings,” he said.

Speculation: Rife
Speculation had been rife that Olmert would in fact announce that he would not run in the upcoming Kadima party primaries. However, it had also been rumored that Olmert planned to step down from office, either by resigning, suspending himself, or possibly by announcing an indefinite vacation. Olmert’s close friend Vice Premier Chaim Ramon had intimated that the last option was the most likely, according to the NFC Hebrew news site.

Four Police Probes
Olmert is currently under four different police investigations: The Talansky cash envelopes, the Cremeiux St. house, the double-billing for his trip abroad, and his alleged intervention in an Investment Center decision on behalf of a close friend.

The police have asked that Olmert dedicate two or mour hours each week to these investigations. The Prime Minister has not yet responded to the request.

The political situation in light of the suspicions against Olmert is complex. Under pressure from the Labor Party to quit in light of the revelations that he had received cash-filled envelopes from New York philanthropist Moshe Talansky, Olmert agreed several weeks ago to hold primaries in his Kadima party in September – a far cry from the immediate resignation Labor appeared to be demanding.

Ironically, and in total defeat of Labor’s intentions, Olmert never said – until now – that he would not take part in the primaries.

Livni or Mofaz
The current front-runners for Kadima party leader are Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Transportation Minister Sha’ul Mofaz. The primaries winner will then be granted a chance to form Israel’s next government. If he or she does not succeed within 42 days, elections must be held 90 days later – somewhere around the end of January. Olmert will remain the Prime Minister in the duration.

It is known that Olmert favors Mofaz, and had looked into the possibility of installing Mofaz as Acting Prime Minister in place of Livni. This would have paved the way for Olmert to resign and Mofaz to assume the premiership, if only on a temporary basis, even before the primaries. However, such a move requires the approval of the Knesset, and was considered an unlikely scenario.

www.IsraelToday.co.il

Israel has already deployed several units of an advanced solid-based laser system with Israeli forces stationed near the Gaza Strip. The new laser is being used to detonate terrorist-planted bombs along the Gaza security fence without putting the lives of Israeli soldiers at risk.

The laser is an eventual complementary system to the “Iron Dome” anti-missile system, also being developed by defense contractor Rafael. Working in tandem, it is hoped that the laser and the Iron Dome will be able to protect communities in southern Israel from Palestinian rocket attacks.

Israeli government endorses plan to install world’s first electric car network in country by 2011

Associated Press

Israel’s government endorsed the ambitious plan of a private entrepreneur to install the world’s first electric car network here by 2011, with half a million recharging stations to crisscross the tiny nation.

Supporters hailed the undertaking as a bold step in the battle against global warming and energy dependency, but skeptics warned that much could still go wrong along the way.

In a signing ceremony with the French Renault-Nissan Alliance carmaker – under the slogan “Transportation without fuel, making peace between transportation and the environment” – Israel’s leaders pledged to provide tax incentives to customers to make Israel’s cars fuel-free.

The project is a joint venture between Renault-Nissan, who will provide the electric vehicles, and the Silicon Valley-based startup Project Better Place, which will operate the recharge grid. The replacement and charging of the lithium-ion batteries is supposed to work like that of a cell phone battery.

“For the first time in history, all the conditions necessary for electric vehicles to be successfully mass-marketed will be brought together,” the two companies said in a statement.

Car with electric engine

‘Humankind addicted to oil’
The initiative is the brainchild of Shai Agassi, a 39-year-old Israeli-American entrepreneur and high-tech star, who raised $200 million in investment money to get the project off the ground. “Our planet’s battery got charged over hundreds of millions of years, and yet we have consumed half the world’s oil in one century. In the process, we got addicted to oil, polluted our cities and altered our planet’s climate,” Agassi said. “Finally, we are running out of out most precious commodity of all – we are running out of time.”

Less than a year ago, Agassi quit as a top executive at the German software giant SAP AG to pursue his green dreams. Along with his partner Idan Ofer, he founded Project Better Place, aimed at helping reduce greenhouse emissions by building a network of charging stations for electric cars across Israel.

Agassi’s spokesman said his home country of Israel was the ideal laboratory to market his vision – with its high fuel prices, dense population centers, and supportive government.

Peres: Oil the greatest danger
In Israel, 90 percent of car owners drive less than 43.5 miles per day and all major urban centers are less than 150 kilometers 93 miles apart, making the use of battery-operated cars more feasible than in countries with longer average commutes. Green cars are also particularly attractive to Israel, which hopes to weaken the political clout of its oil-rich enemies.

“Today is a new age with new dangers and the greatest danger is that of oil,” President Shimon Peres said. “It is the greatest polluter of our age and oil is the greatest financier of terror.”

Other automakers have produced plug-in hybrid prototypes, which switch from pure electric to gas engine to a blended gas electric mode. But the Renault model is the first mass-produced model designed to be completely fuel-free.

“Zero emission, zero noise,” Renault-Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said. “It will be the most environmentally friendly mass-produced car on the market.” Ghosn said the cars, with a range of up to 100 miles per charge, would have a top speed o f68 mph — the top speed limit in Israel. And Aggasi vowed that, in the long run, the electric car would be cheaper to operate than one based on fuel.

