Jewish & World News

A box of documents covered with dust, which belonged to the Israeli Embassy in Prague and was discovered accidentally 46 years later, contains a historical memory which may allow the State of Israel to honor Czech citizens who saved Jews during the Holocaust and have yet to be officially recognized. Shahar Shelef, the deputy Israeli ambassador to the Czech Republic, received a phone call from a diplomat serving at the Swedish Embassy in Prague several weeks ago.

The factory in which Oskar Schindler saved moer than 1,000 Jews from concentration camps will be declared a cultural heritage site even as it faces possible demolition. The eastern Bohemian factory in the town of Brnenec is set to be declared a cultural heritage site even as questions arise over whether any of the original buildings can be saved, the Czech daily Mlada fronta Dnes reported. Some of the factory, which is abandoned, already is scheduled to be demolished, while other buildings are potentially too damaged to be saved, according to reports.

Prague - There are some 4000 militant neo-Nazis in the Czech Republic, including a 400-strong hard core, and a part of them pose a latent risk of switching to terrorism, experts focusing on extremism say in a study worked out for the Interior Ministry and released on the its website today. The neo-Nazi scene poses a permanent threat in terms of crime, including violent crime. The number of individual attacks on Romanies is expected to rise in the country in the next five years, says the study completed by a team led by political scientist Miroslav Mares.

A five-year search by a Czech author has discovered that 16 paintings in the Czech Republic were once owned by Adolf Hitler. The art works, which Hitler bought in Germany during World War II, had been moved to Czechoslovakia after it was occupied by the Nazis to prevent them being damaged by Allied attacks. On Monday, author Jiri Kuchar put seven of the paintings on display for reporters at the convent in Doksany in northern Czech Republic where he had identified them. Today, he said, they are probably worth about 50 million koruna ($2.7 million).

Czech police say they have started criminal proceedings against 15 women believed to be been part of a women’s neo-Nazi organization. The special police squad for dealing with organized crime (ÚOOZ) said that the women, aged between 21 and 32, participated in and helped to propagate the ideas of the neo-Nazi Resistance Women Unity (RWU) movement, the non-registered women’s offshoot of the Nazi group National Resistance (Národní odpor).