Bush chooses Houston businessman to head Holocaust Memorial Council

http://www.nandotimes.com ^ | March 10 2002 | AP

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Nation:Bush chooses Houston businessman to head Holocaust Memorial Council

HOUSTON (March 10, 2002 6:34 p.m. EST) - President Bush has chosen a Houston businessman to be the new chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

Fred S. Zeidman, a venture capitalist who also is involved with several Jewish organizations, will succeed Rabbi Irving Greenberg, the Houston Chronicle reported Sunday.

"I could not be more excited. It's a tremendous challenge and I'm just excited to take it on," Zeidman said about his appointment to the council, the parent organization of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Calls to Zeidman and Greenberg by The Associated Press were not immediately returned Sunday.

Zeidman will be the first chairman who is not a survivor of the Holocaust. The longtime Bush supporter is vice chairman of Texas Southern University's board of regents and southwest regional chairman of the Anti-Defamation League.

Greenberg, a historian and specialist in Holocaust studies, lost favor after he wrote a letter on museum stationery to then-President Clinton in support of the pardon granted to financier Marc Rich.

Rich's was the most controversial of the pardons that Clinton granted just before Bush took office. Rich, whose former wife Denise has been a major contributor to Democrats and the Clinton presidential library foundation, fled the country after a 1983 indictment on charges of evading more than $48 million in taxes, fraud and illegal oil deals with Iran.

Greenberg apologized to the council for writing the letter.

More than 17 million people have visited the Holocaust Museum at the Washington Mall since it opened in 1993.