Prince Charles: goes looking for a mezuzah Prince Charles and Duchess Camilla arrived in Poland today to take part in the opening ceremony of a new Jewish community center in Krakow’s Kazimierz Jewish quarter. While the project was overseen by World Jewish Relief (a charity group based in London and credited with aiding Jewish children in escaping the Nazi regime during World War II), the inspiration for and funding of the center came directly from the Prince of Wales.

In 2002, Charles met with many of Krakow’s Holocaust survivors and was so moved by their stories that he decided to commit himself to the building of a community center. Many of the survivors he initially spoke with were present at today’s ceremony, including Ryszard Orowski, who lost all of his relatives in the Holocaust. Orowski expressed his joy and amazement over the project: "Never did we imagine that we would have a center, a home for the whole community of Krakow."

Prince Harry: fashion faux pasThe center will be used by about one thousand neighboring community members, ranging from elderly citizens to Polish students at Krakow University. It will be open to Jews and non-Jews alike for all sorts of social, religious, and educational activities.

As a token of gratitude, Prince Charles was given the honor of nailing the mezuzah on the front door of the center, making for one of a few rather excellent photo ops.

It is probably no coincidence that the opening of the center coincides with Yom Hashoah, and thus far plans have gone off without a hitch -- unlike three years ago when the British Royal family’s plans to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day went Prince Charles Says: want to play torah slides and ladders?terribly awry after every tabloid from here to Tel Aviv had a photo of Prince Harry dressed as a Nazi soldier on its cover. Also notable is that the Prince and Duchess’s presence at the opening of the community center comes less than a month after the Jerusalem Post published an article exposing the United Kingdom as “the European center of anti-Semitism.” According to Oxford-educated Hebrew University Professor Robert S. Wistrich, anti-Semitism is so implicit in British culture – literary, political, and otherwise – that Brits can’t even recognize it anymore. <!--[endif]-->

Not to belittle his efforts in Krakow, but maybe Prince Charles should take that kippah and hammer and head over to a synagogue in his own hometown.

Die Laughing: the Suharto wayFormer Indonesian dictator Suharto is finally dead, leaving behind a legacy of ethnic and political persecution and genocide. Estimates on the number of Communists, activists, political opponents, and ethnic Chinese killed under his rule range from hundreds of thousands to millions, and Suharto died accused of embezzling more than any other world leader in history: An estimated $15-$35 billion over three decades. The Economist says that in death, Suharto cheated justice.

Coincidentally, Suharto died on the UK's Holocaust Memorial Day, which marks the anniversary of the liberation in 1945 of Auschwitz-Birkenau and aims to prompt British action on behalf of all persecuted peoples.

One Briton who has been prompted into action is Prince Charles himself. More news out of England has the press throwing a royal fit over Prince Charles' decision not to attend the Beijing Olympics. Though no reason was officially cited, it's safe to assume that the Prince's longstanding support of Tibet and the Dalai Lama has something to do with it.

Meanwhile, the death toll in Kenya is soaring as the country's ethnic and political crisis continues to worsen. Atrocities being perpetrated in the mob violence include forced circumcisions on Luos by Kikuyus. A New York Times article quoted one Kenyan woman as saying, "God made all of us. We need his help."

Finally, a Sikh couple in France are founding their own school to skirt the pesky turban ban, which went into effect in French state schools in 2004. Gurdial Singh says, "It would be a huge campus with schools, colleges and a university, imparting both professional and general education without any ban on anybody's religious dress or something that exhibits one's religious affiliation." Sounds idyllic to me.

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