The heist allegedly was organized by an international criminal organization spanning Israel, Switzerland and Russia. Defense attorneys vowed to take the case to the Russian Supreme Court. The right-wing mayor of the southern French town of Toulon has created an uproar by refusing to honor Jewish writer Marek Halter at the local book fair. Instead, he said the award should be presented to former actress Bridget Bardot, whose memoirs have topped the French bestseller lists for months. Bardot's husband, Bernard D'Ormale, is a member of the National Front, which espouses a nationalist, anti-immigrant agenda.
Beatification is a step toward sainthood.
Neururer, a priest in the Tyrolean town of Goetzens, located near Innsbruck, was tortured to death at Buchenwald on May 30, 1940. Gapp, an outspoken anti-Nazi priest who was also from the Tyrol, opposed the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938 and escaped from Austria in 1939. Eventually arrested by the Gestapo in France, he was beheaded in August 1943 in Berlin. A Czech human rights group has filed a complaint against local police for not intervening to end a concert organized by a neo-Nazi group. The Civic Solidarity and Tolerance Movement said the Nov. 10 concert was organized by a neo-Nazi organization called Blood and Honor.