World News Roundup 11/12/14: A Swastika in a swimming pool
A giant swastika has been found adorning the bottom of a pool in a house in southern Brazil after it was raided by police as part of a kidnapping investigation. The tiles are thought to be over 13 years old. Charges will not be brought because it is on private property and the owner is not considered to be promoting Nazism.
Country: Austria
Vienna will host the world’s first permanent museum dedicated to the Kindertransport, officials have announced. The memorial museum, known in German as ‘For the Child,’ will open in the Austrian capital on Wednesday – the 76th anniversary of the departure of the first group of Jewish children from the city.
Country: Japan
The president of Sankei Shimbun, one of the five national newspapers of Japan, has apologised after carrying adverts for a Holocaust-denier author who says Jews were behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that killed 18,000 and the election of Japan’s current government.
Country: France
A French Jew who killed a 25-year old in a hit-and-run in Tel Aviv in 2011 has been jailed for five years in Paris. Eric Robic and companion Claude Khahat were driving a hired SUV on holiday and had earlier been drinking in a nightclub. Witnesses say they were travelling at over twice the speed limit.
Country: Ukraine
Hundreds of Jews braved sub-zero temperatures in the merciless Ukrainian winter to receive aid packages from a synagogue in the besieged city of Luhansk. Chabad emissary Shalom Gopin said: ‘That so many came despite the cold illustrates the growing need for assistance in this beleaguered community.’
Country: United States
US department store Walgreens has removed a roll of wrapping paper from its stores after a Jewish customer shopping for Hanukah spotted swastikas in the geometric design. Cheryl Shapiro, from California, called her rabbi about the silver and blue paper, before confronting shop managers about the pattern.
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