World news-roundup: Ex-concentration camp used as wedding venue

Country: Lithuania

Holocaust heritage organisations have expressed ‘shock and disgust’ at revelations that a former concentration camp is now being used as a party venue. The owners of Seventh Fort, 55 miles west of Vilnius, where thousands of Jews are buried, are hiring it out for graduation parties and wedding receptions.

Continent: Africa

A photographer who spent four years travelling around Africa capturing the continent’s sporadic Jewish communities has unveiled his work in an exhibition in Israel. Jono David’s self-funded trip took him to 30 countries, including Cameroon, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Gabon, Morocco and Benin.

Country: Portugal

A new interactive Jewish heritage centre in northern Portugal has been inaugurated by the country’s culture minister and the Israeli ambassador. The centre, in Monsaraz, is known as the ‘House of Inquisition,’ and honours dozens of Jews forced to leave or convert during the Inquisition of 1536.

Country: Netherlands

The Dutch owner of C&A department stores has said he is ‘shocked and disturbed’ by revelations that his family’s company profited from the forced sale of Jewish property and used of Nazi-era slave labour. Maurice Brenninkmeijer initiated the independent probe himself, saying: ‘We wanted to know.’

Country: United States

A 24-year old Jewish drummer is spending his summer busking up the Californian coast to raise money for research into Crohn’s Disease. Gideon Grossman from New Jersey is aiming for $10,000 for those working on a cure for the crippling gastrointestinal disease, which particularly affects Ashkenazi Jews.

Country: Argentina

A senior judge in Buenos Aires has ordered the arrest of a high-level Iranian advisor in relation to the 1994 attack on a Jewish centre in the city, which killed 85 people and injured hundreds. Alí Akbar Velayati, who was foreign minister at the time, now advises Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.