Recent Events:
1.Olmert honors Warsaw ghetto heroes
2. Poland honors cantor
3. Jewish community receives title to property
4. Warsaw International Jewish Film Festival

Olmert honors Warsaw ghetto heroes

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

WARSAW , Feb. 11, 2004

Industry, Trade, and Labor Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday paid homage to the victims and heroes of the 1943 uprising at the Warsaw Ghetto as he started a one-day visit for talks with Poland's leaders.
Before meeting with President Aleksander Kwasniewski and Economics Minister Jerzy Hausner, Olmert laid a wreath at the Monument to the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto flanked by Warsaw Rabbi Michael Schudrich and Israeli Ambassador David Peleg. He also laid flowers at a monument to a Polish group that helped sav e Jews from the ghetto.

(JTA) - Poland honors cantor

A Jewish cantor received Poland's prestigious Legion of Honor award. On Jan. 26, cantor Joseph Malovany became a commander of the Legion of Honor, Poland's equivalent of knighthood. In a ceremony at Blair House in Washington, the Israeli-born cantor of New York City's Fifth Avenue Synagogue received the award from Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski in appreciation for his musical contribution to the international and Polish communities. "I was very moved because my late father was from Poland originally," Malovany said. "He came to Palestine before the Second World War, but other members of my family perished in the Holocaust." A tenor, Malovany has performed worldwide during a long career that has included cantorial positions in Israel, Johannesburg, London and New York. He is the first Jewish cantor to receive this award from Poland.

World news

The Warsaw ghetto in 1943

Community receives title to property Jewish February 7, 2003

WARSAW: The mayor of the Polish capital Warsaw has handed the Jewish community the title to part of a building complex built on the site of the city's synagogue destroyed by the Nazis in 1943.Several of the apartments of the building opposite the mayor's office are already used by city to house collections of Jewish memorabilia.The transfer of the property by Mayor Lech Kaczynski came during a visit to Warsaw by a delegation of the American Jewish Committee to press Poland for the restitution of private property held by Jews.Poland's restitution law provides for the return of property held by the Jewish community before 1939, but not private property.During a three-day visit to the capital, the Jewish representatives met Prime Minister Leszek Miller and parliamentary leader Marek Borowski.Their discussions centred on the question of restitution of Jewish assets and plans to build a dedicated Jewish history museum on the site of the former Warsaw ghetto. The introduction of a Holocaust Day was also discussed.Some 500,000 Jews lived in the Warsaw ghetto shortly after the German Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939. By April 1943 there remained some 60,000, the rest having been deported or succembed to famine and cold.That was the month of a Jewish insurrection here, when Jews took up light arms, choosing to die fighting rather than be massacred without resistance.

WARSAW INTERNATIONAL JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

will be organized in Warsaw, April 18-27, 2004
HA-MOTIV HA-JEHUDI 2004

This Festival will be both a presentation and competition for films in the following categories: feature, documentary, experi-mental and animated films - all on Jewish themes.

Warsaw played a special role in the culture of Jewish people. Before Word War II biggest Jewish community in the world lived here. It was in Warsaw that first films in Yiddish were shot.
For centuries the Jewish people lived, worked, cherished their traditions in harmonious coexistence with the Poles and other nationalities of the Republic. They shared with the Polish people the difficult moments of their country, co-created Polish culture, took part in economic life and in the repeated armed efforts to regain and maintain Poland’s independence.
In 1939, the Jewish community counted 3 million. In the course of World War II it was practically wiped out from the Polish soil. It lies with us what and how much will be saved of the Jewish culture and passed on to generations to come.
The Warsaw International Jewish Film Festival will be held in Warsaw in mid-April 2004. During the Festival historical movies as well as films about contemporary Jewish communities all over the world are to be presented to the public.
The Festival prizes are: statuettes of Phoenix – a symbol of revival - and money prizes.
Films will be shown in cinemas in more than 20 Polish towns, among others: Gdansk, Cracow, Lublin, Lodz, Plonsk, Plock, Siedlce, Wroclaw - in cooperation with various institutions and organizations.
Leading Members of Honorary Committee: Wladyslaw Bartoszewski and Shimon Peres.
Members of the Programme Board: Marek Edelman, Agnieszka Holland, Marcel Lozinski, Janusz Majewski, Janusz Morgenstern, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Zanussi, Maria Zmarz- Koczanowicz.
Honorary Patron is Israeli Embassy in Poland.
Organizers of the Festival are among others: Media Kontakt, National Film Library, Judaica Foundation, Jewish Religious Community in Warsaw, Mazovia Center of Culture and Art, Ministry of Culture, Museum of History of the Polish Jews, Society for the Protection of the Archives of the Institute of Literature in Paris, The Municipality of the Capital City of Warsaw, Jewish Historical Institute.

We invite you or you with your films: feature, documentary, experimental, animated, produced in 2002 or later, in our Festival. Various forms of films can be entered: not shorter than 6 minutes, recorded on 35 mm, 16 mm, BETACAM, SVHS, DV, and DVD.
The deadline for submitting films is: 20th of February 2004. Form and terms of participation are available on site: www.warsawjff.ant.pl. Film should be sent to:

WARSAW INTERNATIONAL
JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL
MEDIA KONTAKT
ul. Wilcza 12 C, 00-532 Warszawa,
Ph+(4822) 627 28 31-32, fax: + (4822) 622 60 13
e-mail: kontakt@ant.pl

On behalf of organizers:

Miroslaw Chojecki Festival Director
Jan Kidawa-Blonski Artistic Director

Media partners:
- Polish Television SA
- Polish Radio, 1st Program
- Daily "Rzeczpospolita"
- Weekly "Wprost"
- Monthly magazine "Midrasz"