HOLOCAUST CRIES, TEARS SURVIVORS GATHER TO CONDEMN IRAN MEETING.Byline: BRAD A. GREENBERG Staff Writer Vernon Rusheen saw fellow Jews marched into the Auschwitz gas chambers. He watched the crematorium cre·ma·to·ri·um n. pl. cre·ma·to·ri·ums or cre·ma·to·ri·a A furnace or establishment for the incineration of corpses. crematorium Noun pl -riums or flames climb high into the night sky. And he lost 120 family members in a nightmare he knows was all too real. ``Those who deny the Holocaust, I ask them: Find me those who vanished,'' No. 104502, now 82 and living in Woodland Hills, demanded during a survivors' conference Monday. The event at the Simon Wiesenthal Center  This article is currently semi-protected to prevent sock puppets of currently blocked or banned users from editing it. in West L.A. was called to denounce a gathering in Iran, where 70 Holocaust deniers from 30 countries began a two-day conference to discuss theories to disprove disprove,v to refute or to prove false by affirmative evidence to the contrary. six million Jews Six Million Jews their deaths a testimony to Nazi “Final Solution.” [Eur. Hist.: Hitler, 1123] See : Genocide were systematically killed during World War II. That conference is sponsored by the Iranian government, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  This article or section may contain inappropriate or misinterpreted which do not the text.Please help [ improve this article] by checking for inaccuracies. , has called the Holocaust a myth and has said peace in the Middle East begins with the obliteration A destruction; an eradication of written words. Obliteration is a method of revoking a Will or a clause therein. Lines drawn through the signatures of witnesses to a will constitute an obliteration of the will even if the names are still decipherable. of Israel. ``He is not any better than Hitler,'' Rusheen said, echoing a statement made by Israeli Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu in Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. last month. While it's a crime in Germany and other European countries to deny the Holocaust, some groups have tried to do so over the past 60 years. According to Rabbi Abraham Cooper, two types of people have tried -- those who find its reality too horrible to digest and those who ``would finish the job.'' ``Ahmadinejad's ilk fall into the latter category,'' said Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human-rights organization named for the famed Nazi hunter. About 40 survivors attended the L.A. conference, linked via video to New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of and Toronto. They sat solemnly as Jews born in Germany and Poland, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania, and Hungary and the rest of eastern Europe walked to the podium and shared similar stories. Slave labor. Bloated bellies. Gas chambers. War orphans. ``According to German records,'' said Gunther Katz, 77, of Encino, ``on the 17th of August -- my birthday -- my parents were on Transport 20.'' On Aug. 19, his parents registered with guards at Auschwitz. Katz, a German-born Jew who had been smuggled smug·gle v. smug·gled, smug·gling, smug·gles v.tr. 1. To import or export without paying lawful customs charges or duties. 2. To bring in or take out illicitly or by stealth. to live with Swiss Christians, lost 31 family members, including his parents. ``After the war, I expected parents and cousins to return,'' he said. ``But no one ever did. It is hard for me to explain they just disappeared into the woodwork. ``They were murdered.'' Outside the conference room, a table held books about the Holocaust and copies of an unsigned letter for Jews to address and send to the U.N. secretary-general. The table also held a 3-inch stack of e-mailed and faxed letters from survivors across the country. Hungarian-born Eva Brown, 79, browsed through the items on the table. ``It's important that people hear our cries and see our tears -- that they know,'' said Brown, who lost 60 members of her family. ``They took everything away from me but I will not allow them to take my memory and my soul.'' brad.greenberg(at)dailynews.com (818) 713-3634 CAPTION(S): photo Photo: (color) Eva Brown of West Hollywood is a Holocaust survivor who spoke Monday. David Sprague/Staff Photographer |
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