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Food Poland Is Nearing Vote To Legalize Kosher Slaughter
The Polish government reportedly is consulting with trade unions on legislation to allow kosher and halal slaughter. The Polish Press Agency, PAP, reported Jan. 23 that a ministerial committee had given the trade unions copies of a draft amendment allowing ritual slaughter under the Polish Act on the Protection of Animals. The unions have until…
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Fast Forward Youngest Person Saved by Oskar Schindler Dies
The youngest person saved by German industrialist Oskar Schindler has died. Leon Leyson, who Schindler called “Little Leyson,” died of lymphoma on Jan. 12 in Whittier, Calif., at 83, the Los Angeles Times reported. Leyson was 13 when he went to work at Schindler’s factory in Krakow, Poland, where he had to stand on a…
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Fast Forward Polish Film Stirs Debate on Shoah Complicity
A film about a Polish village whose residents help massacre their Jewish neighbours in World War Two has forced Poles to confront one of the most troubling episodes of their past. Most historians take the view that during the war the vast majority of Christian Poles were victims of the Nazi aggression that killed millions…
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Fast Forward It’s #Catholic as Pope Benedict Joins Twitter
It’s official. Pope Benedict’s handle on Twitter will be @pontifex. He already has 1.2 billion “followers” in the standard sense of the word but next week he will have another type when he enters what for any 85-year old is the brave new world of Twitter. The Vatican said on Monday that the pope will…
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News Kosher Controversy Catches Pole Off Guard
News that ritual slaughter could be banned in Poland caught Jakub Lopinski at a critical moment in his career. Lopinski, a non-Jewish entrepreneur from Krakow, was preparing to open a new kosher slaughterhouse in an attempt to carve out a niche for himself in Poland’s large export industry for halal and kosher meat. But the…
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Fast Forward Little East Europe Progress on Nazi-Looted Property
In 1988, Yehuda Evron received a memorable letter from Lech Walesa, the first post-communist president of Poland, on the eve of the country’s transition to democracy. “He wrote that within a few months we would get my wife’s property back,” recalled Evron, now 80. His wife was the only Holocaust survivor of a family that…
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Fast Forward Poland: Animal Welfare Laws Bar Kosher Slaughter
Poland may need to changes its laws on animal welfare to preserve ritual slaughter there, the country’s Ministry of Agriculture said. The ministry statement on Friday came three days after a Polish court ruled that a 2004 government directive enshrining ritual slaughter was unconstitutional. “Immediately after the announcement of the decision, the Minister of Agriculture…
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Fast Forward Polish Ruling May End Kosher Meat Production
Jewish groups said on Wednesday a Polish court ruling on methods used to slaughter livestock could halt the production of kosher meat, threatening their religious freedom in a country where Nazi Germany massacred millions of Jews in World War Two. Poland’s Constitutional court this week reinforced a law that states livestock has to be stunned…
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