Israeli leaders said they hoped the country would prove to be a trailblazer in the field of alternative energy. “This initiative will revolutionize cars in Israel and throughout the world,” National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said.

By Zafrir Rinat, www.Haaretz.com

The hoopoe, Israel's State Bird

The wait is over: after months of campaigning, the hoopoe has beat out nine other finalists to secure the title of Israel’s state bird.

The hoopoe (duhifat, in Hebrew) won 35 percent of the votes, beating out the warbler (ten percent) and the finch (9.8 percent).

The national bird selection process was sponsored by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI). Voters chose from a list of 10 species on the SPNI website.

Surveys show that 46 percent of the votes for the winning bird came from Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

Dr. Yossi Leshem, the Tel Aviv University ornithologist who helped initiate the campaign to choose a state bird, said that the election of city birds is next on the agenda. Tel Aviv has already announced that it will adopt the swallow as its municipal avian mascot and set up nest installations around the city.

By Hana Levi Julian, www.IsraelNN.com

Close to 300,000 tourists streamed into Israel this past May, breaking all records, according to the Tourism Ministry. The number of visitors was 5 percen higher than the previous record, set in the year 2000.

The projected total tourism for 2008 will be almost 3,000,000 visitors to the Jewish State.

Tourism Ministry Director-General Sha’ul Tzemach commented that the rise could have far-reaching positive effects, noting that “with the continuing growth pattern, this contribution will be felt in all aspects of the tourism industry.”

Israeli Tourist Sites Uploaded to Tourism Ministry Website
New maps of Israel and major tourism sites and cities were uploaded to the Ministry of Tourism website, www.goisrael.com/tourism_eng. The new service allows for navigation and printing of the maps, which display major tourist sites marked in English.

Included are beautiful new maps of Israel, Christian sites, and the cities of Jerusalem, Tiberias, Eilat, Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Netanya. In addition, the ministry has uploaded another 200 photographs, adding them to the existing 1800 photos available for downloading from the site, which can be searched by name or keyword. More photos will be added in the coming months, said the ministry.

The Tourism Ministry’s website attracts more than a quarter of a million hits a month and is translated into 11 different languages, including English, Russian, French, German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Italian, German and Hebrew. It is also in the process of being translated into other languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Korean and Portuguese.

By Monika Scislowska, Associated Press

WARSAW, Poland – Irena Sendler — credited with saving some 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazi Holocaust by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, some of them in baskets — died today, May 12, 2008, her family said. She was 98.

Sendler, among the first to be honored by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial as a Righteous Among Nations for her wartime heroism, died at a Warsaw hospital, daughter Janina Zgrzembska told The Associated Press.

President Lech Kaczynski expressed “great regret” over Sendler’s death, calling her “extremely brave” and “an exceptional person.” In recent years, Kaczynski had spearheaded a campaign to put Sendler’s name forward as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker with the city’s welfare department when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, launching World War II. Warsaw’s Jews were forced into a walled-off ghetto.

Seeking to save the ghetto’s children, Sendler masterminded risky rescue operations. Under the pretext of inspecting sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, she and her assistants ventured inside the ghetto — and smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and in trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages.

Teenagers escaped by joining teams of workers forced to labor outside the ghetto. They were placed in families, orphanages, hospitals or convents.

Records show that Sendler’s team of about 20 people saved nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and its final liquidation in April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or sending them to death camps.

“Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory,” Sendler said in 2007 in a letter to the Polish Senate after lawmakers honored her efforts in 2007.

In hopes of one day uniting the children with their families — most of whom perished in the Nazis’ death camps — Sendler wrote the children’s real names on slips of paper that she kept at home.

When German police came to arrest her in 1943, an assistant managed to hide the slips, which Sendler later buried in a jar under an apple tree in an associate’s yard. Some 2,500 names were recorded.

“It took a true miracle to save a Jewish child,” Elzbieta Ficowska, who was saved by Sendler’s team as a baby in 1942, recalled in an AP interview in 2007. “Mrs. Sendler saved not only us, but also our children and grandchildren and the generations to come.”

Anyone caught helping Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland risked being summarily shot, along with family members — a fate Sendler only barely escaped herself after the 1943 raid by the Gestapo.

The Nazis took her to the notorious Pawiak prison, which few people left alive. Gestapo agents tortured her repeatedly, leaving Sendler with scars on her body — but she refused to betray her team.

“I kept silent. I preferred to die than to reveal our activity,” she was quoted as saying in Anna Mieszkowska’s biography, “Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Story of Irena Sendler.”

Zegota, an underground organization helping Jews, paid a bribe to German guards to free her from the prison. Under a different name, she continued her work.

After World War II, Sendler worked as a social welfare official and director of vocational schools, continuing to assist some of the children she rescued.

“A great person has died — a person with a great heart, with great organizational talents, a person who always stood on the side of the weak,” Warsaw Ghetto survivor Marek Eldeman told TVN24 television.

In 1965, Sendler became one of the first so-called Righteous Gentiles honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem for wartime heroics. Poland’s communist leaders at that time would not allow her to travel to Israel; she collected the award in 1983.

Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said Sender’s “courageous activities rescuing Jews during the Holocaust serve as a beacon of light to the world, inspiring hope and restoring faith in the innate goodness of mankind.”

Despite the Yad Vashem honor, Sendler was largely forgotten in her homeland until recent years. She came to the world’s attention in 2000 when a group of schoolgirls from Uniontown, Kan., wrote a short play about her called “Life in a Jar.”

It went on to garner international attention, and has been performed more than 200 times in the United States, Canada and Poland.

Sendler, born Irena Krzyzanowska, said she lived according to her physician father’s teachings, arguing that “people can be only divided into good or bad; their race, religion, nationality don’t matter.”

She married Mieczyslaw Sendler but they divorced after the war’s end. Sendler then married fellow underground activist Stefan Zgrzembski, and they had two sons and a daughter. One died a few days after birth. The second son, Adam, died of a heart failure in 1999.

Sendler is survived by her daughter and a granddaughter.

See page 28 of April 2008 Levitt Letter.

Israeli youths embrace as a siren marking the annual Holocaust remembrance day sounds in Jerusalem. Photo: AP

Israelis stand outside their cars as a siren marking the annual Holocaust remembrance day sounds in Tel Aviv. Photo: AP

By Hillel Fendel, www.IsraelNN.com

Jews around the world, and particularly in Israel, will commemorate the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, as well as those who were able to fight back, beginning Wednesday evening.

Yom HaShoah V’Hagvurah, Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day, begins this evening at 8 PM with a public ceremony at Warsaw Ghetto Square in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will speak, survivors will light six torches (see below), the Chief Rabbis will recite prayers, and Cantor Asher Heinowitz will sing the El Malei Rachamim prayer.

The central theme of this year’s commemorations is “Choose Life.” Last year, it was “Bearing Witness.” At 10 PM, a symposium will be held on the topic of “Choose Life,” with the participation of Holocaust survivors and Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev.

The six survivors lighting the torches are the following:

Esther Samuel-Cahn, born in 1933 in Norway. A religiously observant professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she was awarded the Israel Prize in Statistics in 2004. When she was 9, her father, Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak Samuel, the rabbi of Norwegian Jewry, was arrested by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz. Several months later, she and her family were hidden behind potato sacks and smuggled to Sweden. At age 13, a year after World War II ended, she immigrated to Israel with her mother and two brothers.

Meir Brand, born in 1936 in Poland. In 1943, closed up in a Nazi-built ghetto, his parents decided to smuggle him out, and after many narrow escapes, he arrived in Budapest, Hungary. He was on the Kastner Train – a trainload of almost 1,700 Jews who escaped from Hungary to safety in Switzerland – but was one of the few dozen who was detained in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. After his rescue in 1945, he was brought to Israel via the Jewish Agency’s Aliyat HaNoar (Youth Immigration) project. Here he learned that his parents had been murdered. Meir lived in the Jordan Valley’s Kibbutz N’vei Eitan, and fought in most of Israel’s wars.

Naomi Shadmi, born in 1931 in Hungary. At age 13, her father, older brother and mother were abducted, one after the other, by the Nazis. Naomi and her remaining younger brother were taken to the Budapest Ghetto. After their release, they found that their relatives had been murdered. They came to Israel, where Naomi worked for Israel Police for 20 years.

Tzvi Ungar, born in 1929 in Poland. He survived the Birkenau and Buchenwald concentration camps, as well as the infamous Death March, but the remainder of his family was murdered. In 1948, he immigrated to Israel, fought in the War of Independence, and helped found Kibbutz Malkiyah, practically atop Israel’s border with Lebanon, where he still resides.

Menachem Katz, born in 1925 in Poland. At age 17, he and his family were taken to a ghetto, then banished to the Belzec concentration camp in Poland, where an estimated 600,000 people were murdered. He escaped, and was later followed by his family. In 1946, they were caught on their way to Palestine and taken to Cyprus, where they remained for about a year. A prominent architect, Menachem designed the museum at Kibbutz Baram in memory of the Jews of Berezhany, his birthplace.

Michael Maor, born in Germany in 1933. His family fled to Yugoslavia, then to Italy, and then to the forests with the partisans when Italy came under Nazi influence. In 1944, the Nazis murdered his parents, and he was taken to an orphanage. In Israel, he worked for the Mossad Intelligence Agency, collected evidence against Adolph Eichmann, and established the Border Guard’s intelligence department.

The date of Yom HaShoah was chosen to mark the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Although the day became official by an act of Knesset, it has been traditionally commemorated by Jewish communities around the world. Some religious communities prefer not to commemorate the Holocaust on this day, which falls in the generally happy month of Nissan, but rather on Tisha B’Av or on the Tenth of Tevet, which the Chief Rabbinate of Israel fixed as the day for the recital of the Kaddish prayer for those murdered during the Holocaust whose date of death is not known.